Video walkthroughs offer detailed look at CarPlay on Pioneer’s $700 AVH-4000NEX receiver

Pioneer AVIC 8000NEX with CarPlay

Though we’ve seen our fair share of CarPlay demos in months past, we still can’t get enough of learning about the intricacies of Apple’s in-car iPhone entertainment system. You may have head that Pioneer recently released a firmware update bringing CarPlay functionality to five of its 2014 NEX in-dash multimedia receivers, so people don’t have to buy a brand new car just to enjoy CarPlay.

As noted by TUAW, Josh Carr of technology repair firm Fix Denver put Pioneer’s new software through its paces and created several videos showing off different aspects of CarPlay, including Phone functionality, Apple Maps and various other built-in apps including Spotify, which recently updated its iPhone and iPad app with CarPlay support .

Interested? Jump past the break for more.

First up, Apple Maps with various layouts and GPS navigation demos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHWb_j-yxh4

Next up: some app demos, including Spotify and the stock Phone app with Favorites, Recents, Contacts, Keypad and Visual Voicemail, as well as Music with iTunes Radio, Genius, Artists and Now Playing features.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vonxDwZPNHY

The following clip walks us through the update process for the 200-megabyte firmware update 1.06 for Pioneer’s AVH-4000NEX unit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlG53zG1nTQ

Long story short, you’ll need to create a bootable USB thumb drive that must be partitioned properly for the firmware using Disk Utility in OS X, here’s how.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsjzLRfy0OU

CarPlay is now available as a software update for Pioneer’s existing 2014 in-dash multimedia receivers, the $1400 AVIC-8000NEX$1200 AVIC-7000NEX$900 AVIC-6000NEX$750 AVIC-5000NEX and the $700 AVH-4000NEX systems.

Fix Denver is installation services for CarPlay so check out their webpage listing pricing and other information.

For the sake of balanced reporting, an AAA Foundation for Traffic study has found that voice-based in-car systems like CarPlay actually contribute to to a “high level of mental distraction.”

In particular, Siri performed the worst out of all of the various systems they tested. Not only was Siri rated the least intuitive and the most complex, it got dissed for the lack of consistency and flexibility when it came to recognizing voice commands from its drivers.

So, who’s excited about CarPlay?

[TUAW]