Kenwood KDC-BT51U Bluetooth MP3/WMA/AAC/CD-Receiver with Front AUX/USB Music Inputs and iPod/iPhone Control

I Bought this to replace an old Kenwood unit that had failed after many years of use. I have always bought Kenwood for the car as I have always found them superior to the other makes of head unit.

It was a straight forward fitting into my VW Golf, just a few plugs, the ariel and the Microphone.

I switched on the ignition and the unit powered up, now comes the complicated bit... The user manual that comes with the head unit is very basic, but a cd is included that contains full detailed instructions and as my laptop was not charged at the time I had to keep running in and out of the house to read the instructions on the desktop computer.

I have been using this head unit for about a month now, I have tweaked all the settings to how I like them and all I can say is .. what a great little product. The sound is really good, I have my iPod plugged into it using a standard USB cable with full control from the head unit. I love the fact you can customise the colour of the display and buttons to match your car. The only draw back is on a really sunny day the display is a little difficult to see. I have set up the bluetooth for use with my phone and it automatically connects every time I use the car, very handy. Also the phone book is accessible from the head unit so you dont even need to take your phone out of your pocket. I dont know how I managed without the handsfree I just wish I had bought one before..

This head unit is definitely worth its money, its a sleek looking and excellent sounding product. When you think a good quality bluetooth handsfree will cost you £100+, you get that included with this and full iPod functionality. and oh yeah it plays cd's and mp3's.

What you waiting for????? Press the buy button now...

Very easy to install, logical set-up and a great bit of kit. Integrates with the iPhone, gives access to the tracks etc on the display. Bluetooth hands free works great. Comes with a separate microphone which you can place to get good voice pick-up. Has multiple pre-am audio outs, so you can drive a bigger sound system if you want to (although the 4x50 watts is enough for me). The only down side I can think of is that it doesn't charge the iPhone when its connected via the cable - why not Kenwood?

I received this only yesterday and got it installed no problem. The player doesn't have an internal mic, you have to wire up the external mic(included) which I was planning to do anyway, but just a word of warning to those who don't want the bother.

The last model (Bt50u) had a2dp (bluetooth music streaming), so I didn't check if this one had it as it is the updated model so obviously it would also have it... well so I thought, they decided for some reason not to include it which is annoying as it was a feature I wanted and the hardware is there for it, they just want us to get spend more money on another cd player which made me lose alot of respect for kenwood.

The user interface is abit complicated, I'm a quick learner with technology so it wasn't a major problem for me, but if technology isn't your thing then you'd be better looking elsewhere. The screen is good and can be customised e.g. you can get it to display the time on the top line instead of playing time which was a nice feature, but as others have said it can be hard to view with the sun shining. You can invert the display colours (e.g. bright writing on dark background) which may improve things but I haven't had a chance to see the results yet.

The phonebook was synced across from my phone perfectly, and the microphone quality is decent. The usb folder browser is also good and you can easily move between folders on your flash drive.

It's a good player but unfortunately the user interface isn't user friendly and the a2dp is a definite downside, so it depends on the buyer if these 2 negatives will be a problem.

Overall quality of this sound system is good, the sound is good, however like a lot of technology these days it is complicated to set up, the instruction booklet is very basic and as you need more in depth instructions to set it up properly you need the full manual which is available to download from Kenwoods website (Ok if you've got internet connection).Operation of the unit is ok but not simple, I find it quite fiddly, hands free operation of your mobile phone is ok but again not straight forward even using the voice tag option (still too many buttons to press and knobs to turn). The redeeming feature of this unit is most definitely the usb, just plug in your memory stick containing your music tracks and away it goes,brilliant.
I would like to have seen a much better full manual that is easier to understand in the box.

I was very disappointed to see some major faults with this unit, first of all it did not fit properly in my car even though I was told it is compatible with my car, secondly you can not see anything when the weather is sunny nothing at all which makes it very frustrating.
I didn't like the fact the microphone is not in front like the previous version.
looks good but not very practical.