Thumb drive should work. I know it works on the 2019 Pilot Touring. My Touring also has “My Honda Music.” It allows me to copy my music from the thumb drive to My Honda Music. It must be a small solid state drive (SSD), I think less than 7 GB, but I have copied over more than 800 songs. And it is blazingly fast. On my last 2013 Touring I had a 15 GB hard drive to store music. To do a search for an album, song or artist would take over 5 minutes. This SSD does it almost instantaneously. I have no idea if the SSD is in all trim levels. I can’t find any info on it, only know about it because the person showing me all the tech in the Pilot pointed it out to me.

 

That sounds great, I did see it mentioned but not explained, I had something similar on my last BMW and loved it. BIG THANKS!

 

With the rear entertainment option don't you get the DVD/CD player? Yes you only get one at a time but it works for me if and when I get bored with local FM or XM radio.

The new ones might be different but this is how I listen to CD's in my 16 Touring.

 

True, but obviously if you don't have the Rear Entertainment, you don't have the CD/DVD player. However, there is a CD player available as a dealer installed option - Shopping Cart - College Hills Honda But, for $223 + installation, I would recommend the "my Honda music" storage, and/or a USB drive. I currently use both, and the largest USB drive that I have tried is 64GB. That's a lot of music since the system only recognizes MP3 files.

 

I have over 1,000 songs on my iPhone and mostly just play them via Bluetooth. The sound is fine and you can use the steering wheel controls for volume. I normally just hit shuffle and let it go. On a long trip I may let them go in order, either way it takes several days to work my way through them. If I want more control and information, I plug the phone in via Apple Carplay.