I wanted to install a touch screen head unit in my girlfriend's 1996 Lexus ES300, so we started shopping around all the local big box stores - checked out all the top name brands, Sony, Pioneer, etc, etc. We also visited some local stereo stores as well, but nothing really grabbed me as far as looks or functionality. The 7" Sony was probably the nicest of what we saw locally, but it just seemed kinda bland to me in some ways and also cost was rather high given its feature set. After shopping around town for a week or so, just nothing seemed to really feel like a good match. My buddy had a 7" Sony in his truck and he let us check it out. Again, it was very nice and sounded great (he had some large amps also), but for the high cost it just seemed like it was really over priced for what you got and maybe was overkill for what I was trying to accomplish for my girlfriend in her ES300.Another thing was that wireless Apple car play was important; we wanted wireless, not just wired (which is what many units are limited to). I watched lots of videos on YouTube to try to better understand how Apple Car Play works and how all these these 7 inch head units compare and function. It's a lot to get up to speed on and my girlfriend is Latina also, so that also adds some additionally complexity to the job too, "why this taking so long? Don't you love me??? Can't you just put this in the car in one day?"Baby, I got this...Interestingly, I subscribe to a channel on YT known as Toyota World Runners and they had recently built a nice off-road 4x4 rig; in some of their travel videos I had noticed that they had a kinda cool looking head unit in their dash that did GPS navigation maps real nice. I went back through their videos and found one showing the unit and was able to zoom in and make out that the name of the unit was ATOTO. Turns out, this was actually a brand mentioned in some of the reviews I had been watching online too.In the TWR videos, you could see the GPS map function looked really nice as they drove around. I started slowly researching ATOTO more and more and quickly became interested in it. True, there was no place to actually go see it locally, but in the videos on line it looked really nice and seemed very response with regard to the touch screen and interface. I also did a lot of reading on the forums, etc. and pretty soon the ATOTO A6 started to look like a very real possibility for this ES300 project.I checked prices at Amazon and was shocked to see that the ATOTO units could be had for a fraction of the cost of something like a Sony unit. At first the low price actually kind of concerned me, but after reading more on line it still seemed like people really loved their ATOTO head units. I mean with discounts and sales, we are talking maybe only $250 for a head unit - that's amazing. For that price (plus Amazon's return policy) I thought, "what the heck, let's give it a shot and see". I mean worse case I could always just return it. La Princesa agreed, so I decided we'd go with ATOTO.With regard to the Lexus ES300, it has a double din setup and there are adapter kits out there for installation. Originally I was gonna use the 7-inch ATOTO but after taking measurements, it seemed like the 9-inch would work and still allow access to all the heating and A/C buttons. Ended up going with the A6 9-inch unit. When it arrived, I was really impressed with the overall build quality and all the stuff in the kit.I'll tell you this.. installation took quite a while. I built all very high quality custom wiring harnesses (basically what you'd consider military grade stuff), so installation took me well over a week. Also, the 1996 ES300 has kind of a funky factory amp setup under the seat, so it took me some time to figure all that out and get the wiring under control. I ended up ditching the factory Lexus amp and was happy to realize the ATOTO came with its own internal amp to drive the speakers. After installing everything, I was shocked how good the 28 year old factory Lexus speakers sounded when powered by the ATOTO internal amps! Even running just 4 of ES speakers, when powered with the ATOTO amp, wow sounds really amazing!The overall functionality of the ATOTO touch screen is super nice. Also customer service from the company is quite good as well. I emailed ATOTO with a few questions along the way and they always wrote back with answers. The install on the Lexus turned out really nice too, although I didn't realize it would preclude use of the cup holders by going w/ the 9-inch unit (my bad) because it had to stick out a bit from being totally flush where the double din is. Had we gone with the 7 inch screen, the cup holders would still have enough room to accept cups, but I think having the 9-inch screen size is worth giving up the cup holders actually. The 9-inch screen size is just so nice and looks very cool poking out a bit.Overall, the speed and function of the ATOTO's interface is really fantastic and smooth....
