About another week down and the more I interact with Grom support, the more I dislike how they treat their customers. I noticed an issue with the volume after a couple of longer road trips where my music sounds kinda muddy and quieter than it should be. I think it has something to do with the navigation, because the media volume will go higher/cleaner for a few seconds after the voice nav kicks in, then it goes back down again. Grom has been hands-off with their answers thus far, again blaming the media apps themselves, suggesting that I remove them and only use their own included apps. Um... No? The whole point of an android head unit is to use the apps I want to use to listen to my media. I didn't pay that much to only use Spotify and their FM radio app. Oy.... Either way, the volume issue occurs with their own apps too, so maybe they'll actually look into it now.

The hotspot search is over. I bought a Netgear AC797 since it will wake up the wifi after detecting USB power and automatically turn it back off five minutes after no devices are connected. It works well, but was a pain in the butt to get activated. Verizon was listed as a supported carrier on Netgear's website, but they refused to activate it on my account or even sell me a SIM card "because the IMEI was invalid". I went to a T-Mobile store and the IMEI wasn't valid for them either. They had an option to purchase a SIM without verifying the IMEI, but they wouldn't be able to provide support if it didn't work. I went that route and was able to add it to a prepaid data plan for $10 a month for 2GB of LTE, which seems to be plenty for music streaming and maps/traffic data.

On the Plexamp front, I'm working with the guys at Plex to try resolving the weird issues it has with the head unit. We talked about what was going on in the logs and they might have a solution.

 

Another month of using the Vline exclusively in my car. So far it's still working pretty well.

The problem with muddy sound is now resolved. Grom was very slow to assist with this. They were adamant that audio output doesn't get altered in any way by their system and said it must be an issue with the apps I'm using. It took about a week before they asked me to check the media audio volume in settings when I told them the issue occurs with their built-in apps too. So I tinkered with it myself until I found the source of the issue. It was the built-in EQ for their DashLinq launcher. Everything sounded normal again after I disabled it.

To Grom's credit, after I relayed this info to them, an update was released just a few days later, where they removed the EQ altogether, so they must have been able to recreate my issue.

Another issue unrelated to the unit itself was with the Sirius XM app, where audio would intermittently clip after an update. This has since been resolved with the latest app update from Sirius, but it resulted in a few frustrating weeks due to their support just telling me to reinstall the app and not really provide any additional assistance.

So yeah, still not bad. I haven't needed to use the stock radio functions at all over the last couple months, so I'd say the Vline is fulfilling its purpose.

 

Appreciate the ongoing updates

 

Thanks for the updates. It's very helpful.

Have they fixed the issue with echo sound over CarPlay phone calls? Also I heard it'll go black/screen when it's too hot but I guess you couldn't know in wintertime now.

 

I personally don't use Carplay so I can't speak to an echo issue during calls, though I'd probably attribute that to their cheap bundled microphone. And I haven't run into any crashing or blank screens yet. The only thing somewhat related to that was the touchscreen becoming unresponsive when I first got it, but that hasn't occurred in months.