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good sound, AWFUL interface |
January 25, 2008 |
| Reviewer:
Thew
from California
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I bought this to replace the OEM head unit in my VW Passat, on the recommendation of crutchfield. I wanted a unit that could play CDs (including mp3 and aac formats) as well as something that would allow me to control my iPod through the stereo.
First off, this unit sounds very good, and generates a nice clean signal to my aftermarket speakers. But I kind of expect that from any reciever costing >$200. Pre-amp outs for speakers and sub were nice, although I haven't hooked those up yet. If I were to grade on sound alone I would give 4 or 5 stars. But sound alone isn't what makes a reciever good.
The bad: Kenwood did a poor job designing the controls. This display advertises 64colors, but it isn't sharp at all. pixels (dpi) is much more important than # of colors, and the result is a display that's not very crisp, and hard to read in bright light.
Also, the buttons are lilliputian and its very easy to press the wrong one while driving (particularly the station buttons). The control knob is designed to be turned, pushed, or toggled (up, down, left and right) depending on the fuction. Not necessarily a bad idea but it's confusing when you are supposed to push, rotate or toggle, and even worse it's very sensitive, and its easy to toggle when you meant to push, resulting in you making the wrong selection.
The menu system goes through an almost endless array of functions (which I like having) but it is simply not intuitive to move through each selection. Push, toggle, rotate (sometimes with the volume knob too). As I've owned this I've gotten better, but I think that a well-designed user interface should require no instruction-reading whatsoever.
this reciever has the guts to put out great sound, but it's frustrating to use and hard to read.
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Some good and lots of bad. |
December 22, 2007 |
| Reviewer:
Pete
from Metuchen, NJ
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I've been living with this receiver for a few months now so I figured I would add a review so that other people could be aware of some flaws in this receiver. First off, let me give the background of why I bought it. I had a nice Alpine head unit in my car. I was pretty happy with the Alpine but really wanted something with a bigger display (the Alpine had a 10 character, 1 line display which led to a lot of switching to see what i needed when playing MP3's) and an aux input for my sirius receiver as well as a USB input if possible. I stumbled on this receiver and it seemed to be a perfect fit. It hit all the needs that I was looking for, installed in my dash without modification (which is becomoing rare these days) and had a reasonable price. So, let me list the good things about the receiver first.
The Good:
1) The display is nice. It is able to display almost every bit of info that I would need when listening to MP3's or the radio. It also has a display option which keeps one of the lines as a clock which was important for me since I don't have a clock in my car.
2) The aux input was great for connecting my sirius receiver.
3) The USB input was easy to connect a thumb drive to, in my case a quick 8 gb drive. 8 gb of MP3's is nice amount of music to have in the car.
Well, that is all the good, now on to the bad.
The bad about this receiver:
1) I will start with the thing that frustrates we every day that I use the receiver. To switch between sources you need to hit the source button, scroll with the multi purpose scroll wheel and then press the scroll wheel to select the source you want. Sounds easy enough, but it isn't. The problem is that it is too many steps to acomplish what you want and to press the scroll wheel successfully is near impossible each time. Let me run you through it. Normal stereo has a source button that each time you hit it, will cycle to the next source. So lets say you have 3 sources or even 4 (AM/FM, CD, Aux, USB). If you are on AM/FM and want CD you hit the source button twice and there you are, easy as pie. If you missed your source, no problem, keep hitting until you end up with the one you need. You don't need to look at the stereo to do this. With this kenwood, you hit the source button, now you have to go to a whole different button, move to the source you want, then click the scroll wheel to select it. The problem is, when you hit the scroll wheel, half the time it doesn't engage, or it will accidentaly skip to the next source. I defy anyone to be able to successfully click the scroll button on a consistent basis while driving. The scroll wheel is the thing that will eventually drive me to insanity and cause me to throw this receiver in the garbage. The scroll also is the button needed to pause music while playing, but you never can do it, you invariably end up on the next track or the previous track. I think that you get the idea, very frustrating.
2) OK, on to less frustrating but no less disapoi
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Excellent |
May 3, 2007 |
| Reviewer:
Johnny
from Sugar Land, TX
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Well I had an issue with the other KDC-590, the faceplate wouldnt work, then I couldnt use the flash usb drive, so I sent it in, and they couldnt fix it. By the way I have an 2001 Chevy Tahoe...
So then crutchfield sent me the KDC-MP735U. All I could say was wow, I absolutly love the USB function, and the ability to play music from my laptop headphone jack. After about 20 minutes of reading the manual I was able to work my way around the menus, and start customizing them to my needs! But so far all I can say is this unit is awesome, and I would recommend it to anyone!
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