Kenwood DNX5140 6.1-Inch Wide Double-DIN In-Dash Nagivation with USB/iPod Direct Control/DVD Receiver
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6.1″ Wide Double-DIN Indash Nagivation with USB/iPOD Direct Control / DVD Receiver
Features
- Bluetooth-ready receiver with built-in Garmin navigation
- 4 x 50 Watts maximum power with two 2V pre-amp outputs
- 6.1-inch TFT LCD touchscreen with 480 x 234 pixel resolution
- Direct iPod connection, USB music streaming, front panel A/V input, A/V output; add Kenwood adapters for HD/satellite radio, Bluetooth, and navigation
- One-year limited warranty
- Dimensions (W x H x L): 10 x 8 x 13 inches
- Weight: 8 pounds
Great unit
This unit is awesome and does exactly as listed.
Some points.
1. It is slow to power up which is easy to live with.
2. iPod – Controls work great, but when it pulls in the album artwork, the picture is pixilated. No big deal.
Video from the iPod comes across without a hitch.
3. Steering wheel controls: there is a slight delay but otherwise works fine.
4. Satellite: Some installers told me that it wouldn’t work with the factory satellite antennae and would need to run the antennae that comes with the SCC1. I was going to forego the satellite option because I didn’t want two antennae on my roof, until I talked to one installer who said, “that’s not true, I install them all the time using the factory satellite antennae”. Using an adapter between the original line and the DNX5140, it works fine and I receive the same clear signal that I received with the stock unit.
This is a good buy if you can wait for the price to go down. At the time of this post, it was sold by Car Toys via Amazon and is significantly less expensive than going direct to Car Toys. It seems to fluctuate between $580 and $619 on a daily basis. I’ve even seen the DNX6140 as low as $609. The only difference between the 5140 and the 6140 is the 6140 comes blue tooth ready. The 5140 requires a separate module.
PERFECT in my 2009 Dodge Journey
Although I did LOVE my REN MyGig, it was lacking something major for me, NAVIGATION!
I tried to get the same MyGig with navigation, but at this price, I couldn’t help but try the Kenwood.
First, the navigation. It works SO much better than my Magellan GPS model. Garmin is GREAT in the nav department.
Second, the radio. Volume? MUCH higehr. And I paid the extra $30 for the iPod connection, and it works great. iPod stays hidden in glove box, and ALL controls are done straight from screen of Kenwood. Even watching videos.
Third, price. Price of unit (March 2009) was $587, price of install at Best Buy was $240. Can’t beat it!
This Kenwood head-unit is top-notch!
This unit is fairly easy to learn. Once you do, it will impress you with its functionality and tunability. Lots of functions and lots of fun! Highly recommended.
Great vendor, decent product.
I bought this for my wife for Christmas since she liked my pioneer Avic D-3. It isn’t as good as the Pioneer, but it does what it says it can. The maps are fairly accurate, with a few (why the heck is it making us turn here in the middle of this field) moments, but overall an average GPS system comparable with a Tom Tom or Garmin. The maps could have a little more deatail on them like more major road names instead of having to zoom way close to read the names of side streets and non-major roads. The GPS voice, lets just say that I-Robot it ain’t. The voice is horrid. It mispronounces too many common street names and sometimes isn’t clear on what it wants you to do. Example: instead of saying “Turn left on Morgan street ahead”, it says “Turn on Morgan stra all lef”. It’s like having a foreign exchange student in the car with you mispronouncing common words, you just have to laugh, interpret what it said to whomever is in the car with you, and drive on hoping you made that correct turn. Overall, decent for 600 bucks, but it could have been fine-tuned
Great Unit, Great Price
I picked the 5140 over the 6140 because I don’t need bluetooth, besides that the units are exactly identical. Had Best Buy install the unit, they did a superb job for much less than what some of the local audio shops were quoting me.
Now, onto the unit:
-Boot up time is fast, I’m going good in about 10 seconds. I’ve heard other units are rather slow to boot up (Pioneer). So far no freezing or locking up except I get some lag when using USB (more later). It has an easy to understand interface but I did have to check out the manual once or twice on specific things. I like the fact you can pick what color you want the interface and physical buttons to light up, I have my radio matching my dash lights.
-Navigation is great, and if you ever owned a Garmin unit you know full well how the navigation works. The navigation integrates great into the radio controls. The voices are a little loud and your music will mute for your voice guidance. If you are using your radio controls while navigating a route you will get a green notification bar at the bottom that shows the distance and the next turn you should make. I also like how it shows the speed limit and so far that’s been very accurate. Garmin also updates their maps on a regular basis, and you can use the Garmin updates to update this unit. Some other manufacturers of in dash navigation don’t update after release. Since I plan on having this unit for a few years that was important to me.
-Works great with Sirius. I have my display setup as “4-line” which gives me three lines of song data plus one line of arrow controls. You can pick and choose where and what song data you want displayed with satellite. I personally picked Artist/Song Title/Channel Name in that order. Sirius also gives you 30 presets (6 per “band” and a maximum of 5 bands). Also there’s an option to list all channels and you can see what artist or song is playing on each channel organized by category. Very neat.
