Customer Ratings & Reviews

Great Bang For The Buck!

This head unit has more bells and whistles than I expected. It gave me the luxury of not having to re-adjust my amplifier to its voltage output. When I found out it had a pre-amp built in that I can fully control it increased my likes for it. If you're a bells and whistles guy as I am I would highly recommend this head unit especially if you have a high powered system. Oh and to add I haven't used a cd since I bought it!

GOTTA LOVE THAT!

Amazing Stereo, great value + nice design

Excellent product, first kenwood stereo I've had and is fantastic. Really easy to installl, good hardware quality, nice design and great functionality. If you don't want to spend too much or don't want a cheap/crappy stereo get this, totally recommend it (even though I can't describe myself as expert on the subject).

Ed Eggleston

Product was good but had trouble getting free installation kit. Shipped after radio was received, had to wait approx a month to install new unit.NOT GOOD

Good Radio

Good radio. Like others said it was a bit difficult to figure out the controls, happy with purchase.

kdc 858

this is my second Kenwood deck could not be any happier

Worth the Money

This is a great head unit. I bought it in order to use usbs and and mp3 cds in my car. I instantly noticed an improvement in my sound quality. The only problem I have with it is that it takes a little too long to load songs on the usb. Great product would definitely purchase again

Love it

Looks good!! . Works good!! Love it!! Thanks guys ill be back

The Installer

I have been using Kenwood for many years and I love them. I remember the 1st one I bought I payed well over $300.00 for it and it didn't have half the features as this one. You get alot for the money, its well priced. I dont think this is expensive but it is not by any means a cheap head unit. Even the less expense Kenwoods sound great. I love the blue tooth feature easy to program and it works great everytime. I am running a 1000 watt Kenwood am and 2 tens this thing rocks.

Good value

I like this radio and all it's features. My only gripe is that everything is controlled basically by one knob. There is a learning curve to figure out how to use this radio. I installed this in my truck which doesn't have the smoothest ride, it gets a little challenging to work that knob when you are moving. I'm sure it a car it would be a lot easier.

Kenwood kdc-bt852hd radio review

This radio does everything I'd ever want. Great sound, easy to use considering all of its features. I couldn't be happier. The one thing I would add if I were the designer would be to add a mute button but that is very minor.

Excellent Stereo

Just finished in stalling in my 2002 Grand Prix GTP along with the Axxess ASWC-1. The stereo sounds great with the Bose speakers I have in the car and the interface is easy to learn as long as you look over the manual a little. I have no problems going through the menus on the stereo. The Blue tooth streaming works great with my iPhone 4 and I use the XM radio, Pandora, and iHeart radio AP for listening. The Blue tooth phone works great and I sound good when talking to my wife on the cell. I installed the microphone on the sun visor. This is my 3rd Kenwood car stereo I haven't had any problems with them. The steering wheel control, adaptor was a easy hook up since the Kenwood already has a wire designated for it. This is one excellent sounding system. I highly recommend this stereo

Nice, but probably should have got the 752

I just installed this yesterday so I am still learning but have some initial thoughts. This is a highly capable unit and packs a lot of technology into a small package. That is both good and bad.

Pros:
Plenty of power (for me); lots of customization with colors, EQ settings, etc; iPod, HD, BT streaming, Pandora, Sirius-XM... lots of ways to get you music going; good BT phone quality and function.

Cons:
Mostly ergonomics. All the pros mentioned above stuffed into a single DIN needs great ergonomics and this is very difficult to achieve. First this radio does not have dedicated radio buttons. Everything, including radio station selection is menu driven via the single control knob. It works, but there is going to be a learning curve to get good enough to do much, like even selecting stations, whilst driving. You can't just feel for the buttons and cycle through them with your eyes on the road.

Also, the other small function buttons surrounding the main control knob are just that... small. For someing like me with big hands it is difficult to say, hit only the escape/back button w/o also hitting something else.

With the limited space for dedicated buttons there are some less than obvious sequences and button combinations needed to say, answer or reject a call waiting. I am not sure I am even going to worry ablout trying to learn those.

Also, the display is not highly visible in bright daylight. You can work around this by changing the color. Some are much better in daylight than others.

As for durability, I can't say much but bring your attention back to the single control knob that you need for everything. If that breaks you don't just lose a couple of radio station presets, your radio will be a paperweight.

