Atoto F7 7 Inch Review (2024)

For those wondering or not to purchase this….here is my layman's review of the product:

Vendor: AliExpress, $280 delivered. Took about a month to arrive. Value for money wise, I'd say for the features itself it's not a bad value proposition on paper so I decided to take a punt. Worked out slightly better than Amazon and some other local importers here.

Build Quality: Very lightweight, seems decently put together except the bracket holes do NOT line up with the bracket itself. Yet to see how reliable and durable it is over the long term.

Installation: Terrible - the bracket and their respective bracket holes do not line up properly so I sort of had to fashion it a bit (drilling it bigger) to make it fit. I had the Toyota version so it was a 200mm width rather than your standard 178mm, looked flush though once installed and had a very OEM look to it. The manual itself is typically written in the common Chinese instruction fashion - i.e. undecipherable at times. Came with a Toyota harness which was almost plug and play - I had to, however, get a 6V step down converted for my Toyota reversing camera.

Performance: It takes about 12 seconds from a cold start up, so when you put your selt belt on and check your mirrors, it'll lag about 1-2secs before you can start driving. When I first installed it it also got very hot but then again I was in an uninsulated garage and it was a very warm night but the face of the Head Unit got hot, almost uncomfortable to touch/handle. Having said that never had any issues after the first night of installation. The USB claims to also charge at 1AMP, I've had mixed experiences - on the night I installed it, just mucking around with AA on an S8 started to deplete my battery pretty quickly but when I used my wife's S20 FE and actually tested it with Google Maps around town, seems to have charged it pretty quickly.

Design and Features: This Head Unit has most features you'll ever need in a clean layout - has rotary style wheel buttons rather either a digital or press button type. Love the plethora of input options - overkill if you ask me - BT Audio, AUX, USB x 2 (one via phone), SD Card and RCA. Clean design and very Toyota OEM like. Rotary Control is just improves the Head Unit's experience up a few notches.

Screen:1024 x 780 resolution, says IPS panel but view angle is iffy at best, suffers from glare but frankly it's probably more of the original car design position than it is an Atoto design fault. It's also a capacitive touch screen which is quite slick and responsive but I've discovered a couple of "dead spots" on the bottom right hand corner which has issues registering your taps on first go. Is also a finger print magnet as you'd expect. Also love the extra screen real estate coming from the stock Toyota "peephole" screen era head unit but the glare offsets any gains for when reversing a vehicle.

Sound: Apparently has DPS and it sounds decent on my Toyota stock speakers, I think the internal amplifier is from a Toshiba MOSFET chipset. It sounds OK but I'm not much of an audiophile to be completely honest and it sounds passable to me. Not a heck of a lot of bass and a bit tinny but I'm thinking of adding a Pioneer AMP to the system to beef up the sound a bit.

Bluetooth: Low sound and mic is semi decent, audioable on the freeway but JUST…. incoming sound is also barely passable. Connects well enough though either via the cable or wirelessly. It does however, include another jack so you could possible add your own, better microphone.

Software: Linux based and as mentioned earlier, bootup time is not the quickest BUT decent and probably IMHO, acceptable. Very lightweight and I think Atoto is pretty well known to have regular updates. Android Auto and Carplay are seamless and work well but there is the very occasional glitch, perhaps though, I suspect this is more an AA/CP software issue rather than Atoto's. The same can't be said for the Mirrorlink software though - the software is literally rubbish, I've tried it on 4 phones - 3 Android Based and 1 Apple based. The Apple didn't require additional software, basically just plug your USB cord in and select the Autolink icon on the head unit, performed quite well on this unit strangely the screen ratio was correct i.e. it used EVERY pixel available on the head unit…only drawback was you couldn't use the Head Unit to control the phone so it was basically just one way/as a display type use. On the Android phones, my S8 and dad's A70 refused to work with the software whereas my wife's S20FE worked well and strangely had 2 way feedback/control but had intermittent display lag issues i.e. it throttled the resolution down at times of data transfer lag.

Overall: Was it worth the $280, IMHO, yes but not convincingly. I'm an occasional AA/CP user generally for traffic monitoring but I can see myself getting more use out of Spotify and podcasts. Has pretty much more than all the bells and whistles you'd ever need to be honest. Does it offer a better value proposition than a Sony, Pioneer or other well known Audio brand? Yes, very much so. The main difference I'd hazard to guess with the listed brands is maybe the better screen sensitivity, slightly quicker bootup and possibly better audio/Bluetooth. I've previously had a JVC and that sounded decent enough but I'd wouldn't say by a vast amount either. Having said that they'll probably be at least 2 x the price of an Atoto. With the spare change though, installing an additional Mini Amp may solve the bluetooth issues and pretty much the only factor then would be how durable and reliable the product would hold up.