Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
All of the access with no glitches, April 17, 2008
The Kenwood KDC-MP438U is one of the best players/receivers I've ever owned. My enjoyment comes from access - pretty much anything you can throw at it, it can play. CD-R with MP3 songs on it? It can play them. Music from your iPod? Use the iPod connection cable (sold separately) to connect your iPod directly to the receiver and it is no problem! Music from another MP3 player? Plug it in through the auxiliary jack and you're instantly listening to it from your car speakers. Flash drive or hard drive? Just plug it in to the USB port and the tunes begin.
It is this last feature that I've found the most useful. Go out and buy a cheap 4+ gig flash drive, then copy your NON-digital rights protected music (in other words, normal MP3s) onto it. Now plug it directly into the receiver's USB port and you can play hundreds (if not thousands) of songs on your car stereo without ever having to change a CD. I've gotten this trick to work with the larger portable laptop hard drives, though a USB-to-USB cable is needed. With a setup like this, you may find the CD-player aspect of this receiver to be obsolete. :)
A lot of the previously-mentioned features are not specific to the Kenwood KDC-MP438U. Why go with this model, then? Besides the fact that it has both connection types (USB and an auxiliary jack), I recommended it because I've never had this model "glitch out" on me. The USB drives I've put into it have all been played quickly and perfectly, and I've never had a problem with my iPod.
Drawbacks: I don't have any significant complaints about this model. The display is very simplistic, and those used to brilliant light shows and sound level displays will be disappointed (there are a few blue accent lights around the knobs, but that's it). Another minor complaint: there's a cover that can be closed over the two access ports to keep out dust, but it can't be closed over the individual ports separately (so, if you're running the flash drive from the USB, dust is still getting into the auxiliary jack). That's it.
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars. This is an excellent player/receiver well worth the price.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
a lot of functionality, but not easy to use, December 14, 2008
For a very modest price, this unit has an amazing amount of functionality built in. It plays CDs, USB drives, iPod, and various other devices. The ability to play mp3s from CD means that I can now put a full week of music in the car with one disk. That's really good.
However, the unit is very complex to use, which is inconvenient for a car stereo (driving and reading manual at the same time??). There are about five buttons and a five-way navigation knob which interact with each other, making basic functions (such as adjusting frequency response) difficult to manage. This complexity is aggravated by the fact that the manual is very convoluted and unclear; it isn't just an issue of language translation, the layout itself is simply baffling; they appear to have solved the language problem by eliminating text as much as possible, and depending on pictures for communication.
Also, there's a bug in the firmware, I believe. The manual suggests that you can put files in separate directories, and the unit will play all files in first directory, then automatically switch to next directory, then the next, until done. However, that's not what we've found with the two units that we purchased. If you insert a USB drive with multiple directories into the stereo, it will play all the songs in one directory, then start over at the beginning of that same path. You can *manually* switch it to the next directory, but that isn't the way it should really work. For now, I just put all files in one basic directory, and that works fine.
Supposedly I can also connect my cell phone to it, and it will act as a Bluetooth interface for hands-free phone operation. However, I found it impossible to make any sense of this from the manual, so I have no idea how that would work.
Overall, though, for the basic task of playing mp3 files from CD and USB, it works very well. Sound has been great, better than my old unit. And for $113, that's hard to beat!
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great receiver, June 18, 2008
I purchased this unit after the original tape deck in my 14 year old Honda finally died. Boy, I had no idea what I was missing! Overall sound quality jumped way up, and all the new features of this receiver makes for an enjoyable listening experience in my car. I do wish it would shuffle ALL mp3 tracks on a CD or thumb drive instead of what's in a folder. The front access USB port was a huge selling point for me and it's great to download something quickly and then just use the USB slot. Highly recommended unit.
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