Kenwood eXcelon KDC-X693

Good, overall.

Very good deck and only a flaw that I've noticed. The flaw was that it would not play variable bitrate MP3's correctly. Instead, those MP3's sounded broken. Remember, I said VARIABLE rate. 96% of MP3's out there now a days are encoded constant bitrate and this deck played them flawlessly. But I have many MP3's that I've downloaded from the late 90's and early 00's that were encoded variably. It didn't matter if they were on a CD or on a USB stick; they did the same thing.

Perfect

For those of you who said that the screen is to hard to see in the sunlight all you have to do is set the screen to positive. As for my comments I was at first reluctant to buy this unit due to my previous headunit was the DDX6019. It sounded decent but the controls for sound quality made little difference.The X693 blows it out of the water hands down. I am really impressed with this unit it made a huge improvement in sound quality with the same equipment that i was using with the DDX6019.

Here is my setup, Kenwood 9104D, Kenwood 8404, two Kenwood 3012, Kicker Ds series 6x9 and focal components for the front stage.

Thanks sonicelectronix for great products and prices with excellent customer service!!!!!!

Amazing

I bought this head unit for its E.Q. options as well as the USB input. i love this radio, it tunes my subs and door speakers perfectly because of its built in cross-over and speaker size features. the controls are a bit advanced for people new to audio, however, if you know what your doing its easy to use and its simple enough to get the perfect sound

Best 2009 head unit for the money, period.

I recently purchased last year's KDC-X692 unit and was very pleased with it. It was the first Kenwood deck I have ever owned, mainly because I was never really impressed with Kenwood decks as far as functionality and aesthetics. The 692 was stolen, so I replaced it with the new model, and this model is superior in every way. It looks much better, has more features like time alignment, 2 more eq bands and RDS, and the Ipod functionality is blazing fast compared to the 692. You can actually jump alphabetically by letter so you don't have to continuously scroll through artists to get to where you need to be. The only complaints I have about this deck are that I actually preferred the parametric eq on the 692 to this, and the display appears to be much brighter on the left side of the screen as opposed to the right. This seems to be a problem with other similar Kenwood decks this year, but it's not that noticeable. Also, the display overall is much better this year than last year. It reminds me more of the JVC displays in regard to the higher resolution than the typical Kenwood display.

I highly recommend this deck. This is only the 2nd product I have purchased from Sonic Electronix, and they currently have the best online price on this deck, which is why I purchased it from them. Go for it.

Worth the money

My friend just ordered one of those eXcelon KDC-X693, and I hooked up for him, the only thing I have to say is wow, amazing look it change the color, so you can match inside of your car, give's you everything you need from this HU, and the price on the sonicelectonix is pretty low for this product, but if you want to spend more money and have the highest value from eXcelon get the KDC-X993 pretty much is the same as KDC-X693 but it give you more features to use.

Kenwood knows what they are doing!

This sleek unit is simply wonderful.It requires a little getting used to the controls, but it's features and hi-voltage outputs make adding an amp painless as far as the headunit is concerned. Great piece.

Awesome Buy

bought this thing for the usb and aux inputs and well the cd player on my oem unit went out.

i love it. controls do take some getting used too like others have said but there are allot of settings for sound, display and inputs. the controls for the radio presets are kinda lacking but they'll make do.

you cant return to the previous track if you using folder randomize. definitely a negative there. i really like ipod controls as well.

i cant find too many negatives about this headunit. overall a great buy. do suggest.