Products · Pattern or everyday thing
Car stereos
Raised as a usability problem by 39 people on Hacker News over 15 years (2011–2025), in 36 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads in the last 5 years.
Every issue, all time, most people first
Radio presets must be set up again on loaned or switched carsUnreviewed
20112026- Radio switches on automatically with engine and has no option to disable it2024-05-21
- Programming radio presets was difficult on older car head-units2022-01-31
- Modern car radios take 15 seconds to boot and need a horrible menu to reach controls2017-12-15
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 39 complaints
- Sound settings are buried in nested menus and greyed out, requiring a video to find2025-07-06
- Radio switches on automatically with engine and has no option to disable it2024-05-21
- Playback starts unprompted and wrong track info shows on the display2023-11-10
- Answering calls through the car's Bluetooth gives bad feedback, making calls hard to take2023-08-22
- Volume changes lag after turning the knob, so hands are already off before it responds2023-04-29
- Volume stays at loud level on startup and buttons don't respond for half a minute2023-04-27
- Can't browse artist then album; only one top-level view, and tracks play alphabetically ignoring track numbers2023-04-06
- CD player scratches discs over bumps, making most CDs unusable within a year2023-01-07
- Car inexplicably takes over an in-progress call from a phone 30 feet away2022-11-02
- Phone auto-plays random songs at full volume or connects with no sound2022-08-15
- Music starts playing automatically whenever the phone connects, with no option to turn it off2022-07-20
- Hard to figure out how to set the clock time2022-07-18
- Couldn't find a way to turn off auto-connect trusted device setting2022-02-01
- Programming radio presets was difficult on older car head-units2022-01-31
- Car Bluetooth is so maddening the commenter uses a cable instead2022-01-26
- Non-ASCII characters in song filenames show as garbage on the car's media system2021-11-11
- Button stops responding while the station loads, so inputs are lost2021-01-29
- Radio loses paired devices, tuner and mode on restart, requiring many button presses2021-01-21
- Volume buttons replaced by a knob-less touch layout, making the stereo hard to find and use2021-01-21
- Pressing mode switch repeatedly requires watching the display to find the right mode2020-11-20
- Pairing takes minutes, and connections show as active while no audio plays2020-10-27
- Stereo controls require looking away from the road and risk accidental activation2020-07-02
- Terrible interface makes searching and traversing music files a chore2020-04-16
- Touch screen controls in car stereos are hard to operate and make the car less usable2019-10-01
- Audio randomly plays from phone instead of car speakers; fixing requires re-pairing2019-08-22
- Gets stuck in accidental radio modes with no off button, must wait for timeout2019-05-07
- Playback always restarts from the first song and folder after power-off or source switch2019-02-26
- Navigation UX lacking because the small dim TN panel is hard to read2018-06-07
- Navigating a menu to pick a station while driving is unsafe and hard2017-12-15
- Modern car radios take 15 seconds to boot and need a horrible menu to reach controls2017-12-15
- Radio switches transmitters rapidly, causing annoying audio glitches during handoffs2017-08-22
- Built-in car stereo software is far worse to use than phone-run CarPlay or Android Auto2017-07-24
- Car stereos fail to read basic m3u playlist files, forcing copies of songs2017-03-01
- Touch screen radio forces hunting for functions that buttons would make easy to find2016-11-05
- Audio lags at least 1.5 seconds behind when streaming to the car2016-09-07
- Radio presets must be set up on the car interface and reset on loaned or switched cars2014-10-27
- Drivers can't tell how to cancel the settings menu and get stuck on it while driving2013-05-12
- Counter-intuitive interface forces taking eyes off the road to switch music2013-05-12
- Must use the radio's user interface to play music from a USB device, which is terrible2011-07-26