[andyman]

I've got the 9856 in my 99 Ram. I bought it to control my IPOD.

I've always owned Alpine's, and this is a good unit. It does have some negatives though. Tuner is not real real strong (not an issue for me as I'm pretty much ipod only). It takes A WHILE to dial through 500+ artists to get to the one I want to listen to (smart playlists become your friend here). The 9857 has a nice feature where you can skip "percentages" of your collection. Like to get to Mudvayne, you could skip to say somewhere in the L's and then only have a few turns to get to the M's.

Hope that helps. For the money, you can't beat it. The IPOD control is FAST, and the sound is GREAT!