Home » Delphi Roady XM Satellite Radio Review Delphi Roady Pros: Very small unit. 7 selectable display colors; 3 different covers. Fairly large display for its size. Cons: Reliability issue in the long-term. Does not display as much information as the other XM/Sirius Plug-and-Plays. TuneSelect does not work as great as SongSeek. Overall: The Roady is a small receiver that is great for cars that don't have a lot of space by the dash. While I would not recommend it to be used in the car & home together, many people do that.   The Delphi Roady came out in September 2003 as an all-in-one receiver for the car. It is smaller than all the Plug-and-Plays, and excellent for a do-it-yourself installation. Now that the Roady 2 has been released, the Roady is now available for under $100. It is one of the cheapest ways to get into satellite radio. While it is small and cheap, it is not the perfect unit by any means. People have reported reliability problems, along with a display that doesn't display enough information. Display & buttons The display is large for the size of the unit. While it is a nice display, it does not display all of the information; you can only view two of the following at once: artist, channel name/number, and title. For example, you cannot see "Born to Run" by Bruce Springsteen on "Top Tracks 40" all at once, you have to manually change the display to know all the information. I think the coolest feature is the color-changing display. You can select from 7 different colors as the background. There are also customizable covers that let you style it how you want. This is the only unit to offer the covers, and, along with the Clarion PNP, the color changing display. I think that these will become more readily available in the future. The buttons on the Roady are very small, and may be hard to use with gloves on. The top line of buttons (where memory, display, menu, etc. are located) are almost impossible to read at night. The thumbwheel you use to change chanels may take some getting used to, and opinions of it are mixed. I personally think that it is cool, but would prefer a scrollwheel myself. Other features The Roady, like the Sirius Plug-and-Plays, offers a memory option called TuneSelect (XM's version of S-Seek) that will alert you when songs you like are being played on a channel. I think XM did not design this feature properly, as it has many flaws. First off, the beep is very quiet, and it only displays the title/artist for about 5 seconds. Secondly, XM only displays 16 characters on their display as opposed to Sirius offering 36. While it was not much of a problem before, it makes the TuneSelect almost useless due to different DJs abbreviating the text in different ways to fit on the display. For example, "KC and The Sunshine Band" is displayed in the artist field 8 different ways on XM. The TuneSelect software will only alert you if it finds an exact match. No docking kits are required for the Roady, so it is hard to move around. Nevertheless, people do it anyway. XM now offers a home kit for $20 on their website for those who want to do it. I do not recommend doing this, as it weakens the antenna/audio/power connnections that were not supposed to be taken in/out on a daily basis. Several people have reported their Roady has broken due to this. Reliability With the Roady out now for about 8 months, reliability issues have started to pop up. Many are noticing the connections have become weak (see previous paragraph), and others have had their Roadys go out on them. This seems to be occuring more than average for the other receivers, so I feel the need to address it here. Also, the Roady can cause interference with GPS units that will disable them while the Roady is on. While the problem was recently corrected in newer units, although they may not be in all stores yet. I would caution against getting the Roady if you have a GPS, especially if the store does not allow returns on opened electronics. Summary The Roady is a small receiver with some cool features. While the reliability reports would make me uneasy about this unit, getting the store's extended warranty will easily solve that problem. User Reviews Submitted by: JerseyDevil1980 The Delphi Roady is a very nice unit. Its small size and ease of setup make it a great value for the money especially with the deals that are available. I use it mainly for home use and have no problem with receiving a signal and great sound quality. The ability to change between 3 face plates (or more if you want to paint them) and the ability to choose the background color are awesome. The auto-on and off are great for use in the car to make sure you don't accidentally drain your battery. The Auto-off could be used as a sleep timer although the minimun amount of time before shut-off is 60 minutes from last button press. Some bad things are the buttons on the unit are a bit small and people with bigger fingers can fumble and press more then one. I definitely suggest buying the remote if you are going to use the Roady. Another downside is if you want to use it between car and home you have to disconnect three wires (power, audio and antenna) each time but its not that terrible. All in all the Delphi Roady is a solid unit and keep your eyes peeled for the Roady2 and Roady Boombox. Do you own this radio? Please share your opinion and write a review. Top of page
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