Kenwood E Xcellon X859 By delta on Oct 01, 2007 - Updated Oct 15, 2011

I bought it due to its features, I'm no audiophile - in all honesty it sounds, to me, the same as a $40 unit bought from costco. However, it looks good, and had a ton of features (like most of kenwoods stuff). I mainly got it due to D-mask (when it turns off, it automatically flips around so that it looks like a black face - similar to removing the faceplate. Unfortunatly this is also the problem with it. I later learnt that it is standard to have to replace the ribbon cable every 6 months or so - pretty lame on a HU which retailed for upwards of $500! This isn't actually all that hard to do though, so were that the only thing wrong with mine, I'd still be singing its rpaises. But mine brokein a different way, such that the faceplate won't rotate all the way around (I think its the motor or gears) so mine won't allow me to switch cds, and since kenwood only has a 1 year warranty, and it died 1 year after I got it, its basically a $500 brick, luckilly I didn't pay that for it.

Anyway its since been replaced with a carputer, as I couldn't buy another kenwood, perhaps I got unlucky, but what kind of company sells a HU which needs a cable replaced every 6 months? I guess they may have learned though as the D-mask is no longer an option, awesome idea though