Kenwood or Pioneer? All In One Double DIN Unit - Page 3

WhitH · 03-22-2015, 09:55 PM

Soooooo, I put my van in reverse today to back out and run some errands and guess what? "Caution, picture may be inversed, or flipped or something" was at the top of the screen. So here I am eating some crow and concurring with everything Eric said from now on...always. All in all still happy with the Pioneer unit though.

Kelp · 03-24-2015, 11:28 AM

I had the Kenwood double din stereo installed at Sportsmobile West. I HATED everything about it! I gave it away and bought the Alpine X009. I never would have opted for the Alpine at first because of the cost but the Kenwood was so bad, I was glad to upgrade. I love the Alpine! It was so worth it. I just wish I hadn't wasted my time and money on the Kenwood.

BrianW · 03-24-2015, 01:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kelp

I had the Kenwood double din stereo installed at Sportsmobile West. I HATED everything about it! I gave it away and bought the Alpine X009. I never would have opted for the Alpine at first because of the cost but the Kenwood was so bad, I was glad to upgrade. I love the Alpine! It was so worth it. I just wish I hadn't wasted my time and money on the Kenwood.

There are a LOT of Kenwood double-DIN models, so generalizing like this is problematic. Do you know which model you had? What all did you hate about it?

shenrie · 03-24-2015, 01:53 PM

the different stereos are as different as the people buying them. i have always used pioneer crap, so im familiar with how they set their decks up and generally choose pioneer over the other brands. this time specifically because pioneer offered the largest screen available for a double din deck. there were other considerations concerning a rear bu camera, aux outs, etc, but all that crap was an option on pretty all the decks i looked at in my price range.

i know alpine and kenwood have quality products, but layouts are completely different. some layouts work for some and not others, but realistically other than little quirks, all these decks do very similar things. in the end, its all going to come down to personal preferences.

skyrat · 03-24-2015, 05:09 PM

I have pretty much narrowed it down to two Kenwood units.
I like both the DNX571HD and the DNX572BH, the later model of the same level of DVD/NAV units from Kenwood. They are very similar though the people at Kenwood told me that they have different firmware installed. The newer 572 is "Android based" according to the customer service tech I spoke with this morning. They are the lowest priced models that have in dash NAV. They have a volume knob, play all the forms of digital disc except Blu-ray, have NAV installed and support Rear View Cameras. If I can find a good price on the newer 572 I will probably do that, if not, then I will probably buy last years 571 because of price.

I really like the idea that Kenwood has mirroring features with most smartphones. I use an iPhone and with the HDMI cable and Apple's ($49!!) Lightning Digital AV Adapter, and then a USB cable if you want to charge at the same time, you can mirror the phone on the head unit. That means you can actually operate many features of the phone from the head unit's touch screen, as your phone's display shows up on the unit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMWJ5oaGWQE

After seeing the rear camera setup that Steve in LA uses, I decided on and purchased a BOYO bracket mount rear view camera. There is the VTB301 and VTB301C that fit my needs. I decided on the more expensive but better resolution VTB301 and cannot wait to get all this together.

I cannot wait to see our van.
It has been at Agile for almost 3 weeks and is almost done. Waiting to finish a few items of the 4x4 conversion and awaiting a few Aluminess goodies. We are really putting some money into the van, but we started with a very nice, yet not too expensive, 2wd version.

Be sure to check out the Tire and Wheel Gallery thread in the 4x4 section. I want to see everyone's tire and wheel choices.

skyrat · 03-31-2015, 07:33 PM

We have settled on the newer Kenwood DNX572BH.
I was able to find a pretty good price on the unit and that made the difference between this and last years model much smaller. The unit arrived yesterday and once I get the van back from Agile Off-Road I will get on with the install.

I may be asking some of you out there for install help if issues arise.
I will let you know how it goes and how I like the unit, camera combination.

sierraskier · 06-10-2015, 05:14 PM

Hi skyrat,

I've been following this and wanted to revive this thread and get an update from you to see how happy you are with the new head unit. I've been researching the same thing, specifically the iPhone integration, and how good or bad it really is. I've been looking at the Pioneer 4100NEX - my primary goal (among some other things) is to be able to get off-road maps when not in cell range, which means using a 3rd party app like Gaia or MotionX, pre-downloading maps and then mirroring to the larger double-din screen.

I also want bluetooth and sat radio, which are pretty standard for any modern head unit. Only problem is, from what I can tell, iPhone integration (Apple CarPlay, AppRadio, etc...) is marginal at best on current head units. CarPlay seems very simple/limited and only works with Apple apps, and it APPEARS with mirroring all you can get is viewing - not necessarily interaction with the phone/apps.

Curious what your experience has been with the Kenwood.

Thanks!

1der · 06-10-2015, 05:19 PM

depark · 06-10-2015, 07:37 PM

Serriaskier,

Well let me chime in on this one. I installed a Kenwood eXcelon DNX692 in my van about a month ago. I love it. It is probably the best addition to the van after the 4x4. It is a great deck. It is a full featured deck. I will let you read all the specs on the Kenwood site. Here is the link to the deck http://www.kenwood.com/usa/car/excelon/dnx692/. It takes about 60 seconds to start but the backup camera displays immediately. That is a nice feature. Once started the UI is quick and snappy. My cell phone connects to the deck via bluetooth as soon as it is started. The deck has impressed me so much. The installer here said that I got the first one. They did not even have one there to demo. Lucky me!

The satellite radio is also great although you need to purchase the vehicle connect kit.

Now onto the question of off-road maps. This was a huge surprise to me and a happy one at that. Because this is a navigation deck running Garmin a really cool feature is that you can plug in any Garmin compatible Micro SD card and use it directly on the deck.

I have a Backroads Map card for British Columbia and it works awesomely. The deck runs it just like my stand alone GPS. No issues what so ever. No need to mirror anything. It is nice to see the map on the larger (6.2") screen as opposed to my 4" GPS.

This will definitely fit the bill however be prepared to pay for it. The deck, backup camera and Sat radio kit add up really fast. I spent $1550 for the whole setup. At least for me it is worth it.
Cheers
Darryl

MadScience · 06-10-2015, 11:49 PM

Some cameras will overlay the lines as well, putting a different camera on is pretty simple once it's already wired, and not that much money these days, so I wouldn't stress that.

I have a double din Pioneer with back up, no nav. Happy-ish with it. The UI is a bit flashy, but actually works really well once I got used to it. Happy without the nav now that waze seems to do the right thing and pre-load all my route before I drop out of cell range.

I added a rotary volume control using a micro controller to feed the steering wheel control input. While this is probably beyond the scope of your typical stereo shop, but if you have any EE/CS background, it's a fun little project that didn't actually take me that long once I resigned to using a micro controller.