Customer Reviews

Kenwood Excelon DNX8120 - Navigation system with DVD player, LCD monitor, digital player and radio

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I researched the best Double DIN units for a couple of weeks. There isn't much on the web about this unit and where there is there is 1 review that says it's great to 1 review that says it's horrible. This unit was more available for me to get my hands on locally then any other. I played with the pioneer a bit and was fairly satisfied with it's interface. The clarion's review on the web was terrible so i don't even bother. So basically it was either the pioneer (forget the model but it's the one with all the bells and whistles that compare to this unit) or this kenwood.

The pioneer installer actually told me that they wouldn't/couldn't install the unit in my '07 vette. Said it was just too difficult and couldn't be done. These people have installed all my alarms/radios/speakers etc for 15 years now and i trust their opinion. However, i read a couple step by step forum posts that showed it be done. Instead of arguing and trying to talk them into it i went to another installer.

The second installer had the kenwood (8120 and 7120) with some other cheaper non-options for me (Dual and some other manufacturer). The kenwood had the built in bluetooth which was a huge plus for me. I'm very very skeptical of bluetooth units in any car. I have had many and have yet to find one that was sufficient to replace me having to hold the phone to my ear. The fact that this was built in gave me hope as all others are add-ons.

Many reviews said the kenwood interface is bad. I don't see why. It is plainly laid out and functional. I think it just has so many options (bells and whistles) that there are many nav keys to get into them it confuses people. It seems pretty good IMO. Could be flashier but i haven't gotten into all the custom skins etc that can be added so maybe it is.

I added the IPOD and Sirius accessories. They work great. The sirius has a better connection then my sirius handheld stiletto which isn't saying much but worth noting. The IPOD connection works good and clean sound. The interface is kind of bulky but when you're used to the iphone's simple interface what isn't going to be bulky compared to it? (Bulky = boring/simple not alot of features)

So everything works great except for the one thing that i knew probably wouldn't before i ever purchased it. The bluetooth phone. Everybody i've talked to on the other end said it sounded choppy and/or had static. I could hear them just fine and the voice dial seems to work ok. However, none of that matters if the other person can't hear you :P I will prob keep the phone to my ear.

Oh, the NAV works great. I've used several nav systems on phones and in rental cars and OEM version's and this is wonderful. It auto updates the routes instantly and doesn't yell at me for not following it's orders. It adapts rather than freaking out. So far so good.

Bottom line -- I would look at the pioneer a little harder if i went back through the purchase process but i doubt it's BT is any better and i don't like it's nav maps. However, for me, if the BT is better i'd swap in a heartbeat. The BT is very important to me though.

I've had this stereo for 2 years now and I've taken it into the shop several times. This last time they even sent it back to Kenwood and it came back "fixed", but turns out it still has the same problem. Whenever I start my car with the remote starter, the system locks up and the only way to get it working is to hit the reset button, which of course erases all of your settings and you have to set everything up from scratch again. For some reason, it only locks up when I use the remote starter. If I start it with key, no problems. I'm at a loss for what to do. The installer says they don't know what to do since they sent it to Kenwood and that was suppose to fix it. If you have a remote starter in your car, I would hesitate on purchasing this unit.

I bought this a few weeks after it first went on sale. Works great, takes some time getting used to the controls and all the different setting you can choose. Bluetooth works good also, sends a request to my phone whenever I start my car. Only took seconds to upload my entire address book from my Katana. Navigation works well also, but havn't used that as much. I was very surprised it had a lot of the small unpaved roads that I sometimes travel on when I was driving. I also bought the Kenwood iP300V to play my iPod (80 GB Classic) through. Which works great, no glitches or freezing during any point. Plays the videos that are on my iPod also. Bottom line no problems so far it's a great product and would recommend this to anyone looking for all these features for a great price.

Pros: Good Sound, great image; you can customize the interface, i actually connect this unit to my Zune and sounds great.Great Equaliazer, phone interface and Sound Dolby Pro Logic options.

Cons: Bluetooth doesn work perfect, the unit comes with the version 1.6 of the firmware i decide to update the software to the 1.7 and i can see some improve, but sometimes my phone disconnect from the unit.

