I'm considering getting the x920bt and i see a lot of complaints about the navigation. How bad is it really? Have there been any updates that have corrected some of the issues?

How would you stack this head unit up again the Alpine INA-W900BT?

I;m not the biggest fan of Kenwood's navigation but would be open to suggestion of one of their units as well..

thanks,

chris

I'm considering getting the x920bt and i see a lot of complaints about the navigation. How bad is it really? Have there been any updates that have corrected some of the issues?

 

How would you stack this head unit up again the Alpine INA-W900BT?

 

I;m not the biggest fan of Kenwood's navigation but would be open to suggestion of one of their units as well..

 

thanks,

chris

Kenwood uses Garmin navigation, which most people, including me, find the simplest and most accurate. That being said, the x920BT is nearly half the price of a comparable Kenwood. When I say that, I mean a unit with voice recognition, GPS, iPod, etc. I had a single din Alpine, and its iPod integration was great - didn't like their all-in-one's much, however. I looked at all three, and if I had the money, I'd likely buy the Kenwood. I don't, so I'm gambling on the Pioneer - hey, I can always return it.

In a word? Sucks.

In a word? Sucks.

lol

The navi in all of the new Pioneer units is disappointing and cant be compared favorably to any navi currently on the market. That includes 200 dollar portable units.

hmm maybe i'll look Kenwood's way or possibly JVC..

hmm maybe i'll look Kenwood's way or possibly JVC..

Bear in mind that only people with problems chat it up in these forums. There are people I've talked to in other forums who claim their Pioneer's are completely accurate, and have no Bluetooth problems.

I'd bag a Pioneer while they are super-discounted at Amazon, and if you don't like it, return it. Amazon is usually quite supportive of products that don't function properly.

Kenwood's almost NEVER go on sale, and in my opinion, are wildly over-priced. So what, they have Garmin - for $140 you can buy a Garmin portable with lane assist and text-to-speech (including free lifetime traffic). How then can Kenwood justify the $1800 they charge for their only voice-recognition system when the Pioneers with VR start at less than $400 (Amazon sales)?

JVC bought Kenwood, didn't they? Alpine's interface is kludgy as hell. Bang-for-buck (if they work for you) the Pioneers are the best deal, financially.

If they suck, you can always spend the $1800 for the Kenwood later.

Kenwood bought JVC. And you get more then just Garmin navi for the increase in price. However they are still priced to high. But few people are paying 1800. People are paying between 1300 and 1500 which puts it close to the price range that the Z120s are selling for.

Kenwood bought JVC. And you get more then just Garmin navi for the increase in price. However they are still priced to high. But few people are paying 1800. People are paying between 1300 and 1500 which puts it close to the price range that the Z120s are selling for.

Please post some links where we can find a 9960 for $1300 - at least from an "authorized" seller. I couldn't find any less than $1800 (if they were authorized). At $1300, that would at least be worth a look. Still, when OEM units range between $1200 and $1800, and we all know that OEM units have traditionally been overpriced, it would seem that Kenwood doesn't think it has any competition. NAVTEQ with "advertisements" that you can't turn off, even if you send them money? I just wish these crazy Chinese brands like Caska would clean up their GUI's, work on their reliability and give these "old dogs" Kenwood and Pioneer a run for their money.

Ross Entertainment is now representing Caska in the USA - may be worth a look for people on the fence.

I know someone that just got one from Al & Eds for around 1300.

I know someone that just got one from Al & Eds for around 1300.

cool - I'll call them. They told me that Kenwood didn't want their product on A&E's website since they "price-match". I wonder what the price is over-the-phone?

I dont know but he did get that price do to a price match.

