Decent player for the price, but not perfect.
Written: Jan 19 '03
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Sound Quality: |
 |
|
| Ease of Use: |
|
|
| Durability: |
|
|
|
Pros: Fast MP3 Playback
Usability is good
Cons: Single line display
Bland visual appeal (once the wow! factor wears off)
The Bottom Line: May look good for some. Decent price. Good MP3 playback. If its in your price range, and appeals to your eyes, get it.
|
|
|
| footbag's Full Review: Kenwood KDC-MPV619 Car CD/ MP3 Player |
Let me start out by saying that this review is a modified version of my review for the Kenwood 659 deck. Both decks are quite similar, so I thought it easier to just modify that review. The 619 deck is actually my friends, so please excuse all the instances where I state "I" rather than "my friend".
My friends motivation for choosing this deck was the Kenwood name. Specifically, Kenwoods reputation for MP3 playback. I already had the Kenwood 659 deck, which he liked. After testing many decks simply for their speed at handling MP3s, my friend settled on this deck (it was the only Kenwood available)
APPEARANCE
We temporarily installed the deck into my '02 Elantra, and it stands out like a sore thumb. In my opinion, this deck is best suited for cars that have some hint of silver/chrome in the interior (mine does not. We then put it in my friends '03 Jetta wagon. It still sticks out, being the only silver item, but when it is set for red illumination, it looks pretty decent with the rest of the interior (which has a billion little red lights). In the showroom, I was impressed by the display. But I found that the coloured backlighting quickly gets tiring, and that aside, the display is extremely basic and boring, in my opinion. I do like the hint of style that the circlular button placement on the left provides. Comparing it to some of the other decks being sold, I thought it looked decent, but from a purely visual perspective, there was a JVC deck that had the same 'colour changing display', but it was able to display moving graphics, making it look much better than this unit. A very good portion of the display is taken up by a circular graphic. This graphic is pretty plain looking, but it can (poorly) act as a clock or track time indicator. I think it is mostly a useless feature, and the space could have been better used. Having recently installed the Kenwood 659 deck into my car, I must say I prefer it much more compared to this deck. One last thing, comparing the two decks, I relized how much a sense of balance can add visually (take a look at the 659 deck for an example). This 619 deck doesn't have balance, and that is another slight negative. Of course, this is subject to personal tastes, and contributes nothing to the decks core function of playing music.
SOUND
My friend is running the factory speakers off the deck. I _think_ I notice an improvement from the stock radio, but I will not pretend to be a big audio buff. Suffice it to say it sounds good.
FEATURES
This deck seems to have a decent amount of features for adding an amp and sub, but they go unneeded by my friend, and are eclipsed by other decks out there (that do often cost a bit more). The options to display various tidbits of information on the display were to my liking, but only having one line of text display was disappointing. With MP3s, it is very nice to have Track/Artist and something like Folder displayed all at once, but this deck can't do it. It is also nice to be able to go to a specific song using the remote. Little things like being able to name radio stations and CDs are appreciated.
INTERFACE / BUTTONS
Part of what makes this deck not so visually appealing is the layout of its buttons. However, the buttons are a good size, and well placed, so it can be opperated while driving rather well (but I think rotary controls are the way to go). One way Kenwood kept the number of buttons down is by giving many buttons multiple uses, but this means it gets hard to keep track of some of the extra features of various buttons. Plus, the lighting of the deck during darkness does very little to inform you about the buttons. Minor point, and I just use the remote, which I find basic and well designed, to navigate most of the time.
MP3
This is the reason my friend wanted a deck. And in most regards, this one does a great job. Navigating between songs is 'as good as I could imagine it'. What I mean by that is, given the limited display and buttons available, I'm happy with how you move around. One nice feature Kenwood included was the ability to browse for another folder without interupting music playback. I only wish they included the same feature to look for different tracks. The deck will only do random in a particular folder, which is a bit annoying. There is software out there that you can use to burn discs that get around the problem, so it doesn't bother me too much. I have only made one MP3 disc so far, and have seen a couple songs that the unit will not play, but I haven't looked into why it won't play them. Given the wide variety of MP3 formats and encoders, this doesn't surprise me, nor bother me any, and from what I have read, other decks are a lot more picky.
A note on Durability. This deck was aclearance item, and when we made the salesman hook it up so we could try it out, he ended up dropping it from about 5 feet onto a hard floor. Other than for a couple of small nicks, it survived and kept working. I would think this boads well for its durability.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 350 CDN
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
footbag
|
|
Reviews written: 3
Trusted by: 0 members
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.