Sirius XM Snap

[old turbo]

Anyone have the Sirius XM Snap? I need some comments from someone other than the techno geeks that are on most web sites. Can it be moved from tow vehicle to rv. This unit is suppose to be an easy install,like just plug and go. Wife wants her Fox channel on the go.

[racerjoe]

I use our xm from my truck. If you plug it into the back of the dvd player it will run thru the speakers. I just leave the antennae on the shelf. Works fine.My portable is the xm to go, Helix unit made by samsung.

[Art-n-Marge]

The price alone makes this a great option for being able to port from one car to another (and possibly the house).

There are only two issues I can think of. First, is plugging the unit into your existing radio in that it needs an AUX port to allow audio because I am not sure the unit itself has decent sound or speakers. But if you can't plug into your car stereo, the Fox channel will probably be okay to listen to on the unit. I listen to a lot of music so I'm not sure I'd like that, since I have a fantastic stereo system that my XM (and now Sirius) sounds real good on. The second issue is the interface. How much information is displayed about stations selections, lists and then presets are available? I couldn't tell from the picture and would certainly wanna see it demonstrated.

My background with this is I have had XM for almost five years, and I buy the 3 year subscription plans for XM Radio and XM Traffic. Now, Sirius and XM are merged so we get both. I originallly had to buy a separate XM receiver module for my Pioneer stereo (it is an option). By itself it was $100 and plugged into the stereo for power and sound and came with the antenna that is currently mounted on the dash and runs under the dash well hidden and permanent. The Pioneer stereo also has a very good interface showing station lists, that I can store (18 presets), and also provides the names of the artist and the song. The station list includes genres and station numbers over several pages of information. It also provides traffic pattern information for the GPS part of the Pioneer too. Admittedly, I really don't need this much information. I just want to be able to view/scan the stations and genres so I can pick what I like but mostly only need Traffic.

I only mention all this because you don't say how familiar you are with Satellite radio operation and there's a lot of nice features with it as soon as you get past the subscription price. Not in your case, but I wanted the XM Traffic for the GPS traffic information, but you MUST subscribe to the music/talk stations to get it, oh well.

I like the price of the discrete Snap unit ($60) since my solution was $100. The Helix is about $300. Then if all your vehicles have the correct connector for the Snap interface or you might need to be converter adapters for each vehicle and that would be the preferred method for sound. But, you'll want to be able to scan for stations and genres and I can't tell how the Snap does this. Regardless, there is also the subscription price per month (cost depends on payment plan you pick). I DO NOT pay for Howard Stern or anything extra like that, but that's just me. Then you'll get what I don't have - portability from vehicle to vehicle.

If you can get a power adapter to use this at the house too, then it's even better because you won't need to pay a subscription for home use too. Subscriptions are paid by the unit so only having the one Snap unit you can take anywhere, is the best. In my case, the XM/Siruis is stuck in the truck and can't use it anywhere else. Then we get some of the XM/Sirius stations with Dish or DirecTV but the don't provide all the stations we listen to in the truck.

Hopefully you do better than I did by giving yourself more portability. Essentially, I'm paying a lot of money for just the Traffic part but where I live that's critical and the tunes are secondary. DW prefers to listen to the disk library provided by the Pioneer, so only when I'm driving alone do I listen to the XM/Sirius which is rare.

Lots to know. I provided my story. I hope this helps with what you want to do and what you get for it.

[Art-n-Marge]

Good news... I found this link at a lesser price ($50) and I can see the interface showing the genre, name and number.

http://shop.xmradio.com/edealinv/servlet/ExecMacro?ctl_nbr=10600&nurl=control/snapOffer.vm&cid=DRTVHPXM

Then I guess the buttons provide the scanning and it looks like it also has at least 5 presets for storing your favorites.

I also learned in another website that it uses an FM station from your stereo to enable the sound. The auxiliary cord probably allows an additional means of a connection and is not required. It's just getting better and better.