I've had it since summer and overall I love it but in some areas I think Kenwood dropped the ball.
Likes:
- Navigation has been spot on, not a single problem with any address I've entered.
- Sound is awesome, especially when the HD radio kicks in. Though it's not my style, I like to show off the local PBS station in HD. They usually have a channel with a high quality orchestra track playing and I swear you can hear the flutists breath.
- Very quick iPod interface. Easy to scroll thru. Kinda cool seeing the album art displayed or watching music videos.
- Bluetooth phone interface works fine even if going down the highway with the windows down.
Dislikes:
- I don't understand why the HD radio can't do RDS. If it can do HD why can't it decode the RDS data from the analog feed.
- When I select the source back to the HD radio I have to reset the radio GUI back to the one with the buttons for the station presets. One would think that would be the default.
- The XM radio interface is lame. There's so much wasted white space yet it doesn't have a clock display? Many radios double as the vehicle clock, when I removed my OEM radio the clock went with it. Now if I'm listening to XM I have to switch to a screen with a clock on it to see what time it is. The song title is truncated to 16 characters yet it barely takes up 1/3 of the space going across the screen. I was listening to Steve Miller's Wild Mountain Honey but it came up on the screen as "Wild Mountain Ho".
- Where I really think Kenwood (and other touchscreen HU manufacturers) have dropped the ball is everything on the touchscreen is software controlled so why don't I have control over what is on the screen? How awesome would it be to be able to custom design your own screens, your own skins! Yeah I can put up my own wallpapers but that's not the same as designing buttons and indicators that match the interior of my vehicle or being able to add controls I want and remove ones I don't or arrange them how I see best.
I'm better now. [/ soapbox]