-The USB function is seriously lacking, and the reason I gave this unit 4 stars. First off the USB is slow, and the unit seems to lag when using the USB function. Also for some reason you’re limited to 255 items per folder so if you have more than 255 songs you must start organizing your music in different subfolders. If you open a video file via USB it takes 30 seconds or so before it starts playing, and the unit will freeze during that time until the video starts.
-Video display is crisp and clear. I’ve seen complaints about dimming but I don’t share those complaints. I set my unit to dim with the GPS. This unit will play Divx/Xvid formatted files but you must change the name of the file from filename.avi to filename.mpg. The US version will not play .avi files, I guess due to piracy concerns. It’s a cool feature not found on the spec sheet of the unit.
-I didn’t buy the iPod cable because I figured I’d just use a USB drive, but due to the terrible USB interface I’ll have to buy an iPod cable. Hooking and iPod to the unit via USB without the cable gives no sound or video but it will let you test the iPod interface. It works beautifully.
I’ve been very happy with the unit.
Kenwood
The Kenwood is great, however a little complicated. There are way too many buttons to press for certain features. Also, you can only pause your Ipod. It never really stops it.
Satisfied yet dissappointed.
Pros:
- Excellent GPS
- The backlight is fine.
- AM/FM Radio is OK.
- Plays CDs
- Plays DVDs
Cons:
- Bluetooth is an add-on (6140 has it integrated, 5140 makes you buy a seperate add-on)
- XM is an add-on (More money, you need 2 special items to get this working, receiver and the connector. It works OK)
- Sirius is the same thing
- iPhone is also an add on (I think)
Gripe:
- We live in the day of having smarter, more open hardware in our daily components (iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, to name a few). This software is outsourced and never updated. It freezes and is slow in some instances.
Tip: Buying online is cheaper than Best Buy.
Tip 2: Geek squad will install this if you ask.
Tip 3: You need a double-din adapter to use this if you don’t have one. You’ll have to google around for “Make Model Year” + “Double din”
Getting Around
Easy to use and a very nice big screen. Would highly reccommend this product.]
The only down side is the adjustment of the brightness at night. Still learning and I might not have found the setting yet.
Other wise go out and get one. I used the ipod connection for a USB connection for a flash drive. Alot of music now.
Thanks Kenwood
Thank God its not a Pioneer
Had Pioneer Navs prior to this and they always failed. So glad to have a unit that actually works and you can never go wrong with Garmin Navigation.
Excellent Navigation System
I just purchased the Kenwood DNX5140 directly from Amazon.com — I try to not to buy from 3rd party because I love the flexibility and awesome customer support from Amazon.:)
I installed the Kenwood DNX5140 in my 2007 Jeep Commander Sport 4×4 3.7L 7-seater. I had to buy a $150 dash bezel for the NAV unit to fit. I placed the GPS antenna right on top of the Kenwood Head Unit, which is, of course, inside the dash. I park my Commander under a concrete parking garage at work, and I still get excellent GPS reception. In other words, you don’t have to install the GPS OUTSIDE your car or even ON TOP of the Dashboard. Just install it on top of the metal head unit (magnetic). That way, no one will even see any wires!
By the way, my 2003 Honda Odyssey’s GPS antenna and other Jeep Commander’s GPS antennas are located INSIDE the dash too!!!
There are 3 NAV voice guidance options:
1)English – Female voice NOT Text to Speech
2)English Jill – Female voice Text to Speech
3)English Jack – Male voice Text to Speech
Option#1 gives the most natural sounding voice – like an actual woman talking next to you.
Option#2 & #3 both sound like “robots” talking. They do speak the actual streets to turn, but they sound so robotic it turns me off.
I ended up just turning the voice guidance off in the Audio Guidance Option menu.
So I just listen to music via my USB thumb drive (in my glove compartment) and watch the cool NAV screen give directions.
You can change the EQs to improve on your sound quality, especially if you have sorry speakers like me.
I will probably end up upgrading to better speakers — most likely from Amazon.com.
What else can I say about this unit? It is great. The NAV is excellent. Calculation time takes about 2 seconds! It is extremely fast! Rerouting time takes about 1 second. The DVD player works great. The USB works great. I even changed the picture of the background, which is no big deal.
I LOVE MY KENWOOD DNX5140 from Amazon!!!!!
Excellent value, and nearly identical to the DNX6140
I first installed a DNX6140 from Crutchfield in my 2005 Toyota Sienna. Really liked it, but kind of expensive, so did some comparative shopping for a second unit for my 1991 Toyota MR2. Bought this DNX5140 through Amazon, which was considerably less expensive and the only difference being the lack of Bluetooth. I added Kenwood’s Bluetooth adapter for $100 and it’s now identical to my 6140, but at a much lower cost. I highly recommend both the DNX5140 and DNX6140, excellent units and easy to use.