Forester 2017 Hamilton Upgrade
I wanted to leave my experience with the Hamilton upgrade since there aren't too many threads about this. I had asked on here about pioneer vs sony in another thread, but ultimately my wife didn't like that it wasn't flush with the rest of the dash, and the crutchfield reviews on the mount kit were highly negative saying it didn't fit without cutting plastic and still looked bad. Ultimately I found Hamilton after searching google and saw they had an aftermarket replacement kit. I chose the one that replaced the screen too instead of using the original subaru screen. Choosing this module was mostly my wife's choice since getting a flush look really limits the options. Attached is a picture of the final install.
Thoughts after install:
- Total install took about 2 hours on and off. As mentioned in other threads, the difficult parts were mostly because some wires were very short and putting them in place was tough.
- The install was completely based on Hamilton's 30-minute video online. This video was super helpful, but there are some pieces missing. For example, he briefly mentions the GPS wire and the USB, but he never installs them, nor does he say where they should go. In particular I assume one of the USB cables was supposed to intercept the USB port in the center console, but I didn't know how to get to this one and left it hanging. I did notice that I could plug a USB stick with music into these ports and it would work, but the center console USB no longer works.
- The antenna cables have stickers to attach them somewhere, but I just stuffed them back in with the wires as other people did. Haven't noticed any issues yet.
- Booting the unit takes really long -- like 1 minute. This is far longer than the subaru OS, and most annoyingly, the rear camera does not seem to work at all until the system boots. I'm going to contact hamilton to see if this can be fixed. I did see others mention that after the first boot it's faster, but this is not my experience so far.
- Once booted, it seems really fast. No complaints so far about the UI.
- On the GPS antenna, I'm not really sure what it's for. The phone already has GPS and presumably the UI is mostly working off that. Would be nice to mention it in the docs.
- USB-C would have been nice. USB-A is just too old nowadays for charging phones.
I've had it less than a day, but will report back later as I get more runtime on it.