Kenwood KDC-MP235 In Dash CD/MP3 Player

Decent Deck

Strengths: MP3, WMA, Remote, Aux jack

Weaknesses: lack of HD tuner, skips slightly worn disks

Summary: I ended up buying because my cassette deck in 9 year old camry died. I bought and got it installed at BestBuy.

They added a installation kit and a couple of harnesses also. Next day I noticed real speakers were not working. BestBuy tech said they had blown out and I ended up replacing them with Pioneer 6/9 speakers at an extra cost of $140.

After spending almost $300 on sound system, you would expect a little more that what it offers.

The volume knob is a bit complex, and so is control knob. I like the remote, if I could get it fixed on my steering, it will make changing songs easier. The display either shows Source or Clock. I would expect it to show Clock when turned off, and source when playing. When turned off, the display merely shows Standby.

Reception is no better than my comnapy fitted radio. Though CDs sound definitely better. CDs, which play in my home and computer, will skip here a lot.

Beware about the HD Tuner ready and BlueTooth ready statements. You need to shell out extra $100 each for them to get you started.

Id3 tags get cut off randomly, specially if they have special characters.

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Satsified overall

Strengths: It has alot of nice features, Cool Backlighting, great bass adjustments, sub-woofer levels, lots of goodies

Weaknesses: Although every thing else might be nice, i would have to say the Main menu was a pain in the a** to get used to. Sucks at playing any local FM Stations

Summary: Pretty well pleased over all, usually only used with Cd's for my sound system so i cant really complain when thats all i use it for. I believe i would bye more kenwood products in the future.

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Great practical unit that fits all my needs!

Strengths: front aux input, remote control, mp3/wma capacity with text features, and future proof (Bluetooth, HD radio and Satellite radio ready).

Weaknesses: Joystick takes sometime to learn for new users; no RDS support(normally no budget headunit supports it anyway)

Summary: My old headunit in my old car blew out and refused to play FM radio, and with its other problems, finally decided to find it a replacement, and I'm so glad that I did it with this Kenwood one. It was inexpensive at the time in BestBuy and fits all my needs: front aux input, remote, mp3/wma support, cool looks. It's also bluetooth/hd radio/satellite radio ready, if you like to spend a couple hundreds more to actually get them. (I might upgrade later to HD radio when the price goes down..) Anyway, after I installed it, it looks even better when working. It has high-resolution text function which can easily play CDtext, mp3 tag information and folder/song names. The front auxilary input is very convenient to use with my MP3 player. The remote control is rugged, only drawback is that it's not backlit. As for the joystick controls, I've had some SE phones so very familiar with this kind of operations, but still I've fount the learning took some time to get used to. The sound is great, with a lot of options to tweak the output to my like, dedicated bass level button, speaker size setup, equalizer setup, etc. It's now a joy to drive my old car with this unit. It's priced as a budget unit, but Kenwood made no compromise in its practical feature set and sound quality.

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Small budget,, Not a Problem

Strengths: Great sounding CD playback, real good FM reception, convenient AUX input.

Weaknesses: A little hard adjusting the volume, volume knob is short

Summary: You get used to the volume knob problem after a few days so it's really no big deal. This is a high quality Kenwood deck at a extremely low price, I am seriously thinking about buying one for all my vehicles.

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I was looking for an inexpensive, but feature pack ...

Strengths: I really like the front aux input that enables me to use my ipod while still being able to use my cd changer.

Weaknesses: It only has one set of pre-amp outputs. I had to purchase two y-adapters to hook up my four channel amp to the head unit.

Summary: I was looking for an inexpensive, but feature packed head unit and found it in this unit. The controls are easy to use and the features can't be beat for the price. The only drawback; it only has one set of pre-amp outputs, a problem if you're hooking up a four channel amp.

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