I have driven a 2015 Mazda 6 Touring with the non-Bose stereo since it was new and the number one complaint I have had is the stock radio. Mazda only offered this style of deck in the 2014 and 2015 model year 6 and then replaced it with a better, more capable unit in 2016. To say this deck is bad is an understatement. The only redeeming quality of this deck is that it is a double din sized unit that can be replaced at all. Even at the time of release this deck was a bit behind on technology including support for Pandora, iPod and USB sticks with music. Everything other than the CD player and FM/AM radio was very poorly implemented. iPods were already almost entirely replaced by smart phones at time of release yet it could rarely actually load music from an iPod or an iPhone running Music.app. Reading music from a USB took ages and browsing the music cumbersome, not to mention who wants to manage music on a USB stick? Pandora? I don’t know anyone who uses it. The CD player did work but showed the bare minimum information on the screen. Contrast this to my wife’s Toyota van which could often show cover art and just looked much more slick overall.

It would have been ok if the bluetooth implementation wasn’t riddled with bugs and annoyances. Starting the car and waiting for bluetooth to connect to your phone took minutes, sometimes several. Once it did connect, it would often fail to play music properly by either refusing to do anything or acting like it was playing but lacking any audio. If you were on a call when you started the car you would be presented with a crash/boot loop where the car would take over the call, crash sending the call back to your phone only to steal it away again when it started. This would loop forever until you ended the call. Once it was playing music it couldn’t tell you what track number you were on or the amount of time spent playing. The track number was something random and the timer always sat at 0:00. Moving between tracks was glacial with at least a second spent waiting for the song to change, including the title shown on the display. Overall the experience was subpar in every way.

All that said, I felt trapped into keeping the deck because it was responsible for controlling some configuration settings of the car including daytime running lights, door locking behavior and more. I had basically given up all hope of replacing it because I didn’t want to create new issues or lose steering wheel controls.

It wasn’t until 2024 that I learned there are devices that allow you to better integrate aftermarket decks with modern cars allowing you to keep your steering wheel controls and continue to access vehicle settings. I decided it was time to finally replace the stock deck. In this post I will detail what products I used to replace the stock radio in my 2015 Mazda 6 and what I learned throughout the installation process.

Continue reading