Any inexpensive car stereo will work fine so long as it is below decks. That said many of the "marine" stereos are now similar in price with the exception of Fusion.
Features that "I" find good to have:
*Blue Tooth AUDIO: Forget the remote your smart phone with all your tunes or streaming on it becomes your new remote. Simply pair the phone with your stereo and your music is now where ever your phone is. We have been streaming music from our phones now for a while and will never go back.
*Rear AUX input: These are becoming harder and harder to find but they simply make sense after the fist time you snap the input right out of the stereo. We also have an AUX plug that works too.
*A true equalizer not just some pre-set programs: One of my biggest peeves is stereo manufacturers who create preset EQ settings eg: Rock, Acoustic, Jazz etc.. These presets often SUCK compared to what you can do manually to tune the sound to YOUR vessel.
*iPhone or Android compatibility: Depending upon your phone. Who uses CD's any more. Our CD slot is growing DUST...
*Dedicated Preamp outs for subwoofer: I prefer a deck to have fully separate control for a subwooofer including
subwoofer volume, subwoofer remote amp on/off and
cross over points. If you have a sub the LAST thing you want to be doing is tweaking the sound AT the sub or sub amp. When you want to save power it is far easier to turn the sub amp OFF from the stereo..
*Satellite radio compatible: If you listen to satellite radio this can be a useful feature.
Non stereo features that matter:
One word
SPOTIFY !!!!!! If you don't have it or have not tried it is simply the absolute BEST thing to happen to music since the ability to record music was invented. It makes ALL other sources such as Pandora, iTunes etc. OBSOLETE !!!
SPOTIFY ROCKS !!!!!!!!
99% of the music I listen to today is via Spotify! It is streaming on my computer as I type this.....
Why is SPOTIFY sooooooo GREAT!
#1 Spotify is where ever YOU are on what ever device YOU log in from. It lives in the cloud.. At a buddy's house and want YOUR playlist log in and play it from his iPad, computer etc....
#2 Spotify will BROADEN YOUR MUSICAL HORIZONS. I have discovered more new music since using Spotify than I did in the previous 20 years. I am a hard core music guy so for the $10.00 per month it is simply the absolute BEST deal on the planet....
#3 Want to listen to "bluegrass"? Search bluegrass then go to "playlists" and pick one you like there are hundreds and thousands of playlists. I HATE creating play lists but other people love it. You can see play lists that OTHER people have had the time to geek out on and create. Playlists are sorted by rank and how much people like them. This moves good ones to the top. I rarely have to click through more than a couple to find a REALLY good one.. I have had playlists I've found that have not had a bad song for over 5 hours straight!!!!!!!! There is NO WAY I am going to sit down and create play lists like that but other people do!! You can also search by song, artist, genre etc. etc. etc...
#4 Want radio like Pandora? Does that too....
#5 Find an artist you like and want to hear more artists like that? It does that too....
#6 Want unlimited fast forward or clicks through artists and songs. It does that too.....
#7 Hate the fact that your 60GB of music is on your computer but won't fit on your iPad, iPod a USB etc.. or you can't easily access it everywhere? There is no end to what Spotify has and it lives in the cloud so is accessible where ever you are provided you have a cell signal, wifi or have downloaded what you want to offline mode......
#8 In a bad cell zone for streaming? Use "offline mode" and download what ever playlists you want to your device....
There are so many more reasons why Spotify will change the way you listen to music. I rarely pimp a product this aggressively but Spotify has grossly EXCEEDED my every expectation about how I want to listen to music..