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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Feature Galore!, July 12, 2009
I must agree with others who say this device is complicated, but several readings of the manual and some fiddling bring you tremendously good results! I added a rear-view camera, XM radio, a 5-channel alpine amplifier, 10" Alpine subwoofer and infinity 3-way speakers and WOW! What a sound!. The unit has superb voice contrlol and amazingly diverse sound controls. I can play files from a USB hard drive and my iphone/ipod, including music videos. The video on the 7" screen is awesome! The Garmin software is wonderful - I have three other Garmin untis so it was very easy for me to master. The only glitch I have had is that my ipod loses connectivity sometimes. I still don't know why, but a simple cable reconnect fixes it. I also love to have video podcasts on in the car.
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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not happy, December 18, 2009
When the factory CD player in my 350Z recently went out, I stopped by a local car stereo installation shop where they recommended this unit. Now that I've owned it for a couple of weeks, I wish I had researched it first. It has a lot of features, sounds good and has a very clear display. However, I feel those positives are outweighed by a large number of annoyances.
* It takes about 20 seconds to start up.
* It randomly reboots (which aggravates the slow start up).
* If you play music from your iPhone and don't disconnect it between turning off and turning your car back on, it will resume playing from where it left off for about 10 seconds and then go totally silent. You have to disconnect the iPhone and then reconnect it to get the sound back (and that doesn't always work).
* USB storage device options are limited. It only supports FAT16 and FAT32 partitions, and only up to 32GB in size.
* In addition, it only supports up to 255 folders and 255 files per folder. That may seem like a lot, but I was planning on attaching a large solid-state drive to the unit with a copy of my entire CD collection, which far exceeds those limits.
* It only supports up to 320Kbps WMA encoding, and not lossless. I cannot listen to anything in my Windows Media library without converting it.
* The user interface often requires you to navigate through multiple menus/screens to perform common functions. For example, if you are playing music while the navigation screen is up and you want to change tracks, you have to navigate back to the AV source screen first. This is very distracting while driving, and all the more annoying given that the current song's title is shown at the bottom of the navigation screen. Why didn't they put a few common buttons (forward, back, pause) next to the song title?
Overall, I cannot recommend this unit. I have reconfirmed that all of these problems and limitations exist with the latest firmware versions as of Dec. 18, 2009 (GPS version 3.20 and player version 1.8).
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8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Buyer Beware, October 28, 2009
IMO, anyone looking at this unit should really wait to make sure the bugs are worked out before they drop their money on Beta testing the unit for Kenwood. My unit will reboot itself for no reason while I'm driving or standing still at a stop light. It gets really annoying when your trying to find a location and all of a sudden the unit reboots. They should also put a Garmin on the radio side to help you navigate to the settings you want to change. For instance, your driving with the NAV on but the volume for the NAV is low, so you want to turn up the volume. You need to exit the NAV and go into the System preferences. Dig your way through the menus to find the NAV volume. Why not put the volume control on the screen in the map?
If ever anyone should obey the warnings of a NAV unit, they should on this one. It is WAY TO COMPLICATED and requires WAY TOO MUCH ATTENTION to use while driving.
Also the bluetooth A2DP does not work very well with my iPhone 3GS. With music on my phone, I bluetooth to the unit. Well the connection gets broken between the phone and radio. Is this a radio or iPhone issue? Well I have to believe it's a radio issue.
Why don't I just use the iPod cable to connect my phone to the radio? Well because that doesn't work either. It just shows on the screen, "Reading..."
I do have to say - the sound is really really good. I did put in an AMP because the radio just wasn't loud enough without one. I could hear the music but I couldn't FEEL the music. So I popped in an AMP and new speakers. WOW. There are some songs I can play that can be turned all the way up and sound crystal clear.
I haven't messed with video and I don't have a camera connected so I can't comment on that. But my issues shouldn't cost me $1800. If Kenwood wanted to have me Beta test the radio, then they should have cut me a break and told me I was going to beta test.
So save yourself some stress and Don't purchase this radio until they work out the bugs. AND TO MAC OWNERS, be prepared to invest in a PC to update the radio or find someone who has a PC. You will need it.
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