Phoenix Gold Phorum

Hey long time no see here, kids are keeping me busy. Anyway I have a Kenwood DNX5140 nav unit, does the job well and I like the Garmin Nav interface. Problem is the rear camera input is flaky and Best Buy says they'll refund me the entire amount so not bad after 4 years of owning it. So this has me looking at new nav units and I see they have all changed . I do have an Android phone so it would be nice to work with it but not cruicial. So long as I could make phone calls hands free (bluetooth ? )that will suffice. We don't get Pandora in Canada naturally so that's a nice option that doesn't do me any good.

Is Kenwood just as good as it used to be (that is to say its ok not great). I liked the Alpine units but their nav sucked, is it any better ? Is Pioneer still disco looking on the interface ? Any "new" features I should consider ? I have a pretty simple setup in the Forester these days. HU, ZX450 for front & sub in the rear factory location. What would be nice with kids, is the ability to play videos on a monitor on the seat headrests , controlled from up front , possibly though the phone if that's an option. My kenwood won't play XVID or anything, just retail DVD's which is a bummer.

Suggestions ?

I am using the new pioneer avicz140bh h/u. I love it. Tonnes of features, easy to use navigation. It's way faster than the older models. I thought I would miss havering the built in hard drive, but instead it has a slot for ad cards. And a 64 gig card holds a lot of music. I think it's very nice looking. It also has most inputs I can think of without having to buy additional hardware and special cables like alpine does.

seen some cool installs using mini-tablet pc's that could fit this bill and for a fair price too. Would need off-board amps of course but that is one of the few obsticles to get around.

actually kenwood is releasing the new d series double din deck that has wifi capablities as well as FB, TWitter and other apps. i saw it at CES and its really superb.

I've never used the Kenwood products, but pioneer has the same features. Check out their web site.

one plus on kenwood is that they farmed their nav portion out to garmin who in my opinion has about the easiest to use system from what I have seen. Never been big on their menu system but I think like any deck there is a learning curve with it.