So if I had it to do again i would probably get the BT752.

But it sounds great and i am sure I'll get better at operating it.

good product for price

I have owned this CD player for about six month and it works pretty good and it has all basic stuff for the price. USB / Front Rear Sub with pre-amp and more, i would recomend this head unit because of the features it does offer for the price, it sound's good and it look nice in my car.

solid unit

this is a nice deck for the price, I like that the display color can be changed and the color for the buttons is also customizable. great sound quality and the crossover options are handy. I had a lot of trouble figuring out why there was no sound coming from the rear and subwoofer outputs while using BT audio but after a few hours I came across a setting in the phone Bluetooth settings I don't remember the name of it now. all in all this deck works great and looks good too

Great Product for the Price

This Kenwood receiver does a great job with radio, CD and Bluetooth inputs in my '05 Sonata.

I mainly bought this product to be able to use Bluetooth from my android and after some quick setup I was easily sending signals to the receiver from my phone. One downfall is that sometimes the sync between the phone and device gets screwed up and I need to restart the phone to get things working again. Another annoyance is that connecting via USB was not very successful (I think it is more geared towards iPhones).

But overall this receiver is a great product for not much money at all, especially considering the HD radio receiver and ability to use it for Bluetooth calls.

Awesome radio

This radio can and will do it all you want at a good price. I have it in an over-the-road Kenworth truck. It hardly skips the cd and has all the bell and whistles you want.

Almost a great head unit

Menus are convoluted and non intuitive at best. Support is nonexistent from kenwood because they say Internet retailers are not authorized dealers. They will never put out a software upgrade for the single din head units.

In all fairness sound quality was spectacular once I got it dialed in. The rest that went along with it just soured me on this manufacturer. There are other similar head units out there that have 5 band parametric eqs for the same money. 3 is ok but 5 is better.

kenwood #1

Best kenwood head unit made and so many new features. I love it, strongly recommend and easy to use!

Great radio for the price

This is a great radio for the price. The only thing that i dont really like is the control. The buttons are small and i wish that it had a credit card type control. It takes some getting use to the features and all that but over all it does the job and i really like the USB connection. I can connect my ANDROID phone and it plays the songs with no prob.

decent h/u

I bought this h/u because my pioneer got messed up the Bluetooth its good but the sound quality is not there but great h/u you'll be happy.

great head unit for a good price

Great head unit easy to navigate through all the settings and love watching all the colors change.

Excellent deck for the price

Sound is great, easy installation, good price. Hard to argue with that.

Kenwood Head Unit

Well first off I may be biased on this, cause the only thing I have owned for years is kenwood audio..

But as far as this head unit is concerned, I like it its not the best HU for someone that isn't tech savy, the way you have to navigate to each menu takes a little bit. The worse part on this HU is the display which everyone that owns it will tell you the display is very poor during daytime operations, you will NOT able to see it if any at all. But in my opinion why would you need to really see your display once your driving anyway.. So it does not bother me, during night time operations the HU is great looking..

For the price and for the name that you are getting, its the best buy.

love this kenwood

love this Kenwood, this will be my 3rd time buying this lol, i like how you can mess with the audio settings ( especial when you have sounds) best stereo I ever bought in my life :)

By uriel on June 16, 2015 Verified purchase

Very nice headunit

Definitely one of the best looking headunits in this price range. Comes with all the RCA pre outputs, USB input, AUX input, 22 watts RMS x 4; can't complain. It does take some getting used to as the buttons are few and everything is controlled with one knob; it does however come with a remote and I've just gotten used to using that instead.

Great Unit

I've installed three of these units. I was so pleased with the one I installed in my brother's truck, I got one for my son's vehicle, and another for a new truck that I recently purchased. The remote microphone works well; those I'm talking to don't know I'm talking to them from the vehicle. The handy search button changes function depending on what source you are listening to. For example, if you are listening to your iPod, the search button allows you to look through your iPod content. If you press it when listening to Pandora, it allows you to scroll through your stations.

cant beat the price

absolutely love this CD player. it's got everything I was looking for and plenty of pre output for amps

