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(More customer reviews)23 Aug 2010: Update - It is now a piece of junk
After 2 months of acceptable performance, the Kenwood head unit started dropping the USB connection, then reconnecting a second later, at random.First it was once or twice a day, but now it is every few seconds.Yes, I securely taped all physical connections.Yes, I ran extensive bad block tests on the USB flash memory on a desktop system.This would only be a major annoyance if that simply paused USB playback but NOOooooooo.The code monkeys of Kenwood's crack firmware development team decided to treat each disconnect/reconnect hiccup as a new device insertion!But wait, the consequences of this are surprising.First, on disconnect, it switches to what ever mode the head unit was in prior to the USB playback: radio, standby, what ever.If it was radio, you get a burst of sound from the last station you tuned to. Then it switches back to USB mode a second later (antenna pops up, antenna goes down).From there it must rescan the entire media, which takes a minute - a minute of silence.But the best part is this: every USB connection event is considered of such fantastic importance that the the head unit will immediately switch to USB playback.Even if the unit is OFF (in "standby" mode).That's right: there is NO way to stop it or shut it off!!Like some sort of in-dash zombie, it will come to life and start playing!
So you'd think that Kenwood would be interested in the problem, and their design defects, and try to resolve them.Not happening."Steve" of productsupport (at) ccc.kenwoodusa.com thinks it's my problem.Have you checked all other possible USB flash memory devices in the multiverse?Well, then, how can it possibly be Kenwood's fault?That's their idea of customer service and product support: pushing it back on the customer.Because they will certainly not admit their product is busted and their code chimps can barely code their way out of a wet paper bag.What do you think would be more efficient: a customer buying 10,000 different types of USB flash memory to test everyone exhaustively, or Kenwood buying ONE USB device, the one I've told them about, and testing it?Yeah, that's a tough one for Kenwood to figure out too.And of course they are simply not interested in correcting their design defects.It's freakin' perfect!
My advice: the auto stereo industry is like a technology pool filter, full of tech detritus and waste.Nobody at any of these firms was the top of their class at anything, even driver's ed.And these guys are 5 to 10 years out of date with tech and consumers, but they still don't give a damn about it.For the price of this piece of junk, you can get yourself a really nice portable media player - with gigabytes of memory.For what I paid for it and the SSD, I could have a brand spanking new 42" LED/LCD TV.What did I get?A bunch of grief, some lip from customer dis-service and the most expensive radio-only head unit on the market.Oh, and I take back my comment about FM reception quality: it's only OK, nothing to write home about.Stay away.You'll regret it.Unless you've got a Zune, then, well, your pickin's were might slim to begin with, Lucky.The Zune compatibility alone should have steered me away from the get-go.Don't make the same mistake that I did.
Oh, and don't expect the experience to be any better with any other Kenwood head unit.--------------Old Review-------------
I have been waiting for the auto entertainment industry to join the rest of us here in the 21st century.However, it seems like the industry moves at a glacial and evolutionary pace, with minimal change in their new products every year. I have been waiting for the day when they discover what the rest of us have known for years: nobody walks around with CDs any more. There are many reasons for this but the most obvious is data density - the CD is obsolete.When will we have an in-car media player?(I have been waiting for the auto entertainment industry to rediscover the Empeg.)We're close, but not quite there yet.
