Yeah, so I thought I'd give it a try -- despite my better judgement, the price was TOO appealing, so I bought a couple f90BT units .. not so impressed after a couple days, and 100 hangs/freezes/ipod drops/navi mishaps...

WOW! whuddua POS

Bought the Kenwood Excelon 8120 at a great deal from abt..... you get what you pay for .. i'll miss the F90bt to the extent that for the 30% of the time that it worked as advertised... it was literally the SWEETEST DDin navi/AV unit on the market... and it sounded pretty damn sweet also ...

Thanks for all the help guys -- will be posting in the "Other" section... this is a wonderful forum and a great resource.

wow. a couple of days and a hundred hangups/errors/ ipod drops...sounds to me like a poor install (or two installs in this case). I don't have any problems other than the occasions (once a week) ipod drop. All I have to do is disconnect the ipod and reconnect., that's it. My two work great, I have no idea why there are such vast differences in experience.

I came real close to the Kenwood, certainly was the only other choice for me (Garmin is KING!) The UI of the Pioneer sold me to give it a chance and I am certainly glad that I did. Cheaper too!

Good luck

I had an F90, sold it and got the 8120, sold that and got another F90.

Each has its merits. I wouldnt say the 8120 is particularly better.. its a little speedier, maybe a tad more stable but after the software update the F90 has been good.

Hopefully the Sirius cable is a little easier to find now than it was when I put in my 8120.

I had an 8120 in my WRX before I got the accord, overall it was ok, but if you consider price to performance it just wasn't there. The kenwood radio tuner sucked dog balls, having to continuously pay for navtraffic sucked($120 and I'll never pay for traffic updates again with MSN), overall the screen was pretty blah(although I did like that you can adjust the color settings, not just brightness), dual zone was nice, but I only plan on single screen in the accord, the bluetooth stack was terrible regardless of what phone you use(the F90 doesn't particularly like my HTC phones though), I love ipod VR on the F90, A2DP was decent on the 8120(but not great quality, bluetooth stack again), the EQ is much better on the 8120 though. Have you tried skipping songs on a USB drive on the 8120? All in all I guess it depends what you want. After some tweaking I'm pretty content with my F90.

I'm curious how your ipod was locking up. My 8120 forgot it had XM far more often than the F90 forgets it has an ipod. The only problem I've seen is with bad songs if you ummm download a corrupt one, and if you turn the key to accessory, sit for a few seconds and then start the car. It's the ipod that actually freaks out, not the AVIC. I suppose in order to speed up boot time there isn't much delay between when you turn the key and the avic inits the ipod. When you start the car the ipod tries to reconnect, but it just sits there instead. The easiest way around it is to stick the key in and start the car.

Yeah -- i musta installed two units incorrectly, you know me so well! LOL

I bought the 8120 and the 6140 and both units are rock stable, no hangups or bugs...

I know people take this product (by that I mean the F-series) very personally and anything that someone has to say about it offends them .. therefore, I'll refrain from discussing anymore my problems/issues about the F-series and my two incorrectly installed units.

The 6140 is really nice though for those looking to keep things under $1000 and have all in one -- BT/nav/ipod/xm/dvd...

Good luck with your new units.. I just installed an f90 in my 300c and I love it so far. I dont even notice the boot up time since whatever i was playing before i shut the car down starts playing within 7 secs. All the f90 needs from what i have seen in the past week, is just patience. 1 minute of your time to get everything running. I was kinda surprised when i was messing with the head unit in my garage, and it connected to my cell phone which was in the office inside my house. I was honestly looking at the 8120 before i bought the f90 but for the price, you really cant beat the f90.

Yeah -- i musta installed two units incorrectly, you know me so well! LOL ...

well "100 hang ups/freezes/etc" in a couple of days can be nothing but user/installer error

one of my friends just bought his F90 after seeing mine [got mine a few weeks ago] and I told him I'd help him this weekend with the install; well I was out late on friday night and didn't wake up til almost noon saturday he's not the most technically inclined person around and he couldn't wait for me so he installed the unit himself and afaik he has had zero problems so far

tough it's only been one day so maybe he should be ready for 100 reboots tomorrow

Yeah -- i musta installed two units incorrectly, you know me so well! LOL

Wow Petey, don't be so touchy man! I'm not married to the F90 so I'm not defending it just because I have one but 100 reboots? If it were only one of the two units I'd have suggested it was defective. Since it was both, I still say it was the install (s).

If your Kewood's are so rock solid and you are so happy, what are you doing here? I just sold my old TV and haven't been back to that forum since

100 reboots?

I 've only had mine for 1 week but no problems so far.