 

Bear in mind that only people with problems chat it up in these forums. There are people I've talked to in other forums who claim their Pioneer's are completely accurate... Bang-for-buck (if they work for you) the Pioneers are the best deal, financially.

even with a properly operating pioneer, the interface is complete garbage, it took many mod to make the units acceptable, and even then its only acceptable because of its price (half of its MSRP)

basically if your willing to settle to save some cash, then pioneers the brand for you, if you want a really good system, then you need to be prepared to spend for it

 

Bear in mind that only people with problems chat it up in these forums. There are people I've talked to in other forums who claim their Pioneer's are completely accurate... Bang-for-buck (if they work for you) the Pioneers are the best deal, financially.

even with a properly operating pioneer, the interface is complete garbage, it took many mod to make the units acceptable, and even then its only acceptable because of its price (half of its MSRP)

 

basically if your willing to settle to save some cash, then pioneers the brand for you, if you want a really good system, then you need to be prepared to spend for it

I partly believe that, but at the same time, many auto manufacturers have done good jobs with their OEM systems: VW, Ford, BMW .... It seems odd that there are so few aftermarket companies that can step up to the plate, so to speak. As far as Kenwood, they didn't even design their own NAV - just grabbed Garmin - which is fine. I assume you had a "bad" experience with Pioneer, since many owners are quite happy with their units.

I assume you had a "bad" experience with Pioneer, since many owners are quite happy with their units.

You don't have to have an unusually bad experience to know when something just isn't as good.

I assume you had a "bad" experience with Pioneer, since many owners are quite happy with their units.

 

You don't have to have an unusually bad experience to know when something just isn't as good.

but I know you DID have a bad experience with your Bluetooth, correct? The best thing I found about the Kenwood was its FM implementation - but since FM seems passe these days, nobody notices.

I assume you had a "bad" experience with Pioneer, since many owners are quite happy with their units.

 

You don't have to have an unusually bad experience to know when something just isn't as good.

 

but I know you DID have a bad experience with your Bluetooth, correct? The best thing I found about the Kenwood was its FM implementation - but since FM seems passe these days, nobody notices.

Yeah, and that's a problem.

I assume you had a "bad" experience with Pioneer, since many owners are quite happy with their units.

nope,i have not had any real trouble with my unit, other than the occasional glitch where the phone buttons dont show up during a call, but that doesn't even really bother me. most people are happy with their units because it much better than what they have had before, and if they have not had or used a better unit, then they would never know how good it could be, as an installer, i had get to play around with many many different companies and pioneer ranks as one of the worse(of major companies, cheap china crap doesnt count) in every aspect, the software is glitchy and badly designed, inputting info is much harder than others, and even the sound quality is not as good. but the price was great so i cant really complain too much.

pretty much every OEM system is glitch free and usually much easier to use (its probably because they see a lot more R&D, and thats partly to blame for their super high price, usually around $2k-$2.5k)

and everybody wants to give kenwood crap about them not designing their own nav software, when why spend the money to develop something that, if your lucky, would be as good at best as the most trusted name in the business. garmin is by far the easiest nav out there to use, and thats a major selling point for kenny's

I assume you had a "bad" experience with Pioneer, since many owners are quite happy with their units.

nope,i have not had any real trouble with my unit, other than the occasional glitch where the phone buttons dont show up during a call, but that doesn't even really bother me. most people are happy with their units because it much better than what they have had before, and if they have not had or used a better unit, then they would never know how good it could be, as an installer, i had get to play around with many many different companies and pioneer ranks as one of the worse(of major companies, cheap china crap doesnt count) in every aspect, the software is glitchy and badly designed, inputting info is much harder than others, and even the sound quality is not as good. but the price was great so i cant really complain too much.

 

pretty much every OEM system is glitch free and usually much easier to use (its probably because they see a lot more R&D, and thats partly to blame for their super high price, usually around $2k-$2.5k)

 

and everybody wants to give kenwood crap about them not designing their own nav software, when why spend the money to develop something that, if your lucky, would be as good at best as the most trusted name in the business. garmin is by far the easiest nav out there to use, and thats a major selling point for kenny's

Dude . . . I was replying to jer's comment.

My wifes's VW Jetta's nav system added $1700 to the "retail" cost, was then discounted approx 10%, and blows the Kenwood out of the water in every way I can think of save for the built-in Sirius hardware. But Sirius sounds crap everywhere I've heard it, so that's moot. That makes her over-priced OEM 15% cheaper than a Kenwood 9960. Sorry, Kenwood is SUPER OVER PRICED considering they have COMMERCIALS and DON'T supply their own nav system. Check out a new VW. And I read lots of forums of people with Kenwoods that reset, restart, freeze-up .... seriously, those "cheap" Chinese companies are a lot closer to being serious competition than I imagine even THEY think they are.

