Customer Ratings & Reviews

Big on features, great on sound!

Replaced the stock deck in my BMW M Roadster with the KDC-X993. This deck surpassed all expectations. Installation literally took minutes, the features are many and excellent. The sound out of the nine stock speakers is unreal compared to the stock unit. Night and day, actually. It took awhile to learn how to utilize all the features and program. Only complaint, which I have not figured out how to resolve, is the music from my iPhone mutes out after a minute if I have it plugged into the USB cord after vehicle startup. Only resolve is unplug iPhone from USB and re-plug it in. Overall, it's an outstanding unit, clean, uncluttered design and amazing sound.

excellent head unit

i've read some complaints about the menu, navigation not so user friendly. well it's cake. if you have had a couple of head units in the past few years this will be easy for you to work with. i didn't even read the manual for anything. it's not hard to figure stuff out. this unit has a sleek look and lights up really nice at night. sound settings has everything you need. excellent product.! 5 stars

Great Sound, Options, and Display!

You can make this receiver do anything you want and then some. The controls can be a bit confusing, but are not as bad as some reviews say. Definitely one of the best receivers’ I have used and I would recommend it to everyone except for individuals that are susceptible to having seizures. If you turn on the setting to coordinate the color and blinking of the display with the beat of music it can almost make a ordinary person have a seizure, ha-ha. GREAT PRODUCT & WORTH THE MONEY!

Great Buy!!!!

This Head Unit has everything you could possibly want. I went from the Kenwood HD942u to this and the SQ is like night and day. You also have control over your music like you wouldn't believe. The only bad thing I have to say about this unit is the lack of a strong pre-out voltage. But to the average user that won't matter, Once you learn the controls, which are like the Hd942U, you are good to go.

Great Sound

This head unit does everything I wanted. Great Sound with 3 pre-outs. Good Bluetooth compatibility and a rear USB port for IPOD control. The only problem I have with it is the user interface can be difficult to learn. It is hard to shift between radio stations. Other than that I would recommend this unit to anyone. I am an avid Kenwood fan, and they delivered on this one.

Love the Sound Quality and Colors

Got a 40 gig external hard drive under the seat hooked up to this thing. Words are easy to read at night with reflection very hard to read. Sq choices are preset. cannot choose and boost frequency (can only boost 5 pre-chosen frequencies). Decent choices however, built in crossovers allow me to not need to touch my amps. Low and high passed at 24dbls and down.

BEST BANG FOR YOUR BUCK

This stereo rocks. I have owned kenwood for years and it has been great that is why i got this one. I just hooked this up in my explorer with( rockford fosgate p1683 6x8s). I have not hooked up an amp yet but with out the amp it will blow you out the doors and still sounds good. Great looks,tons of options to set it up your way a little hard to use at first but well worth the money. I would buy this again and again.

Great Features!!

What a load of features in a very affordable unit. It has all of the adjustability I need to run a 3 or 4 way system using it's built in crossovers and equalizer settings and still provides above average sound quality.

Pro's: Crossover flexibility, three RCA pre-amp outputs, multiple color display options, good sound quality, USB input, IPOD control flexibility, built in equalizer, separate speaker placement and type adjustments for the ultimate in sound quality flexibility. Included blue-tooth connectivity.

Con's: The remote is almost a must use, the two knob operation is decent, but without the remote some things are difficult to use while driving. The massive amounts of controls and options makes getting through the various menus difficult until you learn the more common ones. The Bluetooth doesn't work well for me, but I drive a loud full size Ford Bronco and have not yet plaid with the various gain settings yet, which may help.

I recommend this unit to: Those on a budget that require an equalizer, crossover, IPOD connection options and bluetooth.

Great sound good deck

First time buying a deck since 1992. What a difference. So many options and settings. All I wanted was a good deck with 4V pre outs and bluetooth + sat radio built in. This fit all my parameters and I am happy with it so far. 5 months.

kenwood kdc 993 stereo

If you want a nice stereo buy this one you will not be disappointed. for the money you cant beat it and the quality is top notch. The only think is there is a lot of options to use and it takes some time to the hang of it but it is well worth the price.

Great for the price! Excellent SQ

Great unit, the bluetooth is a great feature. Has great flexibility and raw sq from the low impedance preouts.
Only bad thing i can think of is scrolling through an iPod take a min.

Don't hesitate on this deck, i was debating between the 600 series and this is definitely the better buy

The display setting was perfect!

Great Radio

I purchased the eXcelon KDC-X993 from here about 6 months ago and have been loving it ever since. This radio allows me to match a very wide range of interior lighting in my car. It has a function that allows me to increase or reduce the amount of red, blue or green within the current color. The digital equalizers found in this radio also offers superior sound control over high treble, low bass and everything in between. Even the subwoofer has multiple settings. There is even a highway setting. I find the automatic sync to my iPhone through Bluetooth to be very handy. If I want, I can hook my phone up to the unit through USB cable and play music from my phone while charging the phone at the same time. When call come through, it automatically pauses the song.

I have run across two issues with the unit though. It seems that I can not have my iPhone plugged into the USB connection while it is trying to do a sync through Bluetooth or it will not sync and as a result, I will not be able to receive calls through the unit. The second issue I noticed was with the time adjustment function disappearing from the main menu. I'm pretty sure this menu item will re-appear if I reset the unit but it's not a big deal to me so I've left it the way it is.