Excellent

Just finished in stalling in my 2002 Grand Prix GTP along with the Axxess ASWC-1. The stereo sounds great with the Bose speakers I have in the car and the interface is easy to learn as long as you look over the manual a little. I have no problems going through the menus on the stereo. The Blue tooth streaming works great with my iPhone 4 and I use the XM radio, Pandora, and iHeart radio AP for listening. The Blue tooth phone works great and I sound good when talking to my wife on the cell. I installed the microphone on the sun visor. This is my 3rd Kenwood car stereo I haven't had any problems with them but if you plan on buying another stereo with blue tooth, just make sure it comes with a MIC because internal MIC's are worthless and you won't sound good on the phone. The steering wheel control, adaptor was a easy hook up since the Kenwood already has a wire designated for it. Just as a note, I use a free GPS app on my iPhone and it gives you step by step and street names and even speaks over the music either from Pandora or HD Radio. Saves allot of money if you plan on buying a double din with GPS. I highly recommend this stereo

Good features, but clumsy to use and some problems with USB stick

Despite all the negatives that follow, I quite like this unit. I've gotten used to its quirks, and learned to live without working USB.

The biggest problem I encountered with this unit is that I just can't get the USB port to reliably play music off a 32GB USB stick. It sees about 10% of the music, seemingly at random, and skips right over the rest. It worked fine earlier when I tried a smaller stick -- 8GB I think it was. I know by 32GB USB stick is not defective, because it works flawlessly in other players. All the files are simple mp3s, no fancy formats, and all the name length restrictions are complied with.

The other problem is that it has a highly unintuitive user interface. The first time I used it, I couldn't even find the off switch, let alone figure out the music controls. The manual solved that problem, but then when my wife borrowed the car, same problem. Operating a car stereo just shouldn't be this difficult.

Great features

This stereo has all the features. The hands free Bluetooth works great. Tuning is a little odd but you get used to it.

great system

This was a great set-up. We went with this unit and these speakers Kicker 11KS693, Kicker 11KS410, Kicker 11KS35 and put them as a stock set up in a 74 Plymouth 'cuda. This set-up allowed us to hide the unit, and keep the stock look, and have good clear sound over a roaring engine. As i am somewhat hearing impaired, I was able to hear everything crystal clear as I could not with the old set-up. I would highly recommend this system and set up for anyone wanting an old-school stock set-up with great clear sound. The system also has all the modern features for the younger generation and their gadgets, including the microphone so they can talk and not text and drive. It all came together easy and was very affordable for the quality of sound and functions.

Very Satisfied

Overall, I give it an A-. The sound quality is awesome, it looks great (you can pick the backlighting color to suit your car, or let it cycle through all the colors continuously). Considering this is a DIN1, the display gives and adequate amount of info, yet is still large enough that it can be read easy. It's loaded with features (SiriusXM, HD radio, USB, bluetooth, Ipod). I use just about all of the features on this deck.
--SiriusXM--I bought the $70 satellite kit. Installation was super easy, the sound is decent, what else is there to say? Grade-A
--HD radio--This is my first deck with HD Radio, WOW! Tons more stations to choose from, 1000% beter sound quality and reception. By far the best feature of this deck Grade A+ (if I could give it a higher grade,I would).
--Bluetooth--I have a bluetooth cell phone adapter in my other car, and I love it (factory Pioneer, in a Chevy). The one in this deck has a few more features, like receiveing texts that read out on the display, and auto reply "I'm driving right now. I will review your message shortly" (or something to that effect). The included microphone kind of sucks. The callers that I talk to say it sounds horrible on their end, like I'm in a tunnel. I installed it per the instructions, just behind the steering wheel. I think there is an adjustment procedure, but I haven't done it yet. It also can stream from your Ipod, android, etc. via bluetooth. This was easy enough to do, but the sound quality is substandard, so I don't see it's usefullness. Grade-B
--Ipod. Works well, sounds great, but the search tool kinda sucks. It's similar to the Pioneer that my son has, which makes you scroll through all of the songs in your playlist to find what your'e after, so if you have a lot of songs stored it can be cumbersome. I haven't used the tagging feature, so I can't comment. Grade-A
--USB. pretty much the same as the Ipod. Grade-A
Gripes--My biggest gripe is the station tuner set up. You have to set up how you want to tune stations. You make it so that your up/down controls "seek" to the next staion, or "seek" to your next preselected favorite, or "manually" tune up one Khz at a time. I REALLY wish all of those functons could be done, whenever I liked, without going into the set up menu. You should be able to push the up button to manually go up 1 Khz, push and hold the up button to seek to the next station, and push some other button to seek to the next preset favorite. I bet Kenwood could do this with just a software change, and it wouldn't cost them a cent.
I have this set up with my factory steering wheel controls, via the Axxess ASWC controler (purchased seperately). It works awesome. Installation is easy (about the same as any other deck I've installed). The value for $200.00 just can't be beat. I would purchase again.