Dude . . . I was replying to jer's comment.

sorry i seen the comment in a post that i was quoted in

My wifes's VW Jetta's nav system added $1700 to the "retail" cost, was then discounted approx 10%, and blows the Kenwood out of the water in every way I can think of save for the built-in Sirius hardware

i didn't say they where the best(because there not even close) they just have one of the easiest to use nav systems available

Sorry, Kenwood is SUPER OVER PRICED considering they have COMMERCIALS and DON'T supply their own nav system.

Check out a new VW. And I read lots of forums of people with Kenwoods that reset, restart, freeze-up .... seriously, those "cheap" Chinese companies are a lot closer to being serious competition than I imagine even THEY think they are.

but if you want a quality system then alpine and eclipse are two of the better choices, the interfaces on the eclipse look like they are straigt out of 1995, but they have very few problems and sound amazing, the alpines are getting much better looking GUI's but its starting to slow them down, but again pure sound quality is hard to beat.

there's every chance that the Pioneer will turn out to be crap, but I'm rolling the dice because, if I'm one of the lucky 50%, then it cost one-third the price of the Kenwood. If I have to send it back, well, by then maybe Caska will have improved their GUI . . . lol

You guys keep talking about the Kenwood being 3x more expensive but if you shop around you can find better prices. Hell, I picked up a barely used DNX-8120 w/SWI-JACK, iPOd cables, trim ring + chassis cage/can & SCC1 Sirius tuner for only $400. I know this is rare but I've seen VERY good deals on Kenwoods too so the price isn't quite as different as some post if you look. If you didn't know about this Amazon + rebate deal one could say that the Pioneer was only a slight savings over Kenwwod as well. Deals are out there... you just gotta find them.

but if you want a quality system then alpine and eclipse are two of the better choices, the interfaces on the eclipse look like they are straigt out of 1995, but they have very few problems and sound amazing, the alpines are getting much better looking GUI's but its starting to slow them down, but again pure sound quality is hard to beat.

Keep in mind that Fujitsu10 (parent company of Eclipse) has decided to not produce anymore Navigation units under the Eclipse brand name so you can pretty much count Eclipse out of that list. Sad too because they produced some of the best decks on the market in terms of overall quality. The navigation piece, while adequate, was nothing to write home about. It was the same as our Camry Hybrid and Tundra OEM units so it's real easy to use and works solid but didn't offer some of the features of the Garmin powered Kenwood navigation. Real shame too because they were some of my favorite decks overall in terms of reliability, user interface and stability. Of course, they were manufacturing decks that needed to work flawlessly for 3yrs or more since their stuff was designed for OEM applications so when you have that standard to adhere too you are going to build better units (from a durability and stability standpoint) by default. I used to like the Alpine stuff back in the day as well but the interface on their newer stuff isn't as clear as some of their competition. It's a real shame about the Eclipse stuff though. Anytime there are less options in a segment the consumer loses.

yea but there are plenty of good eclipses out there, maybe not brand new units. one of my friends just bought a new in box eclipse nav for just over a grand online (dont know the model # yet as he is bringing it over to get installed in about a week and a half) but hands down they are some of the best radios i have ever heard,

and the new alpines are not too bad, as they are starting to look much better and they always sound great, especially when you use their add on modules like the imprint sound processor and there 4ch amp upgrade.

yea but there are plenty of good eclipses out there, maybe not brand new units. one of my friends just bought a new in box eclipse nav for just over a grand online (dont know the model # yet as he is bringing it over to get installed in about a week and a half) but hands down they are some of the best radios i have ever heard

Not too many people are willing to pay for hardware that already has no support. They didn't opt to have Navtech make a MDV-10D update for them this year so that's all that you need to know that they have no plans to support existing hardware with new firmware and map updates. That's not a good sign at all. I would rather pay the same or less on a Kenwood which is going to be around for a while. As much as I like Eclipse products I just can't bring myself to spend a grand on one even if it is brand new because I know it's already dated w/o any chance of updates.