Kenwood DNN990HD eXcelon WiFi-Embedded In-Dash Receiver

Had to do some learning to use the functions. Tech support also helped me through. The navigation is what I expected from garmin. It's the only gps I have ever used. The Bluetooth was easy to set to my Samsung phone. The sound and talk ability was more than I expected. Everyone hears me and I talk in a normal voice driving down the road. The sound is clear and crisp.I use the ipod mainly for my music. Still learning to have it accommodate my likes. I like seeing the album art and the list of songs that are in cue.I'm only using this receiver in a very limited selection of what it can offer. I'm very satisfied with the results. And it looks great in the car. The installer did a first class job. It angles as intended. You can select the color coordination of your interior for the buttons at the bottom.

*Update 12/19/2013* **I WILL NEVER PURCHASE ANOTHER PRODUCT FROM KENWOOD AGAIN. This unit is a huge, huge, huge disappointment. The software is buggy. It is not easy to use. The layout is terrible. Customer service WILL NOT SEND YOU A REPLACEMENT UNIT UNTIL YOU SHIP YOUR UNIT IN FOR REPAIRS. I will be without a radio while they fix a software issue which could easily be fixed remotely if they knew what they were doing. Bottom line, I wish I had never purchased this radio. I would return it if I could. I will never deal with Kenwood again. !!!!DO NOT NOT BUY THIS RADIO!!!!!!**I'm the recent purchaser of the DNN990HD. I've coupled this product with the iDatalink Maestro module to retain the use of the steering wheel buttons and sync functions along with their Mustang Dashkit for use in my 2012 Mustang. I was really looking forward to adding navigation to my Mustang along with some other bells and whistles that the DNN990HD radio and Maestro module would deliver.However, I have issues with the DNN990HD and the combination of the DNN990HD and Maestro (please keep in mind, the issues I have are not with the Maestro unit). Some of which I believe could be easily rectified. Bottom line, this radio is frustrating. I spent a lot of money and, frankly, I'm not happy with it. It seems like all the pieces are there for this to be an excellent unit but Kenwood failed to make it happen. I've included some the issues I have with the radio below.1. The screen which displays a nice big clock on about 1/3 of the screen and then either Facebook, Twitter, or Email on the rest.I love the clock on this display. However, Facebook and Twitter are almost completely useless in my car. Why not give the user more control over what is displayed on the rest of that screen. I would choose to display the radio or Sirius information instead of Facebook. I will say the TTS for email is a nice feature. There is an overall lack of customization to this system. The next display shows some source information on about 1/3 of the screen and then I only have the option of displaying pictures on the rest of the screen?? In my car???2. The lack of another other display with an easy to read clock.*Other than the initial screen I was just mentioning, when the clock is displayed, it is very small. This is very annoying. Especially since the only screen with a decent sized clock is mostly useless, I rarely have it on that screen. The Ford OEM display had a clock on it. For whatever reason, Kenwood did not provide the guys at ADS/iDatalink access to the clock information for the Maestro module to continue to display a clock on the factory display. If I have the radio off or without the right settings in navigation, I have absolutely no clock.3. The information output to the Maestro module to be displayed on the factory display. *It is wonderful you guys teamed up with ADS/iDatalink to create a system that can interface with so much of the factory equipment. So much so, it is confusing that it was decided to only allow the Maestro unit to display the elapsed time of the song being played, THE INPUT SOURCE, and the song title. Why would you want to display the source? The factory radio did display the source but it also displayed the clock, artist information, track information, channel number, and channel name. It is so annoying to look at that display and see the input source with the song information below it. I can understand perhaps initially displaying the source but then changing it to display the artist name. Just displaying the source without the artist name is no good.4. The software is not intuitive.It is difficult to figure out which settings are under which menu. There are two different settings menus?? WHY IS THE SCREEN BRIGHTNESS CONTROL MENU LOCATED UNDER A SPOT ON THE SCREEN I HAVE TO PRESS AND HOLD (without any indication of there being any reason to press and hold that spot) AND NOT UNDER THE DISPLAY SETTING???5. The operating system is android, yet there is no ability to install my own apps or customize the front panels.The openness and huge library of apps for the android operating system are two of its strongest attributes. It is impossible to add apps to this radio. Many of the issues I have with this radio could be corrected by the community of programmers. To demonstrate the impact of app development by the community to enhance the value of something, look at your smart phone. Plus, it is as if you took the android OS and made it difficult to use.6. Boot up time is way too long.Every time I start up my car, I am out of my driveway and down the road before the radio starts. Since I have the Maestro Mustang Dashkit, I also cannot view my climate controls. Again, this is very VERY frustrating.I spent a lot of money purchasing this radio. It is sad to say I would return it and everything else I have purchased for my car concerning this radio if I could. The hardware provided by Kenwood seems to be at least adequate. The software seems to be poorly thought out and executed. There are other issues I have with this unit but these are perhaps the worst offenders to me.*The asterisk indicates I am referring the radio and the Maestro unit and its coupled functions. I contacted Maestro and ADS about the issues I had with the lack of the clock as displayed by the factory radio and only displaying the input source and song information on the Mustang OEM radio display. In their response to me they indicated they display what is output from the Kenwood radio. That is, there is no clock information and the source and song information is all that is available from the radio to be displayed.

I ordered this unit for my 2012 Toyota Sienna Limited with JBL speakers. It promised a lot and did deliver a lot but nevertheless was a bit disappointing. First, it was very expensive to install. I had BestBuy do it for me and it wasn't exactly plug and play.. It required a special adapter for the JBL speakers that cost an additional $100.00. Even with this adapter, I am only able to balance the speakers left to right and am not able to fade them front to back. This is really unfortunate . There apparently is no provision for this situation and yet almost all upscale Toyota's have JBL speakers. The start-up time is much longer than I would like. I will have backed out of my driveway and gone down the street before there is any audio. This is particularly troublesome when using the Garmin feature. My portable Garmin is up and running instantly. I don't want to wait 45 seconds to get route information. The SD card slot has caused me no end of trouble. I put an SD card in with music and sometimes it plays. Sometimes it doesn't. Other times it causes a fault in the system which means I have to re-set the unit. This means I have to go through the whole set up process again and have to re-enter all my addresses back into the Garmin. A huge pain. I no longer use the SD slot, instead have found that you can use an SD card to USB adapter on the USB input. Additionally, the Garmin's voice recognition is dicey at best. I speak very clearly but it still comes up with answers that aren't even close to what I have said or asked for. For whatever reason, if I try to use voice input for addresses it hardly ever gets the numbers right. "1688 Main" usually comes up as 881688. Very frustrating. To make this unit perform properly you need to create a "Route Collector" account. I did this but really don't understand why it was necessary. I uploaded music to Dropbox which is their Cloud storage of choice. When I try to use this music in the vehicle it shows that it is there but won't play. The "Route Collector" site is really pretty bad. It is not intuitive in the least and when I have tried to pre-plan a route that can then be accessed from the vehicle the route it suggests is usually not the one I would have chosen and I haven't figured out how to edit this feature. I like many of the features it offers but so far the negatives have outweighed my joy of the positives. The frustration level has been high. The owner's manual is good overall (I have accessed it so often that I have nearly memorized it) but it needs a lot of fine tuning. It is not always clear how to get to the next step or what step to take. Knowing what I know now, I am not certain I would have spent this much money to have something with this many hiccups. I have talked to Kenwood and their only answer is to send it back and have it repaired. That would cost a fortunate to take the unit out and re-install it plus I don't believe most of the issues would be resolved anyhow.