Top critical review
1.0 out of 5 starsThis unit will wreck your engine battery if wired on yellow constant power lead
Reviewed in Canada on December 15, 2023
This unit has a serious design flaw due to the fact that it has no internal battery. I guess the Atoto engineers decided that the car's engine battery could be the substitute battery using the constant powered yellow wire, but then there is the problem with parasitic draw when engine is off and the S8 is in sleep mode. Atoto support says the current draw in sleep mode is 10-15mA and that the unit shuts down completely after 7 days of no use. Using a voltmeter I was seeing .01V loss every 20 seconds. The Atoto does not have under-voltage protection so it will drain every last volt from your engine battery until the battery is in an overly discharged state, you can't start your engine and the battery may need to be replaced. Check Google for 'Atoto battery drain' and you'll find all the consumer complaints. If you connect both the yellow and red leads to switched/key power as I have done to avoid destroying your engine battery when parked for a few days, you will discover that the clock needs to be set every time you turn on the unit, because it has no clock battery. This also means that every HTTPS website you visit will reject your traffic until the system date/clock is set correctly. Why did Atoto not include a battery or even a coin battery for the clock? Who knows, I can see now that users have been complaining about parasitic draw for years on the Atoto units. I will never buy from this manufacturer and will pursue a return of this S8 head unit. Have to wonder how many engine batteries have been destroyed by this junk electrical engineering from Atoto, all the stranded people and tow charges and costs. It's unfortunate because this unit sounds really good with its 24bit DAC and the Android app possibilities are otherwise awesome. Atoto - if you are listening and care about growing your brand, you need to build a lithium rechargeable battery into your head units to maintain sleep state and date/time state. Ideally such a battery would be able to maintain sleep state for no less than 30 days.