I know the 7015 is discountinued but it can still be had for cheap but I am trying to decide which one to go with for my 04' WRX. Im trying to get opinions on those of you that have them or viewed them in person. Im lookin for quality picture with NAV but i i think NAV for the kenwood is separate. Opinions? Thanks in advance

 

I was at an audio store last weekend and saw these units on display and decided to test them out. The Eclipse and the Kenwood are both good units but they it all depends on what you are looking for in a unit. In my opinion, I'd take the Kenwood for it's looks and functionality of having a touchscreen. Unfortunately, it does not come with navigation out of the box and you would need an add-on to make it have navigation. The Eclipse is also nice and comes with navigation (Model AVN 2454) but I found it rather clunky to be pressing buttons under navigation. Also, to me it looks like the Kenwood had a sharper picture than the Eclipse. But anyway, here is a pic of the Kenwood in my friend's WRX.

 

i've got the kenwood, and its great. the navigation option works seamlessly with the touchscreen and makes it so easy to use. the bezel on the kenwood unit matches the WRX HVAC bezel and gives it almost a stock look.

 

I used to have a DDX7015 in my WRX. I really liked it, for the price it was hard to beat for all the features you get. I never had a problem with it. The picture quality was nice, it never had a problem with any dvds. You can even burn mp3s on to a DVD disc and the 7015 accesses them. It also matched up nicely with the interior., and gave it a oem look. The GUI was is very intuative , although, it seem as not-finished compared to some of the other in-dash dvd headunits. But then again that’s my opinion of it. Overall it’s a great HU, and if you get NAV system it will be great.

I sold my Kenwood 7015 to buy a Eclipse AVN5495 (I do believe the 2495 is previous model), it was a considerable jump in price, and I am very pleased with the 5495. The picture quality is slightly less than the 7015, 7017 or the 8017. The other features make up for that. Overall it is a awesome HU, built in NAV on the internal 30 gb HDD (10gb for the nav data, 20 for storing mp3s). Overall, I am pleased with the 5495, interface is nice, nav comes in handly (yes even in Hawaii).

If you can get the 7015 for a good price, go for it!

 

the 7015/8017 are sirius ready right? this is one of the primary reasons for getting an indash other than dvd of course. And how is the NAV on the kenwood? and if i hook up speaker, amp, sub...how is the sound quality?

 

If you want Nav, the AVN 5435 is a better deal. The Kenwood with the separate Nav unit is going to run $500.00 dollars more. Also, the AVN 5435 has two slots, one for DVD and one for CD, so you don't have to remove discs to switch between the two.

 

i like the eclipse personally.......never was a big kenwood fan

 

There are two slots on the Kenwood setup also. One on the deck for DVD/CD the other on the remote mounted NAV unit. The 'west coast' map DVD only needs to be changed if you drive to the most eastern states. In other words there is a ton of overlap in map covereage.

Plus the kenwood has a better display. I shopped them both.

 

Having shopped them both, is the Kenwood worth the extra dollars?

 

I have the Kenwood and NAV add-on.

Got it almost a year ago on ebay for about $1700 (nav combo)

You can find it much cheaper now.

The display on the Eclipse looked grainy compared to the 7015.

 

only thing i did not like about the Eclipse model was that you needed to take the Nav disk out to play DVD movies.

Where as Kenwood 8017 has a seperate hideaway nav drive.

 

Just to be clear that the nav part is optional. Same nav unit for all of the kenwood models that support nav.

 

ya i just got the 8017. not really keen on spending 1500 at one time... nav will come later

 

Does anyone know the difference between all the Kenwood units... they all look the same but have approx. 3 different model numbers. Im sure its simply revisions, but whats the actual difference?

 

I also have the Kenwood 7017 with Sirius and Nav in my car. Couldn't be happier.