Works Great!!

I've had the unit about a week, and it works amazing. Does everything i want it to and does it great. love the sleek glossy look, the bluetooth works amazing and it helps that it comes with a separate mic you can put wherever (preferably above steering wheel). Only thing i wish it had was a USB input in the back of the unit, other than that its absolutely awesome and love the customization capability.

Lots of features

This is a great little unit. For the money, you get an impressive amount of features. Love the display! You can either choose a color, make your own custom color, or let it cycle through a spectrum of colors automatically.

Sound is superb with many different sound shaping tools to make fine tuning to your personal preference a breeze. Highly recommended.

Excellent Car Stereo

Love the bluetooth audio! There is so much you can do with this stereo. I am very pleased!

a all around decent radio

Bluetooth works well for audio streaming and for hands free. I got this cause i thought it would work with my samsung gs3. Well through the usb, no. But through bt it works flawless. Using as a tuner works well if not better than factory. Although i couldn't plug my gs3 in via usb it works even better through bt! =)

Really, I mean REALLY nice!!

Didn't see many reviews on this particular unit, but went with gut instinct and a little internet research and took the chance. VERY impressed!! First, what's not mentioned on this website is that it has a 24-Bit Digital-Analog Converter, just like the higher end models.

Excellent clarity especially on mp3 files pulled from the front located USB port. Power output is genuinely sufficient for my 2005 Town n Country (but the vehicle is also loaded with sound deadening insulation from the factory); sound is quite dynamic with enough power to drive a pair of Audiobahn 6x9's in the back and a pair of 6 1/2 Pioneer separates up front.

Tuner cleanly pulls in stations I never knew existed... RDS is nice and reads streamed data cleanly.

Bluetooth works better than most bluetooth units - every radio I've ever tried has always been a little glitchy; this one is better than most though. Everyone I've spoken with has said that the bluetooth is really clear and didn't include a ton of unwanted background noise. Haven't tried streaming audio from my phone as I prefer the thumb drives.

3-zone color display (buttons, display screen, usb port area) is pretty neat as there are some unique colors in there to choose from... tricky to get to though. (Hint: Choose the clock for the display and push in on the rotary control to open the color/display settings menu - not mentioned in the instructions, BTW...) The clock is nice and legible and has a neat vintage 'rolling numbers' look to it.

Only complaints?

-Radio presets are rather tough to navigate while driving. You have to hit a button and scroll through to find what you'd like - not too intuitive.
-Controls take a little getting used to but when you figure them out, you'll wonder why other companies don't set things up this way!
-Included instructions manual is pretty weak. If you have a knack for figuring out things on your own, then it's not a big deal... if you're the type that needs step by step instructions to accomplish things, you might get frustrated (see hint for changing display colors mentioned above).

All in all though, this is a FANTASTIC unit and value for the price! No regrets here, only satisfaction!!

Aaaaaand, I can't forget Sonic's superb customer service and lightning fast shipping!! Truly a first class company in a sea of mediocrity!!!

Not to great

I bought this unit for a commercial truck. The screen is hard to see during daylight hours, it's hard to go through the radio stations , also the Bluetooth is not the best. It answers calls automatically for you which I don't like and it might just be me but when you get off the driver seat the Bluetooth audio goes into static. Not what I was expecting for the price range.

static through speakers

when i received and installed unit i was very impressed with my new kenwood , I all i have ever bought before was JVC but did not want a new JVC receiver due to the flashiness, i wanted more of a factory look with less multi collard lighting across the front. This knewood unit has all the options i needed with blue tooth which pares easy to all my devices although when you get unit you will need to go into options and turn on all speaker use with blue tooth or you will just hear noise out of front speakers, but I might of just got a bad one but after about 6 months of ownership mine started putting static through all speakers in car very noticeable over Level 15. i get static through any source in...hoping issue will fix it self before i need to send in for warranty.

