How to do a firmware update on your new 2016 Pioneer AVH radio



WARNING!!!! The Radios Smart phone setting has to be on either iPhone-USB or Other-USB/MLT for this to work! The radio will not see the thumb drive and give you an error message.

33 thoughts on “How to do a firmware update on your new 2016 Pioneer AVH radio

  1. Hi i have avh-x8850bt headunit and i want know that do i have to unzip the file in my pc or should i plug it in to my headunit without unzipping the file thanks waiting for your response.

  2. Five star car stereo. I have the avh-x4700bs. Just recently the touch screen is acting crazy. Not opening what I touch. The unit also turns on my Google assistant randomly and I sometimes have constant crackling from my front speakers and the bass hitting with my sub. All while no music is being played. I can't find any solution in the net. Can you point me in the right direction?

  3. Five Star Car Stereo i need some help not sure what to do i have a pioneer avh 4100 nex stereo and it froze on me and reset it and now its stuck on the pick a laungage screen and buttons arent working what should i do can this be fixed or should i get a new stereo

  4. I hate to sound like a complete imbecile, but these units are made to be mounted in one’s dash. Therefore, accessing the USB terminal on the back is impossible, unless you want to rip the thing out just to run an update. Right? Why, oh why did Pioneer make system updates SO impractical and not just easily done the way phones are done? Via the internet/WiFi?

    This also leads me to ask the obvious: Phones will get updates which will possibly render the firmware on these Pioneer decks obsolete. Is this a fair assessment? So, are users of the AVH family of Pioneer players expected to have to take their vehicles IN to a specialist just to get a firmware update? Because I know that myself, and a good majority of the average Jane and Joes in the world aren’t going to have the means to get to the BACK of these units just to install a flash drive to get their players’ firmware up to date. Which will, eventually, have to be done.

    If I am wrong about everything I stated, please tell me how I am expected to see my Pioneer AVH deck remain compliant with my iPhone. I’m already having issues with the thing making an immediate recognition of my iPhone after doing the most recent iOS update. Needless to say, this is annoying as hell. How much more fun can I expect to have in the future with this Pioneer unit when the inevitable phone updates come out? Especially since the device doesn’t manage its own firmware updates. I am seriously asking.

    Thank you

  5. AVH-3300bt Bluetooth doesn’t do audio if i update this will it allow me too do music audio too the Bluetooth also? Or will I just have too get a new unit?

  6. Would like to see a Firmware update on a Jensen Radio There are none for Jensen!!! If Not & I Figure out how to do mine I will be Posting!!!

  7. What is frustrating to me is that each time I add new music to the thumb drive, it takes longer and longer (days) for the unit to somehow absorb the directory of music. Normally I can click on the folder icons or use my steering wheel controls to advance through each cd or artist. But when it's presumably "reindexing" the music directory, I can't use those features. So all that's left is to scroll through the list to try to manually locate the new music or to move to the next cd. Otherwise, it just repeats the same set of songs on whatever cd was last selected.
    What I'd like to know is if there is a trick to getting it to index faster. I took a four hour drive lately and had added new music before I left home. The directory didn't get indexed until late into the return trip, and coincidentally the yellow folder buttons showed up after I had the Head Unit set for radio for awhile. I was wondering if the unit indexes the thumb drive in the background faster when it's not being read from to play music, or something like that. I'll try doing that next time I add music, but I was hoping for some method to get the folder buttons to appear sooner. I have the optional sirius module, but due mostly to the taxes they charge, I never subscribed to the service. They give you the base price which looked acceptable to me, then they add on the artist's commission or taxes or something and it adds nearly 50% to the total monthly bill. I figured I might as well just buy a new album every month and put it on my thum drive…which is what I'm doing, but you see the problem I'm having now. Please let me know if you have a fix. Thx.

  8. @fivestarcarstereo. I recently got the AVH 2500 nex and I saw that there was a update so I downloaded the update onto my playlist Drive put it in the car and it says "Error please make sure that file is the only data on your usb but when I plug it back into the computer it has the correct folder on the flash drive then it has a folder for data that keeps popping back up. Could it be because I'm using a scan disk USB? If so what brand USB would I need?

  9. Be sure to extract software from zip file, then copy the contents to the USB drive. Don't copy the ZIP file to your USB drive! If you do you'll get an error message, and the upgrade will fail!

  10. I just want to let everyone know how simple it is to bypass the parking brake. super simple (even though it took me ages to find out). Simply – CONNECT GREEN PARKING BRAKE WIRE TO GROUND WIRE. THATS IT.

  11. ok what size is the flash drive and what system type is it formatted to? Need to know that before any firmware can be loaded.

  12. Im having a problem with my head unit avh-x8650bt, the usb doesnt resume the song which im playing whenever car is restarted and it starts from one song always and I change the color scheme wallpaper etc but whenever car is started again everything is reset . I tried to update firmware and when update was finished I checked firmware no it was same old firmware meaning update didnt get installed. I have tried to reset the head unit via settings, through the small hole and also by removing car battery .. Any help please

  13. Great info. I have the DEH-S4010BT I downloaded the update like you did and I'm using a PNY 32gb USB and it keeps saying "File Error" on my head unit. Can you help? Thanks 👊😎👍

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