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BMW Professional Head unit

19K views 108 replies 32 participants last post by  bodhi 
#1 ·
Hello
Has anyone had any experience with AliExpress, They seem to be selling BMW Professional head units for about £100 shipped.
Do you think they will be able to be coded ? anyone ?
 
#53 ·
doubledot said:
bjt said:
doubledot said:
Heya!

Also found these on Aliexpress and I am considering ordering and installing one as upgrade to my business headunit.
Can anyone confirm that they managed to get a streaming music connection (A2DP)? I want the new unit to accept my phone calls and play my spotify music over the bluetooth connection :)
No A2DP, but what you want to do is possible using a Bluetooth audio receiver connected to the Aux in. Phone can connect to both radio for calls and audio receiver for music at the same time.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk
Oeh, that is one major drawback for me.. Still no song skipping on the HU. Don't care to much for song info, but due to road safety (and the accompanying fines)I do not want to fiddle with my phone itself.

Maybe a Parrot-like system on my business cd is not a bad option after all.. Although I loose the stock-look, it brings me a2dp controls from the HU itself.
Just get one of these on Amazon for under £30. Lets you stream music, answer calls, skip tracks and activate voice control via Bluetooth. I've had it for a few months now and the audio quality is excellent. Attach it to your centre console and you can skip tracks without taking your eyes off the road :-D
 
#54 ·
Made a plate out of ABS sheet to mount the BMW USB socket in the hole in the glovebox. Cut the tab off one end of the Chinese USB cable and plugged it into the socket backwards to correct the USB pinout, works fine. Planning to use cyanoacrylate glue (superglue) to mount it in the glovebox hole as that seems to work well on ABS.


Bought a pigtail cable from eBay to extend the aerial cable as the right-angled aerial connector fouls the HU mounting bracket in my car.

 
#55 ·
So, I have professional HU with Bluetooth in a 2004 e87 with hifi 10 speaker system. My MULF is toast and I've been struggling to fork out the $400 to repair it. Also the pixels on my OE unit are fading.

Will this just plug and play using the existing mic? Or will I need to install the mic that comes with the unit?
 
#56 ·
You would need either to install the mic it comes with or connect to the existing mic wiring that goes to the mulf.

Also would need to code the new HU to hifi.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk
 
#58 ·
hey, i bought the aliexpress headunit a while ago, it didn't come with a mic so i bought one seperately from the same seller;
However, it does not work. bluetooth sound and calling works fine but they can't hear me.
i had to cut a little piece of plastic tab of the cable connector to make it go into the big connector that goes into the player.
Is there something wrong with the pinouts its using or doesn't it work with the supplied vw mic or something?

Green connector is the plug to the mic:

Mic:
 
#64 ·
hello, i have a question too - i'm on a lookout for a professional HU, stumbled upon this thread. my main question is - are these HUs "the real deal"? the main reason i want to upgrade is sound, so can someone confirm for sure that this units on ali express have same sound quality as the ones on ebay (that go for 200 pounds) or the one you can order from your dealer? 450 new one from dealer, roughly 200 ebay, this 100 euro pieces make me a bit worried. i see that they work, but is the sound as it should be? thank you.
 
#66 ·
Don't know what the provenance of these units is, but mine sounds great and just as good as the Pro HU without BT it replaced.
 
#67 ·
that sounds good. sound is my main reason of upgrade so it would be very disappointing if the unit could not deliver sound quality as the "real" one does. they look very real but how sure can one be with AE? has there been anyone that got a faulty one? also, there shouldn't be any "boundaries" for replacing some speakers or adding an amp with these units, right?
 
#68 ·
No, I am using an aftermarket Alpine amp, hifi mods/tweets and Logic 7 subs with mine.

You will need line output converters or an amp with high level inputs though
 
#71 ·
bjt said:
Yes, they are OEM. They're not Chinese lookalikes. Repaired QA rejects perhaps.
Why on the listing pictures they are hiding the BMW logo and trademark?
I ask a couple of repair shop out here, and they told me that is not quite sure if I order a HU from the internet it will be supported by my E87 116i 2010. He advised me to go to the BMW service to run some checks, on the printed check report it will be a number/code. Then they have to crosscheck that number with the HU number/code and confirm if its gonna be supported. I'm a bit confused here cause BMW needs 1200 EUR roughly to install a brand new Professional HU. Ali needs about 150 EUR + cables, mic etc.

So my question is, will it work? is what I've been told true? Sorry for the long message
 
#72 ·
Naz0s said:
Why on the listing pictures they are hiding the BMW logo and trademark?
I ask a couple of repair shop out here, and they told me that is not quite sure if I order a HU from the internet it will be supported by my E87 116i 2010.
Good question, I have no idea. If they are surplus liquidated stock, perhaps a condition of sale is that they're not advertised as genuine BMW parts.

With regards to your car supporting the HU, I am not aware of any model year-related restrictions. The HU I got from aliexpress was manufactured in 2014 and works fine with my 2007 car.

What the repair shop may be referring to is whether the radio is coded for PDC, HiFi, Logic 7, CD Changer and if the radio coding matches your car's options.
The cheaper units on Aliexpress don't have a MOST/fiber connection so they won't work with Logic 7 or CD changer.
If you're upgrading from a business unit you won't have any of those things so it's no problem.
 
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