The boot time of the units its acceptable but will be great if occurs a little faster. i have a Volvo s60 i change my OEM Stereo, everything works fine, but have to buy the dietz Interface 61301 to enable my steering Wheel control and my rear detectors.

The 8120 is very expensive all by it's self. Don't forget about all your excessories, install items, and the install price it's self. I bought a refurbished model and saved $250. I only installed the iPod cable and it still set me back about $1400 installed.
I have the Bose system in my 2005 Tahoe and it seems to be a little touchy. The volume is much lower than stock, and, even after setting all the speakers to zero db. I still get a crackling noise at max. volume. I've even bought new speakers, thinking my stock ones were blown. They weren't, so I'm going to try bypassing the Bose amp. next. The separation seems to be better. However, based on this alone, I wouldn't do it again. Unless I was ready to blow another $1000 or more for speaker and amplifier upgrades. Even though I'm having these problems, I don't blame this unit. This really is a top notch receiver, and, once I get the kinks worked out, I'm sure it will perform perfect.
The Navigation seems to perform in true Garmin fashion; Really good! Garmin is rated #1 buy all the review sites. I haven't really had a chance to play with the navigation yet, except it seems to be pretty accurate in most cases.
The iPod control is very cool. I'd almost venture to say it's better than the iPod it's self. I have the 3rd generation nano and even the album art work shows up. It has a scroll bar on the left side of the music menu which alows you to quickly jump through your vast library. And if you have video's on your iPod, you can watch them. I'm kind of new to this game, but, I can't imagine getting a better interface.
The bluetooth connection is also pretty complete. I have the razor2 with verizon, and it downloaded my whole phonebook. I'm told by those I've called I sound pretty good. Onstar definately sounds better though.
I'm giving it 5 stars becuase it won't alow me to give it 4 1/2. The only negative being the price.

I recently bought the DNX8120 for my truck. I was really apprehensive about dropping such a chunk of change on something that was really getting shakey reviews most of the time. I have now had it for over 2 weeks and I can honestly say I am not sure why it was getting such mediocre reviews. This thing kicks A$$. The Garmin GPS is dead on accurate and there is an exceptional amount of info stored in this thing. The Sirius option that I got with it was programmed in about a 5 minute phone call to Sirius. The sound quality is out of this world and the 13 band EQ is actually a blast to toy with. At first glance you would think that you would need a degree in computer engineering to run the thing, but it is actually very simple to use if you know anything at all about opening programs on a computer. I am no whiz by any stretch of the imagination, but I can navigate from one section to another with relative ease. The bluetooth works excellent and you can hear the person on the other end loud and clear. If you have the cash to spare, this is the unit to buy in my opinion.

This product works great. It has everything that your could want. I was able to install this product myself in my motorhome. The only thing I needed to get was a wiring harness to attach to my existing wiring that was in my motorhome. I The maps look and work great and it is easy to switch from the map to the trip, favorite, or gps mode. It has a day and night mode that can work automatically. As for the bluetooth, I had heard that this part of the unit did not work very well, but I have used on several occasions and the person that you are talking too sounds like they are sitting right next to you. They are clear and they have no problem hearing you. I purchased the KCA ipod 300v but I have not had a chance to use this feature yet. I did not purchase the XM to see how it might work. The only draw back that I see with this unit is trying to watch a video on that small of a screen, however if you had larger auxiliary tv, I'm sure it would look much better. I would recommend this product to anybody who was looking to change out their factory radio.

Like many others, I read lots of good things about DNX8120. After the initial excitement of a new gadget is over, it is now becoming pain in the neck.

Mostly problems are small but very irritating.

1. The physical buttons are so small and text is not readable during day time. During night, you get to read the text because of the blue light glowing from inside. Physical buttons are very uncomfortable to feel. It hurts to use them.

2. Every time, I start my car or hang up on phone, last song from IPOD or USB drive starts playing again. No matter what you do, iPOD or USB starts on its own after phone call ends. I go out with my friends to lunch, we laugh when suddenly system starts playing IPOD after ordering carryout.

