#1631362 - 04/17/09 08:32 AM
Kenwood dnx5120 or Alpine IVA-W205
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BOSPLYA
SD Newbie
Registered: 03/29/07
Posts: 19
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I am leaning towards the alpine because they say full speed ipod connections.Plus the review Ttclowcls left. But the kenwood is cheaper. The only thing i see that the kenwood have is NAV. I really dont care about that. I plan on building a SQ system around which ever unit. So any advice would be nice.
This will be going in my 99 Lincoln Continental.
Edited by BOSPLYA (04/17/09 08:34 AM)
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99 Lincoln Continental
92 Cadillac Eldorado
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#1689756 - 08/05/09 06:45 PM
Re: Kenwood dnx5120 or Alpine IVA-W205
[Re: BOSPLYA]
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Temple
H.N.I.C
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Registered: 01/30/00
Posts: 241
Loc: Nederland, TX
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Personally I would say go with the kenwood. If your worried about the speed of your ipod connection you shouldn't be because its more that quick enough. Also the kenwood unit uses garmin gps so that kicks ass to.
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#1708053 - 09/20/09 06:02 AM
Re: Kenwood dnx5120 or Alpine IVA-W205
[Re: Temple]
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RadioFlyer
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Registered: 09/20/09
Posts: 2
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If you don't care about GPS, go with Alpine. I just got a Kenwood Excelon head unit. I should have gotten the Alpine I was looking at (9887). I was in the same boat - the Kenwood's cheaper and has more features. Well, the Kenwood sounds good, but everything else about it is ridiculously clunky. Like, if they would have flow-charted the functions, they'd have seen how obscenely counterintuitive the controls are. The menus are unclear about what setting you're selecting, and sometimes certain menus automatically override other settings you've already set.
So, for example, you try to go through the menus to tell the head unit what hardware you're trying to control, and set the eq last, if needed. So you spend quite a bit of time on the eq because it just doesn't sound quite right. Eventually, you go back to double check the setup menus to make sure you set them correctly, and yep - they're all been reset to other values because of selections you've made later in the process.
Before buying it, there weren't many reviews, but they mentioned a confusing owners manual. (It's true, it sucks.) But I took that to mean that there are a lot of functions that a lot of people don't know what to do with. I'm a recording engineer - I know what to do with audio functions. But the way this head unit is laid out, it feels like the people packaging it don't know what any of the functions do. It's like their ONLY concern was to get a lot of functions into one head unit. That's it - no regard for how those functions are accessed. It's like the difference between packing a U-Haul with stuff you're moving, and packing a U-Haul with stuff to the dump. If you're moving, you're going to pack your stuff in boxes that make sense, like kitchen stuff, linens, etc. And then you'd label the boxes appropriately, so you know what's in each of those boxes. Then you'd load the truck in such a way that you can get to whatever box you need in the sequence you need it. Conversely, packing a truck for the dump, you just throw a ton of stuff in there. Number one priority? Fit as much stuff per load as possible. So there you go - I just bought a truck headed for the dump.
But I will say that it sounds pretty good sometimes. (I don't think an Alpine or Eclipse would have a hard time pulling that off though.) But it seems like the big draw for Kenwood these days, is that they use Garmin Nav. That's great, if you care about nav.
Oh, and the "Hands-Free Calling" is a joke. I actually had to pull over to figure out how to make a call. Seriously. They knew it was going into a car. It's dangerous and irresponsible to make their interface so complicated and frustrating. All they're doing is sending a bunch of people out on the streets driving while not looking at the road and getting angrier and angrier, like me! I'll never buy Kenwood again.
Edited by RadioFlyer (09/20/09 06:05 AM)
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