Kenwood DDX471HD DVD receiver

I purchased this receiver because it seemed to be the best bargain in a double din touch screen.I like many things about Kenwood's design so I normally stick with their products.*PROS*- Price, $300 for a double din touch screen from a reputable company is a good deal.- Features for the price. I couldn't find another unit with Bluetooth, HD Radio, ipod controls, touch screen for this price.- Actual volume knob and a few buttons. I HATE volume up / down buttons. I like a knob. It just works better. This is honestly the main reason I went with Kenwood over Pioneer. This unit also has some conveniently located control buttons like mute (pressing volume knob), power, phone Bluetooth answer. All buttons on the left side closest to the driver (here in the good ole USA anyway :)- The radio preset virtual buttons are on the left side and big enough to access while driving.- I like the interface for the most part. It seems fairly responsive with a few exceptions which I will list in the CONS.- The main menu is customizable. You can choose which icons appear so you can see your most frequently used apps.- Sound quality is really really good for a unit this cheap. The parametric EQ is easy to setup and very decent. Sure it isn't as good as a $1000 Alpine unit, but it's still pretty good. The amp is strong and plenty for my stock Toyota speakers (which also are not terrible). I can pump some respectable bass out of my stock 6 x 9's.- Bluetooth, it works and is pretty easy to setup.- Parking brake bypass. Kenwood is by far the easiest brand to bypass the stupid parking brake sensor. If you don't know, you must "supposedly" engage the parking brake before you can play any video. So, if you want your kids to watch Barney from the back seat while you drive, you're out of luck. UNLESS, you bypass the sensor, which every sensible person should do. All you have to do for Kenwood is ground the sensor to any ground source and you're good. Pioneer and especially Alpine are more difficult with Alpine being completely ridiculous.*CONS*- Radio presets. There just isn't enough customization available. I can't compare it to other touch screen units because this is my first one. However, it seems with the touch interface, I should be able to have more than 6 presets since you're not limited by physical buttons. FM1, FM2, FM3 seems like an outdated concept. It's a giant hassle to press the BAND button over and over to get from my 1st FM preset to my first AM preset. There is no way to skip the other 2 FM sections and just switch from FM to AM. You can combine FM and AM into 6 presets by changing one of the options but 6 isn't enough for me.- Speed. Some things are fast like switching between radio presets, from radio to CD, ipod, etc... However, reading data from either a USB stick or an ipod / iphone is really really slow. Way slower than my older model single DIN Kenwood receiver. Once all of the data is loaded, it's faster. However, scrolling or searching through the artists and songs is pretty slow. If you are playing music from USB and switch to radio, then back to USB, it's almost instant though so that's good.- USB ports. There is only 1 port, so if you have an iphone and a USB stick like I do, you have to switch back and forth with the same USB port.- Some settings are not very intuitive. Like if you have an iPhone 5 or later and you want to play music from the USB port instead of the 1/8" jack, you have to change an "initial startup" setting for the input type. You change it from ipod to AUX. Yeah, that makes alot of sense. Also, to get the steering wheel buttons for radio preset up / down to work, you change the seek mode in radio to Auto2. It only took me about 3 hours to figure this out while programming my Metra steering wheel control module.*Other Thoughts*Overall, I wish I had the money for a nicer Excelon version, maybe with more USB ports and perhaps a faster interface. However, for the money, you just can't beat this unit.Navigation in radio head units is just not worth it. It is normally lower in your car and out of view, the cost is crazy high and you have to pay for map updates. You can get a $150 Garmin windshield-mount unit with lifetime maps that works better.

I gave this 4 stars because there are just a few small things I think that could improve this product. Telephone sound quality is good, the Bluetooth connection is very good. One fault I found is by default all bluetooth connections use only the front speakers. You have to go to Settings->System->Scroll down to Bluetooth From there scroll down to Bluetooth HF/Audio and change it from Front Only to ALL. Pandora sounds so much better when it uses all the speakers. The USB cable is almost too short. By the time you run it through everything, you almost don't have enough slack. I'm thinking of buying a USB extension cable for mine.Overall the sound quality and ease of use is nice. You can go into display and turn down the back light at night and set it for the dimmer on or off to tweak to your preference. There is no remote but there is an on screen cursor you can access to move DVD selections around. There is a remote you can purchase separately and I'm seriously thinking of that. I haven't bought a rear view camera to use with this yet but I'm seriously looking at some and can't wait to get one. HD Audio is amazing so far.

Solid system, none of the buttons feel cheap, system is responsive and works well. The screen is boring and does not provide any visual coolness. There are no usb ports up front which is a huge con in my book. I bought this system to get HD Radio and the get the signal boost(my '08 Altima') antenna is terrible, and my reception is actually worse with this system and I was surprised to have found no new channels. The channel search will not connect to any channels, even one that I get sold reception with. Another reason was the Bluetooth for my phone. The microphone is right in front of me and everyone I talk to finds it hard to hear me. It would of been nice for a microphone to be built into the system.Conclusion, there are much better systems for the money.