By Mike on December 27, 2015 Verified purchase

It's okay

The Bluetooth sound quality is good but the microphone is a little bit awkward to find a place for. I suppose that goes for any out-of-place piece of plastic you have to jam somewhere. It's even fairly easy to use from either the radio itself or the remote.

Sound quality is fairly good, it puts out noise that your speakers play. Basically it does it's advertised job.

No HD radio included (need separate piece for that, darn.

It has a lot of features, including a fairly good set of audio controls (HPF, LPF, etc) including Front, Rear and Subwoofer outputs on the back.

But the downside is that it just seems... cheap. I've gone to using the remote to switch tracks and such because I don't want my volume knob to fall off, which it feels like it's always about to do.

And don't even get me started on the HD radio, egads, what a horrid system I personally still haven't figure out how the hell to add stations to the preset, and hunting for the things takes far too long.

Thank god for USB and AUX inputs.

Great sound quality BUT...

Kenwood has always been a favorite of mine, have had many Kenwood product's over the years.

Pros:
Sound quality is great, super clean, lots of sound adjustments, bass, treble, mids, loudness and bass boost are nice features. Blue Tooth connectivity is nice, the phone calls are crystal clear. Install was easy, nice connection features for steering wheel volume control, power antenna, extra power amps and sub woofer.

Cons:
The biggest issue I have is the screen is not very bright at all. It's very hard to see what is on the screen in daylight, which is basically EVERYTHING because all your adjustments are made via the menu screen. I have this stereo in a convertible and haven't even put the top down yet and can't see the screen. Even though you can adjust the color to anything in the rainbow, unless it's night time, you will only be using YELLOW. White isn't even offered. I can only imagine it's a total black out when the top is down. Add the fact that the face of the stereo is so shinny and reflective, all I see is reflections of the interior of the car, not the information on the screen. This is a MAJOR down fall.
The blue tooth connection is also very spotty. Connecting the blue tooth, then getting out of the car to run into the store and come out and start the car and it takes a long time for the phone and stereo to re-pair with each other, if they do at all. Sometimes the phone will pair, but Pandora doesn't work but my other music player will stream. I did download the "Kenwood" app for my phone (HTC Thunderbolt) and each time I got in the car and turned on the stereo, it opened that app automatically, but I didn't have that app set up, so that might be a way to go....but still kind of annoying. Went for a drive with my wife this weekend and was more frustrated than relaxed. Couldn't see the screen to make adjustments, couldn't connect to the stereo via Pandora, Kenwood App kept loading, just wanted to play my normal mp3 player that I use (MixZing). Finally gave up and played a CD.

During the "Tuning" phase after installation I thought there was a problem with my wiring, then thought that 2 of the RCA channels on the head unit were bad, turns out there is a setting for blue tooth streaming for either front speakers or all speakers. I assume this is for phone calls and to prevent feed back from the mic, but it wouldn't stream the music to all four corners. Spent HOURS figuring that out, no mention in the instruction book. Speaking of, the instruction book is only the very basic's. Go to Kenwoods Website to download the full manual.

There is no doubt that learning how to operate this radio through memory will be the only way to use it because you can't see the screen while day time driving. Even changing radio stations can be a chore because there are no preset buttons for the stereo.

HOWEVER, since I own it, I will have to get used to it. I'm sure over time the adjustments will tapper off and hopefully I will learn the patterns of connect-ability and that will make things smoother....I HOPE.

I would probably not buy this stereo again simply based on the dim display screen.

Kenwood KDC-BT852HD

Had built in blue tooth, HD radio and comes with a mic. Syncs to Pandora and can skip songs from head unit or controller. Lots of features for a low low price!

Cons, slow sync to phone and sometimes needs to restart phone/head unit for proper sync. Have a mazda 3 with stock Bluetooth that worked much faster and never a problem, so kind of lame this is a step down for speed.

great value

Very well priced for what you get.

Kenwood KDC-BT852HD

Overall I love this stereo, but especially the built in blue-tooth. I can program phone numbers into the stereo and make calls without ever having to touch my phone. Playing songs from my iphone wirelessly is pretty awesome too. Figuring out how to access certain menus and all of the different controls was not the easiest, and once in a while it will shut off and restart while I am driving, but the music keeps playing so I am still happy :)