Delphi SA10224 SKYFi 3 Portable XM Radio Receiver with Vehicle Kit

Ok, I feel for people with a bad unit. Mine was working for two hours then locked up. I had another one arrive a few days later from another seller, it worked great! Difference was: THE FIRMWARE! I reset the first locked up unit by pressing the Volume+ button on the side while pushing the Mode (on/off) button on the front. The firmware version is shown at the bottom of the screen at startup, my first unit was version 1.03! Version 1.19 is the latest! (16 revisions of the firmware have obviously solved numerous problems) So I went to XM's firmware update page (http://fwupdt.xmradio.com/), hooked up the supplied USB cable from my computer to my SkyFi unit, clicked on the "XM Firmware Client (R2.26} (in red) at the bottom of that page and followed the simple instructions and let it do its update magic. Presto...my first unit works great now, no lockups, just smooth operations in all features. It's a great unit, just some of these have been sitting around on a shelf somewhere for a while (from the original $199.00 price days) and just need this simple fix to straighten them out. Best XM radio value out there!

I use this device with awesome results in my vehicle. I use a cassette adapter to play it through my car stereo, rather than the built in FM modulator. I get much better results using the cassette adapter. I do not have the antenna mounted on the exterior of my vehicle. Rather, I simply lay it on a non-skid pad on my dashboard. This device has

many improvements over the Roady2, most notably the portability (you can use it like a Walkman with headphones purchased separately). The ability to record songs is great, as is the fact that the device has a slot for up to a 2 GB microdisk. (It will not accept a microdisk larger than 2GB). Basically, you can use this device as an MP3 player and as a satellite radio. I did do the firmware update on the product. This was no big deal to do the download online. It does freeze on a rare occasion. There is a reset option that fixes this--you simply press two keys simultaneously as directed in the manual. I got this product and a home and car kit free after rebate elsewhere, even as an existing XM subscriber. I've also purchased the headphones with built in antenna, and an extra car and home kit. I got those accessories for about $5 each on the Delphi site using a special code I found on Fat Wallet.

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For those of you wondering if you should purchase this XM Radio system and look to the reviews to decide, I will definitely recommend the SKYFI 3 to you. MP3 and live XM recording are both very easy to use. Most of the bad reviews mention that the radio locks up while in use. I work ten hour shifts driving circles around a small town, so I have put probably 3 to 4 hundred hours of use into my SKIFI 3 that I purchased 2 months ago. I did have the radio lock up on me twice in the first week of using the radio. I found out that it only locks up when you leave the radio on and have activated the auto shut-off timer. I disabled the auto shut-off the first week and the SKIFI 3 has not locked up since. I just last week I ordered 2 more for other members of my family.

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I would have given this five stars, because it looks really cool and works great in the car when it works, but sometimes it freezes, and other times it just doesn't work. Definitely long on features and looks, short on quality and reliability. Would I buy it again? Maybe. I would take a closer look at alternatives.

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Well, as others have mentioned, the sound is fine. But, I had no complaints about SkyFi2's sound either. And beyond that, I've had nothing but trouble since I opened this thing.

1) It's very slow to boot up.

2) It is very slow to change channels and to register the buttons you press.

3) The remote is not as useful as the SkyFi2's remote.

4) The car console doesn't have a "jump" feature like the SkyFi2's did, so you need to use the remote to do that.

5) The "enter" button only sometimes acts as an "enter" button, and the rest of the time it changes the display mode, and there's really no way to predict when it'll work correctly.

6) This one's not the unit's fault, but I made sure my new car had an auxiliary input so I can hook up the radio--but when I hook it up to the car's power and auxiliary jack at the same time, there's a loud, high-pitched feedback, and the only way to avoid that is to not plug it in. But if it's not plugged in, it obviously doesn't work. So it can't work with the auxiliary jack.

7) The FM transmitter is not very good, and I had to purchase a separate modulator to hook up directly to the FM antenna.

I honestly wish I had never upgraded, and I'm going back to the SkyFi2 as soon as I finish typing this.

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