kenwood excelon dnx6960 great stereo and nav to many features to list i think this nav stereo has all features offered by any manufacture at a reasonable price well worth the money buy one today.
A Decent Item Used I installed the DNX6190 myself about 3 weeks to a month ago. I've only ever installed two head units myself this and a DNX8120 previously. Like many people I gravitated to Kenwood because of the Garmin nav. That is what I am used to.I bought the unit actually both units at different times off of ebay as used items. Had I paid $800$1000 that I have seen online as new or refurbished then I might have taken away a star or two from my review.
Lasted 1 year and 6 months Do not buy this piece of junk. I paid over $600 for Kenwood DNX5140 and it lasted me exactly 1 year and 6 months. Their warranty is only for a year. It just died on me out of no where. Not worth your money.
Great head unit! The user interface of the DNX6960 is very well laid out sources are very accessible the touch screen is very responsive the built in blue tooth works flawlessly and Garmin navigation is the best. I'm very pleased with this purchase.
Defective product After having the unit professionally installed with a brand new Kenwood DNX6160 the HD tuner would cause DVD playback to lockup or video to freeze. My only recourse was to power cycle the head unit. As the head unit runs the video in the backseats for the kids this is a deal killer. After removing the HD tuner there were no playback issues. After searching online I saw that this was a known issue that has not been aknowledged by Kenwood. One individual even documented the issue on Youtube. Contacted Kenwood technical support with no resolution. Back to the shop to have the HD tuner removed and returned.
Make Sure This Unit Is Compatible for Your Vehicle I purchased this and all the little connection gizmos to replace the original navigation/radio unit in my 2005 Jeep Grand Cherokee Laredo. Bottom line the audio on the navigation didnt work at all when anything else was on even though the other items went silent when she was supposed to be giving directions and I had no fade control from the front to the back speakers. Best Buy and Kenwood said they couldnt do anything because my original factory six speaker set up had an amplifier that could not be wired around and was interfering. Rather than put another 800 into a substitute new amp I finally installed a small additional speaker dedicated to the navigation and decided to live with no fade. I wish I had gone to a more competent installer than Best Buy and perhaps they would have told me the real deal and I could have saved myself by sending the radio back before it was installed.
Kenwood acknowledges bug but will not fix it You can find the full review at []. I am returning this unit. Be aware that all 2012 models likely have the same problem.When you plugin a USB with very few songs on it e.g. say <500 MB it takes about 15 seconds to recognize the ID tags of the music e.g. artist genre album title. Slow but not a huge issue. When you plugin a USB with what I consider a small library e.g. about 4GB worth of music it takes about 90 seconds to recognize the ID tags. I have a 16 GB USB that has 14 GB on it about 2500 songs. I've waited over 1 hour and it still will not recognize the ID tags. As a result you can ONLY access the folder structure on the USB. You cannot search for songs by artist genre album title etc. The options for category list links etc. will all be grayed out you will not be able to access them. This unit is useless if you can't search for an album to play or an artist or even a song.Ergo if you plan to use this unit with a USB that will have more than just a few songs do not buy this unit. As all 2012 units have the same firmware they will all have this problem. Kenwood acknowledged the problem but said that's just the way it is. A pretty awful response if you ask me.This is a $1000 unit. At that price point there are some very basic things like being able to search by artist genre album title that it has to be able to do. As it cannot do it with more than a few songs this is a joke. Basic testing should have caught this before it even left the lab. And as it appears it's been a problem in past models they should have specifically fixed it.The user interface on this is pretty awful and the ability to customize is even worse e.g. I can't even set my home city on the GPS as the default city when looking up an address which means I always have to put in the city before each address. The only reason I bought the Kenwood over other models is because of the Garmin GPS.
Kenwood Excelon DNX6960 First I would like to say that I'm an amazon.com addict! I buy everything I can from them and ALWAYS appreciate their friendly customer service and lightning fast shipping even through their 3rd party sellers.There is only one reason you should buy the Kenwood DNX6960 If you MUST have Garmin Navigation and if it's priced VERY low. It is the only reason I broke my vow made back in 1995 to not buy Kenwood stereos but this particular model comes up short everywhere else. I had a Clarion before this unit and I only returned it because the GPS was totally unreliable Everything else worked very well. Especially the Bluetooth.
Short but informative review I would first like to start out by saying that I have owned this unit for 9 months now but I'm taking it out today because I recently sold it.Here's the problems with itFIRMWARE UPDATESThe firmware is difficult to update. You have to burn the new firmware to a disc then go to the menu to update it. Sounds easy enough? Well my update button was somehow grayed out.iPod IntegrationOkay depending on what device you have it can be either really slow or really fast. I had an older iPod nano and looking through my 1000+ songs was PAINFULLY slow. However on my iPad 2 with the same songs it was actually pretty fast.GPS MAP UPDATESYeah good luck. The maps on mine were the 2010.10 update which means they were released in 2009 sometime. I don't think there's even an update for the maps yet and how do you even update them anyway? There's NOTHING on either Kenwood's or Garmin's website regarding this. It's probably not going to happen. The GPS is actually very good too but updated maps are crucial.GARMIN FIRMWARE UPDATESFor Garmin firmware updates your supposed to use a microSD card and put the files in a folder named Garmin where then they are supposed to automatically update when you start navigation. Well they didn't.I know Kenwood has released some software updates for this device but they make it way too hard to actually update the product. Map updates will likely never come wither. I really liked this head unit when I got it but it's time to get rid of it while I can still make some money off it. It's a good unit and has a lot of potential but it lacks one thing UPDATES.
Kenwood DNX6160 Awesome Unit D This is an Awesome Unit. The reason I bought this was because of its GPS.Since I have been using Garmin GPSes I am really comfortable with the GPS on this Unit. The iPod features is amazing I play videos and also mp3 from my iPod and it plays it perfectly. The CD and DVD Is great also. The Sound Quality is amazing D The telephone features is amazing also I have had couple phones connected to it. Especially my SE x10i so I can use the Bluetooth Hands free features and it shows your phone book and your battery life also you can send and receive TXT messages with it also. I highly recommend this item to anyone. It is fast and operates amazingly well. I am really glad I bought it.
Read more...
Related Products
- Metra Axxess ASWC Universal Steering Wheel Control Interface (Black) Works great I don't know why you would buy the alternative. I ripped out my PAC SWI jack because it wouldn't work right. Connected the simple three wires on this unit turned on the ignition and the unit programmed itself in about 30 ...Read the full
- Kenwood KCA-IP301V iPod Video Direct Cable Not a Kenwood Cablewould not buy again. I purchased this cable thinking it was a real Kenwood KCAIP301V iPod cable. It is not. After installation of my new stereo with this cable I was having intermittent connecting issues. Talking to ...Read the full
- PAC SWI-JACK Steering Wheel Remote Interface Works OK slow response
- Kenwood Cmos-200 Rear View Camera Very nice I love this camera. Installed it with my Kenwood DNX6960 and the image is very nice. The camera is right above the trailer hitch and I can see all the way to both sides of the truck. I swear I could see an ant walking on the ...Read the full
- Kenwood CA-SR20V Sirius Connection Cable for 2008 Video Unit Did its job Did its job for my kenwood dnx 9980hd head unit. But had to buy another cord to make it all work ...Read the full
