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APR Stage 1 ecu & tcu VS Unitronic Stage 1+ ecu & stage 1 tcu: choices choices choice

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Alpha61

Passed Driver's Ed
Location
Fort Worth, TX
APR Stage 1 ecu & tcu VS Unitronic Stage 1+ ecu & stage 1 tcu: choices choices choice

To everyone: APR or Unitronic?

Benefits of APR:
- known brand, great service
downside:
- prices
- have to go to shop to modify (if needed or upgrading)

Benefits of Unitronic:
- cheaper (when bundled together)
- can be modified wherever internet is at
downside:
- (personally) don't know much about them

looking for advice from users that have had either (or preferably both)
tunes being looked at are both 93 octane and high output/torque

Ride:
- 2016 Golf GTI w/ Performance Pack (DSG)
- ~46k miles, daily driver 80 miles Mon-Fri
 
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geokilla

Go Kart Champion
Location
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Car(s)
2018 VW GTI DSG
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pieguy

Ready to race!
Location
Bay Area
I'd personally go neither and just use Eurodyne. Eurodyne Maestro or Eurodyne 93HT + Stage 1 DSG tune is really good for close to a grand.
 
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bluekid99

Drag Race Newbie
Location
Pennsylvania
apr is definitly more powerful by far. Uni is more linear but not as powerful...I personally ran uni stage 1+ and stage 2 before going is38 where I went APR. I never had issues with Uni. I just wanted more power
 
Hoon

Hoon

Autocross Champion
Location
Rhode Island
Unless you're positive you want a set it and forget it solution, Cobb and Maestro have a ton of advantages over APR or Uni.

If you're going to limit yourself, APR has a stronger stage 1 tune, but the dealer thing is a pain in the ass.

Uni stage 2 makes good power, I gained 87whp over stock with an eBay downpipe and that tune. Also like Uni's TCU better than APRs, but it is not an ideal choice for bigger power should you go down that road in the future.
 
PLF8593

PLF8593

Drag Race Newbie
Location
Philly
Car(s)
19 Alltrack 6MT
Uni has better service than APR. APR is a massive giant that doesn't give a shit about you. Unitronic is the underdog that has to care about their customers to give them a reason to come to them instead of APR.

APR makes a good product. Unitronic makes a good product.

Unitronic's product is, by some measures, "safer," or more OEM-minded in its intent. Doesn't push the turbo to its absolute limit, which you could say that APR's does in some respects (i mean, they do post the highest gains, and thats from working the turbo to its limit).

APR's flash-at-dealer model is pretty whack, but at the same time flashing eliminates your warranty anyway, so I don't really see why you'd ever want to flash back to stock once you've flashed.

I'll say this: having owned 3 GTIs since 2013, and having spent tons of time on golfmk6 and golfmk7.com, I will be going with Unitronic when my powertrain warranty expires. I want to drive my car to 200K and don't want to overstress my turbo (though I DO want more power).


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Hoon

Hoon

Autocross Champion
Location
Rhode Island
GolfWang said:
APR's flash-at-dealer model is pretty whack, but at the same time flashing eliminates your warranty anyway, so I don't really see why you'd ever want to flash back to stock once you've flashed.

I'll say this: having owned 3 GTIs since 2013, and having spent tons of time on golfmk6 and golfmk7.com, I will be going with Unitronic when my powertrain warranty expires. I want to drive my car to 200K and don't want to overstress my turbo (though I DO want more power).
Click to expand...

APRs dealer-centric model sucks. First dealer I tried to work with was a blatant scam artist.

Second one took about 2 hours to do a TCU flash, which takes me 10 minutes to with Uni from home.

Ive had decent customer service from both, but I'd give the edge to Uni in that department.

Also definitely would give the edge to Uni in reliability. APR is boost happy and the power curve faceplants up top. Boring.
 
A

Alpha61

Passed Driver's Ed
Location
Fort Worth, TX
So i've taken a few of their dyno overlays and plotted them in Excel. Judge for yourself. I may be a little bit crazy when researching things (not only this, but servers, computers, other hobbies i'm vetted in to)


 
depth_charged

depth_charged

Ready to race!
Location
AZ
I think people like to bash APR because they are the big guy, but I went through a good dealer locally (not a performance shop, just a VW repair specialist) that was great and thought the tune was amazing. I later installed the APR downpipe myself and the free stage 2 upgrade tune was painless. I only have experience with BMS and APR though, maybe more people that have used multiple flash tunes can give experience.

I also had no desire the flash back to stock, the car was no different than stock just cruising on the daily commute.
 
Twist1

Twist1

Autocross Newbie
Location
Breaking Mustang Hearts
APRs Stage 1 HT on e25 is the most insane stage one tune ever made for stock hardware. It is quite aggressive and honestly most could not tell the difference between a well running stage 1 APR car on E25 and a stage two car on 93 only. However it is definitely a tune for squeezing every bit of power and tq out of the engine. IS that the most reliable? I am not sure.
 
H

Hans

Ready to race!
Location
NC
Car(s)
19 Golf R
Alpha61 said:
looking for advice from users that have had either
Click to expand...
My advice would be to first consider what is most important to you.

Power
Reliability (sketchy to define and/or rate objectively)
Customer Service
Driveability

Then see if you can get a ride in a few different cars and talk with the owners and get their take. Lastly, keep in mind that most, if not all of us here, are guilty of confirmation bias.

That said, I couldn’t be happier with my Uni set up. I had a Mk6 with APR, and had a few bad experiences with dealers as well. There are other reasons, but this largely influenced my decision to go Unitronic with my Mk7 and have the ability to self-flash. Power was at the bottom of my priorities. Obviously i wanted more than stock, but not at the expense of the other priorities listed. HTH
 
MonkeyMD

MonkeyMD

Autocross Champion
Alpha61 said:
So i've taken a few of their dyno overlays and plotted them in Excel. Judge for yourself. I may be a little bit crazy when researching things (not only this, but servers, computers, other hobbies i'm vetted in to)


Click to expand...

Looking at the data points, as most people have said, Unitronic has more power at higher rpm and apr has more at lower rpm.

Is there a reason you can't get both?
 
seanmcd1

seanmcd1

Autocross Newbie
Location
SC
That's a useful graph Alpha! Would love to see the APR low torque stage 1 compared to those...
 
PLF8593

PLF8593

Drag Race Newbie
Location
Philly
Car(s)
19 Alltrack 6MT
MonkeyMD said:
Looking at the data points, as most people have said, Unitronic has more power at higher rpm and apr has more at lower rpm.

Is there a reason you can't get both?
Click to expand...

Yes. The reason is that running the turbo super hard in the first half of the band heats it up so that towards the end the heat outweighs the extra boost being made, so you get the power in the beginning but sacrifice it up top. Make sense?
 
A

Alpha61

Passed Driver's Ed
Location
Fort Worth, TX
Ask and you shall receive (added the low T APR stage 1):





 
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