I have had my Kenwood DNX9960 for some time now, installing it, with some help from Joe at MMM7. As it’s been some months since I installed it, I figured it’s about time that I wrote a review. I’m not going to post videos as the gentleman that runs the Kenwoodforums.com site has posted lots of them to Youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=vblue42+9960&aq=fHere’s picture of it in the car on the iPod screen. I leave my iPod Touch in the car and rarely listen to the radio any longer. I love the sound as the stereo sounds so much better than the stock Monsoon did. I liked the Monsoon but wanted something a little better and full featured. Listening to Joe’s deck last year and hearing the difference that an aftermarket deck could make was what convinced me to take the plunge.
[attachment=1]
The install wasn’t without its share of problems but there were out of our control at the time. The PAC steering wheel interface that Crutchfield shipped me was bad and I spent the whole weekend doing the install and trying to get it to work. Spent many hours on the phone to both Crutchfield and PAC on Saturday trying to get it to go but in the end they concluded that the unit was dead. Once they shipped me a new one on an RMA it took me all on 10 minutes to get the thing installed and programmed.
It wasn’t a total waste of time though as I learned a lot. First of all I can rip the dash apart with my eyes closed now. The guy that I was speaking to at PAC also said that the connections to the car wiring harness should be soldered for it to work properly. They said that they have seen many times where a crimped connection either doesn’t work or just works intermittently. I also know how the interface talks to the radio in our cars. A different voltage is sent along the single wire that comes from the factory interface buttons. Pushing the mute button might generate a voltage of 6.2 volts, pushing the volume up button might generate a voltage of 7.3 volts and so on. Each preset voltage tells the factory radio what button was pressed and it responds accordingly.
I have enjoyed the summer with the 9960. Boot time from when you turn the key to when you can listen to the iPod is about 10 seconds. Crank it and the bass thumps and the highs are clear, at least to these ears. I find it easy to use with the steering wheel controls, with the voice recognition and with the included wireless remote control.
The unit has a power button to power off the unit if desired and the Garmin navigation is awesome. You can plot several points or waypoints along with your final destination with voice recognition (VR) when using the Garmin. The interface is uncomplicated and easy to use as well as being familiar to anyone that has used a Garmin in the past. I have loaded a red light camera data base in the unit and it alerts me as I approach the intersection. Likely don’t require this as I always stop at red lights in a timely manner but it’s a nice feature to have.
The free traffic that is built in (no add on tuner required) is ad supported and on occasion, a pop up ad will be shown on the screen. They are unobtrusive, although if you don’t want the free traffic it is possible to shut it off.
When listening to an AV source, the titles scroll if they are too long to fit the box provided. The VR works well if you are controlling the iPod or the rest of the feature in the deck although I generally just use the steering wheel controls. VR is practically useless when you are tearing down the highway anyway but it’s nice to use when you can.
The 9960 supports 5.1 sound and sounds great when watching a movie although that’s not something that I will likely be doing much of in the Solstice. In the family car with the kids in the back, probably but not the Solstice. It supports external monitors and has inputs for external source like a video game or two but there again, not in the Solstice. Where would you put the game, in the trunk?
A nice feature is that you can save all you settings so you can reload them after doing a firmware update and disconnecting the battery won’t lose all those settings either. That’s a REALLY nice feature on a unit like this where there are so many things that you can set up and tweak to your liking.
The screen is HD and is easily readable in bright light. The screen also has the ability to go to a reverse angle (tilt) that helps reduce even more, any glare that we could potentially get from the screen when the top is down.
Others have said that the BlueTooth really works well with this unit but I can’t verify those claims because I haven’t got a BT phone. You can stream your music via the BT if you choose to do so although I installed a cable for my iPod when I did the install.
The radio works well, as the tuner is great at picking up weaker stations. The back of the unit features two USB ports. The one port comes with a cable so you can plug in a thumb drive to play music, movies or perform firmware updates to the stereo portion. Garmin updates are done with the SD card slot. The second USB port on the back allows you access to the file system of the unit. You can add voices or cars to the Garmin and there are others that are working on other uses for it as well.
Garmin map updates are available frequently and those that have access to unlocked Garmin maps will work with this unit.
I am really quite happy with the DNX9960. As with any early adopter I paid a little more than I should have but I knew that going in. It had only been available for about a week when my unit was delivered. Several firmware updates have come out since it was available. The first one fixed the reset problem that this unit had when it was new. It would, quite frequently actually, forget all its settings and you would have to set it up again like you had just taken it out of the box. The 1.10 firmware fixed that issue though.
Would I do it again? Yeah, in a heartbeat!