The KIV-BT900* (the same thing as a KIV-700 but with a built-in hands-free BlueTooth interface - that's the "HF" that keeps popping up on the display) has finally ditched the CD player mechanism.You can still add a CD changer if you feel nostalgic, but without moving parts, it should prove to be more reliable than its predecessors.As a media player, it does have some internal flash memory: a whopping 512MB.If you don't mind highly compressed MP3s, you could squeeze 150 - 200 songs on it.It beats NO memory, but in these days where you can get an 8GB USB stick for $10-$20, it's not even close to enough.I wish they had evolved to the point where there was a slot where you could slide your 2 1/2" solid-state-disk drive and you're good to go.Until then, I have a PQI SSD S525 128GB flash drive (with a USB 2.0 port) plugged into the USB pigtail connector in the glovebox.It must be formatted to FAT32.With this configuration, I have my entire home music collection with me on the road: hundreds of artists and 11,000 songs, over 100GB.However, there is a caveat: the KIV-BT900 can not handle more than 500 directories, up to 8 levels deep, and 15,000 files. These limitations are likely a holdover from the old days of CD head units adapted to play back data disks with MP3s.Back then, a CDR only had so much space, so it was easier for the firmware developers to decide to use an arbitrary fixed sized array to hold the CDR's contents.Some day, they will learn about dynamic data structures and there will be no limitations.You can also add album cover art to each MP3 file that may or may not be displayed when playing.I have not figured out why the device refuses to display some cover art images but not others.
Another bummer: it will re-scan the USB device every time it comes on, even if it was only shut off momentarily.For 100GB+, this process takes about 60 seconds, before it will play it.Also, if a USB device is plugged in when turned on (I can't say what happens when you plug the USB device while on) it will switch to it automatically.Even if it was set to another mode, like radio, before you shut it off.But it will play 2 seconds of radio first, then decide to switch to USB, and take its time reading the device (60 seconds for me) in silence before playing the USB device.Yes, you can go and manually switch it after it switches to USB.
Kenwood produces some Windows software called "Kenwood Music Editor Lite" that will compile a database of the music on your USB device.In theory, this allows you to navigate through the music by Artist, Album, or Genre.In practice, I have found that (A) you lose all of the good play modes available without it (like play-all-random) and more importantly, (B) it will crash the device.Not a good thing on the road.Seriously, the "KME" database format uses the old DOS 8.3 filenames internally, which, again, shows the slow evolution of the industry, and it seems to have it's own limitations that Kenwood had not considered when they set the specs for this device.It may work fine for smaller music collections.
Finally, there are still remnants of this head unit's ancestors constantly visible to remind us of the past: when playing from the USB memory, it constantly shows the directory number and song number.In "play all random" mode, they FLASH.Constantly.Guys, this is NOT a CDR and the songs have embedded ID3 data as well as directory names and file names.So that's constantly annoying.
The radio works fine, though I only use the FM band.However, as a throwback to an earlier age, there are FM1, FM2 and FM3 "bands", each with 6 station memories.Switching between them requires some menu scrolling, which is not safe to to while driving.When you have one of them selected, you can use the FWD -> and REW <- buttons to access each of the 6 stations sequentailly (if you're in tuning mode "auto2") - direct access requires a menu and scrolling.Don't do this while driving.Why are we limited to 6 per "band"?All the previous units were, and this is a slow evolution.As a huge evolutionary step forward: it supports RDS - in the United States!Finally.
The BlueTooth works well too.Microphone placement is left to your creativity.It took me a while to figure out how to transfer my cellphone phonebook data to the KIV-BT900.Once done, however, it allows you to search and dial from the head unit.The unit connects to my phone very quickly and reliably after starting my car - it happens shortly after the USB device is found.I believe it can display SMS messages but I have not tried that - best when not actively driving too.
Summary: Good things-
- upto 500 directories of data
- upto 15,000 songs
- most album art
- very good FM sound
- RDS for the US
- "Hands Free" BlueTooth
Not so good things:
- switches to USB automatically
- takes a while to scan the USB device
- crashes with the Music Editor Lite database
- annoying flashing directory number/song number when playing
- internal flash storage insufficient, no space to add more.
It's not yet a car audio equivalent of home or portable media players, but it's as close as you can get today.
*System/Device Firmware versions 3.00/3.03.I will update this review if the firmware is updated.
29 Jun 2010 - I got new firmware today: System/Device (no, I don't know what that means) 4.00/3.04.The release notes indicate that it fixes WMV sync problems, Zune (ha ha) problems, and KME problems.I see no improvement with KME and I have never tried to play a WMV or use a Zune.It did reset nearly the entire...Read more›
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