[Android Head-Units] Kyle M.:
Interesting that not many people have commented on this thread. I've been looking to compare these 3 brands lately because they seem to be the only ones who make a decent unit in the form factor that I want for my BMW E39.

I've been running a Joying unit for E39 (5er) & E53 (X5) Since 2018. It's a PX5 unit with FYT 6026 SoM (not MCDE) (Still don't know the difference between the two) with a 7" display and physical buttons and knobs which looks like it belongs in the E39 (which is exactly what I wanted). It runs Android 8 and apparently it originally came out with Android 6. Joying had supported this unit for a while rolling out updates on its website (never made OTA updates available) but it stopped supporting it soon after I bought it. Sadly I never found any custom ROM for it and I only know the technicalities of it thanks to a user called Surfer63 who also very kindly made an app called Joying Extra Tools which allowed me to root the unit and do some minor tweaks. The unit came with 2 tiny flimsy mounting brackets which were threaded and no screws. The threads of course gave way as soon as I tried to to screw the unit on and I ended up drilling it and putting clipnuts on together with 2 long screws, but that's all that holds it in place, there's nothing supporting the heavy rear side of the unit.

The biggest problem with this unit was a particular bug that deleted the contacts from your phone as soon as you connect it via Bluetooth. Joying knew about this problem and always adviced users to turn off the "share contacts and call history" option on their phone, but they never released an update to fix the actual issue. Also, the CPU always runs really hot on this unit to the point where I actually stuck aluminium fins to the CPU cooler as well as a 5V fan hooked up to the USB connections. The unit actually survived all these years and it's powerful enough to run a custom launcher as well as several apps (like Google assistant, maps, dashcam software, podcasts, music...) all at the same time even on long journeys. The microphone quality (both internal and external) is almost useless on calls but good enough to use google assistant to play news and set reminders.

To Joying's credit, they reply to emails quite quickly which kind of gave me a bit of faith in the company, assuming that they probably make their units from off-the shelf parts which might not always work flawlessly together.

Eventually my unit started to show its age and slowed down, which was still fine by me. Until last Friday when it entered a bootloop without any apparent causes. I ended up reflashing the latest version of the firmware but after a couple of downloads, it did it again.

At this point I'm looking for a new unit and I've practically narrowed it down to 3. 2 (Xtrons and Eonon) which look like the orignal E39 Navi, and a Joying unit which has just 1 knob and a 9" display. I'm not interested in units without knobs and buttons and I don't really like these screens that stick out too much. I want a reliable unit, reasonable processor powerful enough to survive the next few years and if the mfr. or the community keeps rolling out ROMs and updates for it, I'd be really happy.

I would certainly appreciate your thoughts.

Old Joying unit I currently have:

New Joying unit I'm considering:

Eonon unit I'm considering:

Xtrons unit I'm considering: https://www.xtronsgermany.de/bmw-e3...-4gb-ram-64gb-rom-ia7239b?qty=1#support-video