3. Bluethooth connection with my iphone stays for maximum of 5 seconds. Display shows that you are not connected to any phone. However, when call is received or dialed from your iPhone, system recognizes the iPhone and gets engaged. In other words, dialing from screen is not possible.

4. Sound Quality of iPhone is horrible. Horrible is a mild word to describe the sound quality. I have latest bluetooth firmware (1.70). Sound quality is so bad that I have to switch to phone instead of the system. Believe me, it is not just my problem, every users of iPhone is talking about it. Just search.

5. UI design is so bad that you have to click 3 to 4 times to reach TEL button. TEL button brings phone screen.
UI in general reminds me of 'DOS' days (specially line based rectangles). At $1200-$1600, one can expect a decent user interface. When in Device mode like IPOD, there are few short cut buttons. TEL button is on second page of shortcut buttons. I wonder, when there is a room on first page, why some one thinks of hiding important choice like going to phone screen.
You get so much involved in getting to do what you want, it is definitely NOT 'distraction-free drive...'

6. Mute button also named as 'ATT' does not fully mute the volume. I could still hear songs but volume is considerably reduced.

7. Garmin UI is decent. In order to get to my favorites, I need to click on Menu->Where To -> My Locations -> All Categories -> favorite. Is it really essential? There is no one single path to reach phone screen while navigation screen is running.

8. You can not play videos (DivX, mpg etc) or see pictures from USB drive. One of the reviewers web site mentioned that you can watch photos from your camera directly using USB port. It is not true at all. You can only listen to music from USB drive. No videos, No photos just music. It does not make any sense.

Documentation , there are no documentation about any customization that is advertised.

Support, there is almost no support on Kenwood web site about latest firmware updates etc. I am sure, people are nagging them about various issues.

It seems that I am critical of even small problems like 'mute' button etc, it starts getting in to your nerves after few days of initial excitement. For Kenwood, it should be easy to solve such small inconveniences and if they do, it is a great product.

It seems that Kenwood did not test the product, if they did, I recommend not to buy this product,

I had been happy with Kenwood stereos for a good decade before bumping into this one. Before they were feature-rich solid performers.

This one, though, has had odd little annoyances that eventually added up to me just pulling it and putting the factory stereo back in.

First - the features:
- AM/FM w/ RDS
- optional XM (GXM30 or XM100V module)
- iPod control
- GPS
- CD
- DVD
- Bluetooth
(sounds great, right)

Now the problems which, individually, aren't incredibly bad, but all together makes for a disappointing product.

AM/FM w/ RDS: I've had other radios (The Kenwood XXV) which were able to pull apart the RDS stream from the radio signal correctly and display it correctly. This one seemed to always get the PINFO data (like 6 characters of scrolling data - usually junk from the radio station) but it consistently missed station name and song title (I forget the RDS name - basically you can get Artist/Title information - worked on the old XXV).

XM (GXM30) - This was actually a pretty handy little XM tuner. I used to use it with a Garmin StreetPilot 2820 without any issues. With the DNX8120, though, it'd freeze up and/or reset from time to time. Sometimes it would sort itself out and come back on and other times I'd have to reset the unit. One thing that was really cool with this module was traffic and weather (even radar maps) but what sucked (besides the resets) was the monthly cost. You can get FM Traffic for a one time fee instead of the monthly fee from XM.

XM (XM100V) - This is the Kenwood specific external module (uses a Mini Tuner). It's a really good idea (well, now the Mini Tuners are going away) but every so often I'd get 'CHECK TUNER' on the display. This started happening about a 9 months after I first installed it (as a replacement for the GXM30 because of the resets and monthly cost of the traffic + weather - I ended up getting a Garmin GTM10 for Traffic and it can't share the port with the GXM30). I finally gave up and got an external XM Tuner. Now we're starting to defeat the purpose of an all-in-one unit. Oh, nothing extra with adding this module. No Tune Select where you can have it look for Artists/Songs in the background an alert you. You just get the category, channel name, artist, and song title plus 6 presets (and the labels don't change to match anything - it's just P1, P2, P3, etc. - same with the AM/VM presets).

