Are you a proud owner of a BMW E46? As you may know it by now, this great german car doesn’t have a high-quality audio system.

Do you need to upgrade it? Yes. You need a better aftermarket head unit and if you want to go further – upgrade speakers and add a subwoofer to your Bmw E46.

After doing a lot of research, I chose a radio USB player that is perfect for BMW E46.

I was looking for :

• Variable illumination to match dash light color
• Steering wheel controls compatibility
• USB media play and Bluetooth enabled player

After many searches, I narrowed the list to the models below.

Top 3 best aftermarket single DIN head units for BMW E46 (with USB, Bluetooth, steering-wheel controls ready and variable color illumination).

• Alpine UTE-92BT
• Kenwood eXcelon KDC-X502
• Alpine CDE-HD149BT

Best BMW E46 After Market Head Unit

After seeing many aftermarket head units and taking into consideration price and features, I finally got my aftermarket unit which is complete and delivers a far better sound on stock speakers.

Alpine UTE-92BT was my choice. This car media player has everything you want: truly good sound, Android app controls, variable illumination and good integration with BMW E46.

Variable illumination

Alpine UTE-92BT has 150000 color variations, so it was an easy thing to match E46 dash light colors.

It integrates perfectly with climate illumination and all other controls.

Steering Wheel Remote control ready

As most E46 have steering wheel controls, I needed a stereo head unit compatible with those controls.

Alpine UTE-92BT works perfectly with BMW E46 wheel controls but you need an adapter which is sold separately – this one.

Android App for tuning your sound

Another great feature is Alpine’s Android App. With this app, you can tune everything and more.

You can set sound or you can load presets loaded by Alpine users. There are many presets for BMW E46 and if you don’t like those, you can easily create new ones and save those settings.

Other features

Alpine UTE-92BT is a truly great head unit at a decent price. You’ll get:

• Bluetooth connectivity for phone calls and media streaming from iPhone/ Android smartphone. Android connection via Bluetooth with car stereo is a must if you want to simply listen to your favorites songs from Youtube.
• Active crossover – you can adjust every speaker separately
• Bass Engine for instantly boosting low frequencies
• Facebook notification enabled on head unit’s screen
• Subwoofer pre-out
• Phone battery indicator when connected via Bluetooth, phone agenda enabled on head unit

Check price on Amazon

What other accessories you need to install Alpine UTE-92BT on Bmw E46?

First, you need to buy Alpine UTE-92BT – check the price here.

Next, you need:

• steering wheel remote control for Alpine-Bmw – this one depending on E46 year of production.
• BMW 3 (E46) Radio Faceplate Single Din to fit the new head unit perfectly.
• Antenna adapter for BMW – you need also an adapter for radio antenna.

You can buy the whole installation kit (antenna adapter, steering wheel remote control adapter, bezel) – from here.

The installation is quite difficult for a beginner but not impossible. You’ll need to remove dash trims and you’ll get access to the factory’s head unit screws. A full tutorial here – remove E46 head unit YouTube.

That’s all, if you need more info please try comment section.