Kenwood eXcelon KDC-X500

Excellent value

I got everything I had hoped for with this kenwood.

By Fingolfin on August 14, 2016 Verified purchase

Kenwood head unit

very nice head unit. bought this after filtering all of the possible units on the site down to five or six with the features i wanted to have.
i am running two 6x9's, two 6's, and a 12 off of this through a rockford fosgate amp. sounds amazing.

I have used the usb and bluetooth features frequently with no problems, and switching back to the radio if i am just looking for a charge is a simple press of the button. connecting the usb and running pandora is an interesting experience, but i normally just use the bluetooth unless i need to charge the phone so i have not yet memorized how to run pandora through the head unit.

the downsides i have to this head unit are only two. the first is the display, as mentioned in other reviews, is a bit hard to see during the day. I enjoy having the colors change or set to straight red at night, but during the day, especially on a sunny day, it gets hard to see anything except the white display.
the second is the ease of use. putting down four stars because even with the booklet (yeah, its a booklet- there are lots of features) it's a bit of a learning curve to figure out where all of the normal settings are. once i drove around for about two weeks though, everything i used frequently became much easier.

overall, very good head unit at an affordable price.

i am in love with this radio! i love it

i love this radio!. i used to be a pioneer guy but i will only be buying kenwood excelon stereos from now on! this stereo looks and performs great. the colors are awesome. it has awesome features and easy to use.bluetooth works like a charm! i love that it has 3 rca outs. overall i am super happy with this radio.best radio i have ever owned.i will for sure only buy kenwood stereos in the future!

By rigo on May 31, 2016 Verified purchase

Freaking awsome

Dealing with sonic was good a bit slow but the product is freaking amazing awsome options to many options to remember lol quality is so amazing so clear best deck I've owned by far

good radio

the kdc-x500 sounds good, the RCA hookups was main reason to purchase, price was excellent, easy to install, the durability is only 3 ,only had for 1 month, ease of use takes a little time because of all the features, great radio

Kenwood eXcelon KDC-X500 as replacement for original radio

I'm very pleased with this replacement radio. It's much more up-to-date than the original (though very nice) radio that came with my 2000 VW Passat wagon: has full Bluetooth connection and full source readout on the dial. I had to fiddle a bit to get the EQ to where I liked it--but if anyone else is having trouble, don't give up, keep fiddling with it, it will sound just great. Thanks to Sonic Electronix for getting this to me in the quick time they promised. Just one caveat: my mechanic said the delivery package was fine but needed harness and antenna adaptor, which I didn't expect, but which I was able to order for another $30.

Kenwood Radio is awesome!

Love this product! phone automatically connects to the bluetooth. works great in my jeep. easy to install. fast shipping!

Very dissapointed.

Being a past car audio installer, I have always gone to the high end Alpine or Pioneer and never been let down. This was my first Kenwood and I am very dissapointed with the product. I purchased this after hearing so many good things about the exelon series by Kenwood and how they were as good if not better than my previous "go to" decks. I will keep it short and say that the display is almost impossible to read in the daytime no matter what color you choose. The response when switching from sources is aggravating as it is always lagging behind. The wait time to use either the bluetooth or the usb is also horrible. The sound quality is "so-so" and would only benefit if you add multiple channel amplifiers to help out and tweak.
The only thing I am impressed with is the handsfree calling clarity on both ends of the call, but there is also a fairly large lag time from phone to deck but its not as bad as the others.

I will definitely not purchase one of these again and will fallback to my previous experience of Alpine or Pioneer.

By kim on July 8, 2016 Verified purchase

Highly recommend the Kenwood KDC-X500

I purchased a KDC-X599 and the CD player was defective, was stuck on "Please Eject"... so I returned that for a KDC-X500, the new model.

I had to wait 60 days+ and Sonic Electronix allowed me to trade it out at no cost beyond the 60 day period. They were very helpful.

They said that the KDC-X500 was barely any different but I see many differences. The KDC-X500 seems to sound better, as well as having about 30 new settings.
, all kinds of frequency settings and stuff I don't even know about, but way more customizable in general.

Highly recommended.
It has a 13 band equalizer, 6 loudness settings instead of 2, it has individual settings for all speaker sizes