Good deck for the money
Written: Jan 02 '03
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Pros: Good display, no skipping, lots of features
Cons: No Random Across Disk feature, buttons aren't great.
The Bottom Line: I found it to be a good deck, well worth considering.
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| footbag's Full Review: Kenwood KDC-X659 Car CD/ MP3 Player |
Note: There is a review by Rally-x that really does a good job summarizing this unit.
My motivation for choosing this deck was the Kenwood name. Specifically, Kenwoods reputation for MP3 playback. I got the deck for $330 CDN, which was on the high side of what I wanted to spend, but after having it for a week, it was money well spent.
APPEARANCE
I installed the deck into my '02 Elantra, and it visually fits in wonderfully with the dash of this particular car. In the showroom, I was not impressed by the display. Comparing it to some of the other decks being sold, I thought it looked cheesy and not as 'flashy' as I wanted. However, the display grew on me. I now am glad I choose this model over some of the others, with their silver face and rainbow colors. The display is fancy enough to be appealing and it doesn't cross the line into gaudy and distracting. Of course, this is subject to personal tastes.
SOUND
I am 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 lot of features for adding an amp and sub, but they go unneeded by myself. The options to display various tidbits of information on the display were to my liking. 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 visually appealing is the layout of its buttons. However, the buttons are a little on the small side, so it requires more attention than I would like to do certain tasks, otherwise a slip of the finger is easy to occur. 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 I wanted a deck. And in most regards, this 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.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 330 CDN
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Epinions.com ID:
footbag
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Reviews written: 3
Trusted by: 0 members
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