In all I enjoy using this radio. The unit arrived faster than I expected and I was blown away by the fact that I also received a mounting kit. When the time comes, I will definitely come back here again!!!.

Great Deck

Looks good. Sounds good. Just buy it!

GREAT STEREO

I think this is a great system, the sound quality is great with the 5 band EQ and many sound features on it, great for if u have subs and an amp and not only that it looks great too, the colours are fantastic on it! A great buy!

great h/u

This h/u has everything you need and sounds great!!! looks very nice to!!

Outstanding

Well to start Sonic is the best company to work with fast shipping, knowledgeable staff, and GREAT prices!

I am an audiophile, I want it loud but more importantly I want it clear and clean. I started looking for a new head unit to replace my Alpine CDA-9831 that was on its way out the door. I looked at all the top end models from Alpine, Pioneer, Eclipse, Clarion, and Kenwood for a while before deciding on this unit. While price is not a total issue with me I still don’t want to spend an arm and a leg to buy a deck and then spend even more to add the features I want to it. I needed a single din deck with DTA and not too many models offer this as a standard feature. The Eclipse CD7200-mk-II is a much nicer unit but it’s almost twice the cost of the Kenwood. I decided to go with the Kenwood for the price and options and I’m glad I did.

Install was a snap and set up (for me) was a breeze. Don't get me wrong the unit’s menu system is not ideal but it is not impossible to learn. I find the display easy to see during day or night (I have tint) from an upward angle (if you have a Town Car you understand). The display is actually easier to read than my Alpine was.
The deck has a separate crossover for each output front, rear, and sub w/selectable bands and then you can select the slope you want that band to have. You can configure the cabin size and listening position for each source along with the crossover band/slopes. The deck even has settings for speaker size's (front and rear) and position to optimize performance.

With no configuration after install it sounded just as good as my Alpine did that was configured. After I configured it for my system and did some testing/tuning it sounds GREAT!

I would buy this product again (I more than likely will the wife wants one now) and would recommend this to anyone looking for a top notch head unit at a good price.

System
Head: Kenwood KDC-X993
Monitoring: Power Acoustik Meter 4
Eq: MA audio MA-30EQ
Speakers: Rockford Fosgate T-1682's (2 pairs)
Subs : JL Audio 12W3v3-2 ohm (2)
Amps : Infinity 610A 600W RMS@2 ohm (2)
Infinity 475A 75Wx4 RMS @ 4ohm
Power: Optima D34/78 yellow top 750CCA
Cap: Tsunami X15HCAP-20 20 Farad
Wiring: 0 gauge Monster cable
4 gauge Monster cable
All wire connectors: Street wires
All Interconnects: Street wires ZN9
Sound dampening: Dynamat Extreme (whole trunk+all doors)

Excellent

This is my first Kenwood head unit and I must say, boy am I impressed. I am VERY picky about the quality of my sound and this unit really delivers. Crisp, clear and abundant sound is all you'll get from this unit. Installation was a snap with all the installation goodies I got with my order. One word of advice... USE AN ADAPTER KIT. Also, if required, use the proper Metra or Scosche interface. All I had to do was SOLDER & HEATSHRINK the connections between the head unit and the adapter, and I had it installed in 10 minutes. No joke. Complete plug and play. I have to agree on the menu system though... a little confusing. All in all, I highly recommend this unit to anybody considering purchasing it.

Decent Head unit with a few annoyances

I picked this up without doing a lot of research. My plan was to install something temporarily until I got around to installing a NAV system. For that purpose, this worked great. The unit sounds excellent. I had this professionally installed so I can't comment on that part of it. I can say that, when it was finally all set up and working, everything worked well. The bluetooth feature was especially nice.

On the other hand, if this was going to be something I was going to use for an extended period of time, then its not so great.

1) The display is almost impossible to see during the day. I've played with several options and no matter how I configure it, the glare makes it impossible to read.

2) The menu system is terrible. Expect to spend at least 3-4 hours setting this thing up, programming stations, etc. About half of this time is trying to figure out which setting is under which button. The manual helps but not much. Also, there is no way you can do any of this while driving. If you need to add a new preset, you're pretty much screwed until you stop.

To make things worse, you have to perform different actions (with the same control) depending on the option you are looking at. For example, sometimes to select an option, you have to push the right tuner Knob to the right. A different option in the same menu may have you simply press and release the button and a 3rd item may have you hold the button in for 3 seconds. Its really annoying to try to figure out how to select as the pushing the knob the wrong way might take you to a completely different menu.

I gave this unit an overall rating of 3 because of the glare and the incomprehensible menu system. If those were fixed, this would easily be a 4 or a 5.

Questionable

The sound is very SQ. Onboard power is usually enough . The remote wire left my amps setting silent from time to time. Very frustrating. !!! RMA'd this unit after 4 days. Upgraded it to a Pioneer PRS modle, But if you don't use an amp or two, Then for the money i would still recomend it for the SQ and the features which were really nice. I also had HD radio with it that really worked well and did improov over regular brodcast. Didn't try the B Tooth, But my son's works well for him on a simelar system. To date the best SQ unit I have owned. Wish the amps would have been workable with this system. Sonic Electronics worked with me on this exchange and everyone was very easy to work with. I give them a solid 5X5. Great folks there.

kenwood how could yoiu go wrong

i just hooked this up and i like everything about it just one thing is that i can not play the song off my env touch phone with the usb cord. i owed 1 other deck and i will never leave Kenwood again. Kenwood is the best in my words