iPod Control - I have a 160GB iPod. About 70GB of that is music. You'd expect that when you go to the iPod input and select 'by Artist' and then press the scrollbar in the middle that you'd end up somewhere around the middle of the alphabet. You could argue that maybe the S's are more numerous so it may push the true middle back to L or maybe it would stretch out to P if you have more artists between A-M but you wouldn't expect the middle to land you on 'D'. Ok, so you click to near the end of the scrollbar - I ended up on R or S where I expected to be on Z. Only after clicking at the very end (like on the dot) of the scrollbar does it actually load the entire artist list and then the scrollbar would behave like you'd expect it would (middle of the scrollbar getting you the middle of the alphabet). It's minor, but kind of a stupid pain. Oh, and every so often the iPod interface would screw up and I'd get: Authorization Error. This is with a regular iPod. Another reset...

GPS - There is basically a StreetPilot inside the this unit. The Garmin StreetPilots were nice. I like Garmin products. I don't like how with this unit that after you start moving it loses the street names and labels (no street names, no numbered-icons over the roads (like an interstate symbol with the number on it)). You end up with just a map of squiggly lines instead which maybe isn't horrible when you're in your own city because you know the layout but can be disorienting when you're driving in a different city. While other Garmin products allow you to update the maps with their numap Lifetime service (pay once and get the maps for the lifetime of the unit), and this extends to older StreetPilots, AND you can plug a computer into the back and access this unit like a StreetPilot, but you can't buy the Lifetime maps for this unit. So, each year you're forking over about a hundred dollars for updated maps. Oh, and it'll pester you if you don't. Every so often the GPS will freeze up and reset itself, too. Sometimes you'll lose settings.

CD/DVD - never really used these other than on rare occasions. No complaints here.

Bluetooth - I don't really attribute this to a problem with the unit but I've really not had a great experience with Bluetooth devices. Phones seem to work with handsfree systems and earpieces but anything outside of that starts getting into a grey area. I've had a few phones since getting this stereo in my car and the only one that actually worked without an issue was a Sony Ericcson. Every other phone only sort-of worked. Enough of a pain that I just leave Bluetooth off on my devices now. Kenwood may have done this one right and all of the phones are just crummy with their support.

Overall interface - I got used to it but it's pretty clunky and not very appealing. I don't think someone could get in my car, see this unit, and get how to listen to the radio or iPod (or whatever). Getting the idea of how to setup the unit wasn't obvious either. With the various resets, even after using it for a few years, I'd still have to dig through the settings to find that one setting that I wanted to adjust. Kind of a, "I know it's here somewhere"-sort of search. The phone interface wasn't clear at all. Even with a phone that worked with it (the Sony Ericcson I had) it wasn't obvious how to dig through the address book and select one of the numbers from the list (as dumb as that sounds) or how to have presets numbers in the DNX8120. Yeah, I could make it happen after enough trial and error but it was odd enough that the average person wouldn't bother with it (I didn't even after I figured it out)


Basically this was about a huge waste of cash for me. It sounds great: AM/FM/XM, GPS, iPod support, CD, DVD, Phone support, etc. all in a single in-dash unit. It was just a pain to use and it seemed like I had to keep screwing with it to keep it going. Worse, my original factory stereo actually sounds better.

They had, I think, two firmware updates, in the last two years. One was an initial update (I don't remember what it fixed) and another was a GPS update for when you're driving in the Middle East (I live in the U.S. - not likely that I'm going to hit the Middle East anytime soon). Freezes and interface issues were never addressed. It was as if they did just enough work on it to check off a checkbox (Ok, AM works, FM works, RDS?? We got something on PINFO, check that, the test iPod with 3 songs works - check.. (etc)) and move onto the next item.

Anyway, I was happy with Kenwood products up until this unit. Newer like-units seem to have similar problems. I'm just going to pass on Kenwood products from now on.

Buy this stereo! This thing will do anything you want it to. It's awesome! Sounds great, easy to use, so many features, wow!