Kenwood Excelon KDC-X579 Car CD / MP3 Player

I recently bought a new car and when trading it in the dealer was willing to give me a substantial markup on the trade-in if I gave them the Kenwood Excelon unit that was in there so I let them have it.

Let me provide the disclaimer that I specifically purchased the 'old year' Kenwood model because I do not like the 2005 Kenwood Exceleon head units as far as style goes. I have no doubt as to quality, since this is my fourth Kenwood unit and I run Kenwood in my home theatre as well, but I was not able to find a style I liked, so I went to the 2004 models.

I specifically have avoided getting the very fancy models. The new motorized faces worry me, since I tend to keep a head unit for about 4-5 years on average and I have heard reports (not just Kenwood but across the board) that while nice the main thing a motorized face does is provide an otherwise sturdy unit with something moving to break. A detachable face (which this unit has) has always been enough for me.

The unit also comes with a security code that you can program in and is very easy to use. This will lock the unit out if power is removed from it until the code is entered. This feature has been standard on some stock stereos for years and it is nice to see Kenwood adopt this feature.

Overall, the unit produces very high quality sound with MP3, WMA and CD. (Obviously dependent on what level you encoded the WMA or MP3 at. At 128 bps, the sound quality is very good. I run the system with Polk Audio db650 6.5" Two-Way Speakers(to be reviewed shortly!) and a Kenwood Amp and Polk 10" Sub in the trunk which produces an extremely rich warm, yet accurate sound overall.

Having experimented with other brands of head unit in audio stores, I believe that this head unit (and other Kenwood) provide the most versatility in helping you create the sound that you are looking for. The System E and System Q along with the built in High and Low Pass filters allow you to modify how and where the sound is produced to your hearts content. There are also 6 additional preset configuration if you standard user config doesn't work for a different type of music. Example: I don't listen to Rap, but a friend brought a Rap CD on a trip. My personal preset didn't really produce the ideal sound he wanted, but simply flipping to the 'Easy' preset gave him the sound he was looking for immediately.

So, you might ask. OK, you think Kenwood is great, but why this headunit? Well, I think that this is really the best of all worlds. This unit gives all the Excelon features, 22W RMS outputs which is nice and high but not so high as to require a special power lead like some of the Alpine units. The preouts are plenty beefy for running external amps flawlessly. The random feature works well for WMA and MP3 and I have never had any issues with amp saturation. One bonus, at least for me, was that it didn't give me a lot of features that I would never use.

But here's the kicker: The price beats the pants off of any other Kenwood unit of this year group and is much cheaper than the 2005 Excelons right now.

A backlit display would have been nice, but I haven't really had any readability issues yet. The remote works fine, but as with most passenger cars, I still can't figure out why a radio you can easily reach needs one.


Update: After a month or so of using the unit, I have come to the conclusion that as opposed to disliking the silver volume ring, I actually find it to be one of the most useful car radio volume controls yet seen on a modern radio. This is because most volume controls now are push button rigs that take a given time to respond after being pressed, and have a finite change speed. The ring works so well b/c its like a old volume knob. With little practice it's a very fast, yet precise volume control.