In-Dash Item ID: #317Kenwood DNX5140 6.1-Inch Wide Double-DIN In-Dash Nagivation with USB/iPod Direct Control/DVD ReceiverProduct Information:
Item Description6.1″ Wide Double-DIN Indash Nagivation with USB/iPOD Direct Control / DVD Receiver Item Reviews5 Responses to “Kenwood DNX5140 6.1-Inch Wide Double-DIN In-Dash Nagivation with USB/iPod Direct Control/DVD Receiver” |
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This unit is awesome and does exactly as listed.
Some points.
1. It is slow to power up which is easy to live with.
2. iPod – Controls work great, but when it pulls in the album artwork, the picture is pixilated. No big deal.
Video from the iPod comes across without a hitch.
3. Steering wheel controls: there is a slight delay but otherwise works fine.
4. Satellite: Some installers told me that it wouldn’t work with the factory satellite antennae and would need to run the antennae that comes with the SCC1. I was going to forego the satellite option because I didn’t want two antennae on my roof, until I talked to one installer who said, “that’s not true, I install them all the time using the factory satellite antennae”. Using an adapter between the original line and the DNX5140, it works fine and I receive the same clear signal that I received with the stock unit.
This is a good buy if you can wait for the price to go down. At the time of this post, it was sold by Car Toys via Amazon and is significantly less expensive than going direct to Car Toys. It seems to fluctuate between $580 and $619 on a daily basis. I’ve even seen the DNX6140 as low as $609. The only difference between the 5140 and the 6140 is the 6140 comes blue tooth ready. The 5140 requires a separate module.
Although I did LOVE my REN MyGig, it was lacking something major for me, NAVIGATION!
I tried to get the same MyGig with navigation, but at this price, I couldn’t help but try the Kenwood.
First, the navigation. It works SO much better than my Magellan GPS model. Garmin is GREAT in the nav department.
Second, the radio. Volume? MUCH higehr. And I paid the extra $30 for the iPod connection, and it works great. iPod stays hidden in glove box, and ALL controls are done straight from screen of Kenwood. Even watching videos.
Third, price. Price of unit (March 2009) was $587, price of install at Best Buy was $240. Can’t beat it!
This unit is fairly easy to learn. Once you do, it will impress you with its functionality and tunability. Lots of functions and lots of fun! Highly recommended.
I bought this for my wife for Christmas since she liked my pioneer Avic D-3. It isn’t as good as the Pioneer, but it does what it says it can. The maps are fairly accurate, with a few (why the heck is it making us turn here in the middle of this field) moments, but overall an average GPS system comparable with a Tom Tom or Garmin. The maps could have a little more deatail on them like more major road names instead of having to zoom way close to read the names of side streets and non-major roads. The GPS voice, lets just say that I-Robot it ain’t. The voice is horrid. It mispronounces too many common street names and sometimes isn’t clear on what it wants you to do. Example: instead of saying “Turn left on Morgan street ahead”, it says “Turn on Morgan stra all lef”. It’s like having a foreign exchange student in the car with you mispronouncing common words, you just have to laugh, interpret what it said to whomever is in the car with you, and drive on hoping you made that correct turn. Overall, decent for 600 bucks, but it could have been fine-tuned
I picked the 5140 over the 6140 because I don’t need bluetooth, besides that the units are exactly identical. Had Best Buy install the unit, they did a superb job for much less than what some of the local audio shops were quoting me.
Now, onto the unit:
-Boot up time is fast, I’m going good in about 10 seconds. I’ve heard other units are rather slow to boot up (Pioneer). So far no freezing or locking up except I get some lag when using USB (more later). It has an easy to understand interface but I did have to check out the manual once or twice on specific things. I like the fact you can pick what color you want the interface and physical buttons to light up, I have my radio matching my dash lights.
-Navigation is great, and if you ever owned a Garmin unit you know full well how the navigation works. The navigation integrates great into the radio controls. The voices are a little loud and your music will mute for your voice guidance. If you are using your radio controls while navigating a route you will get a green notification bar at the bottom that shows the distance and the next turn you should make. I also like how it shows the speed limit and so far that’s been very accurate. Garmin also updates their maps on a regular basis, and you can use the Garmin updates to update this unit. Some other manufacturers of in dash navigation don’t update after release. Since I plan on having this unit for a few years that was important to me.
-Works great with Sirius. I have my display setup as “4-line” which gives me three lines of song data plus one line of arrow controls. You can pick and choose where and what song data you want displayed with satellite. I personally picked Artist/Song Title/Channel Name in that order. Sirius also gives you 30 presets (6 per “band” and a maximum of 5 bands). Also there’s an option to list all channels and you can see what artist or song is playing on each channel organized by category. Very neat.
-The USB function is seriously lacking, and the reason I gave this unit 4 stars. First off the USB is slow, and the unit seems to lag when using the USB function. Also for some reason you’re limited to 255 items per folder so if you have more than 255 songs you must start organizing your music in different subfolders. If you open a video file via USB it takes 30 seconds or so before it starts playing, and the unit will freeze during that time until the video starts.
-Video display is crisp and clear. I’ve seen complaints about dimming but I don’t share those complaints. I set my unit to dim with the GPS. This unit will play Divx/Xvid formatted files but you must change the name of the file from filename.avi to filename.mpg. The US version will not play .avi files, I guess due to piracy concerns. It’s a cool feature not found on the spec sheet of the unit.
-I didn’t buy the iPod cable because I figured I’d just use a USB drive, but due to the terrible USB interface I’ll have to buy an iPod cable. Hooking and iPod to the unit via USB without the cable gives no sound or video but it will let you test the iPod interface. It works beautifully.
I’ve been very happy with the unit.