Kenwood KAC-M1814

Worked great—until it didn’t

This amp had lots of clean power, great sound and was easy to set up. Then after about two months there was a pop and the smell of burning plastic. I returned it for a different product.

By Chris on April 2, 2020 Verified purchase

Plenty of power and great for a "hideaway" install!

Purchased this amp in order to properly power the four Infinity Reference 6x9s in my wife's 2014 Jeep Patriot. The Infinity's are a 3 ohm design, so I needed something that was stable below 4 ohms (this also goes for many Polk and JBL speakers). The Jeep doesn't have many good areas to hide an amp, so I needed something with a small enough footprint to hide under the dash or center console. After cutting off the four mounting brackets (where you'd screw the amp down) and filing the sharp metal edges, I was able to fit this nicely inside the "hump" under the shifter. You'd never know its there.

This amp has more than enough power to drive the 6x9s cleanly and provides a lot more bass thump compared to just a head unit. Vocals are much brighter and clearer, too. Its currently receiving input from 2.5 volt RCA inputs and I opted to keep the stock 18 gauge speaker wire in place for now, but I'm sure it would perform even better with a stronger input signal and 14 gauge wire. I do wish this unit was capable of more power at sub-4 ohm loads like my favorite mini amp, the discontinued Clarion XC1410, but it does its job well nonetheless. Time will tell if it lasts as long as my Clarion (going strong for 6+ years!). Oh yeah, definitely use proper sized cable for the power and ground: I picked up the Belva 8 gauge CCA kit from Sonic and it was perfect.