Music Features
Music playback is one of the things Toyota's DA6 system does well. It supports flash drives, iPhones and iPods, SiriusXM, and HD Radio.
USB Playback
Toyota places a USB port in the storage cubby directly below the climate controls. The cubby has quite a bit of space, and could probably fit five smartphones stacked on top of each other and still let you close the cover. Auxiliary input and a cigarette lighter plug are available in there as well.
Audio file playback is pretty straightforward: just pop in a thumb drive and select your music by folder, artist, or album. The DA6 supports cover art if there’s an image in the folder.
Track data is also displayed by default. There’s a “Play More Like This” feature that we didn’t have much luck with. So, we defaulted to folder-based and random playback options throughout our week with the car.
Radio
Toyota includes a 90-day trial of SiriusXM radio with the 2012 Camry Hybrid XLE. By no fault of Toyota's, we continue to find the quality of SiriusXM lacking due to heavy compression. Nevertheless, the included SiriusXM playback features are pretty much limited to just listening to stations. You don't get the ability to add favorite tracks, which would either notify you when it's playing or time-shift it.
HD Radio support is a nice addition to new vehicles, particularly since the quality of HD Radio is substantially cleaner than SiriusXM. Toyota supports HD Radio tagging in the Camry when an iPhone or iPod is connected. But unless you tend to purchase tracks you hear in the car, this feature is of limited utility.
Perhaps the nicest feature of the Toyota DA6's radio is the ability to mix presets between the FM band, HD Radio, and SiriusXM. It’s a simple nod to useability that we enjoy and wish more manufacturers would implement as well. This lets us cycle through our favorite broadcasts on multiple formats without needing to change sources.
