Hey I'm JR, training manager here at Crutchfield, and this is the Kenwood Excelon Reference
DNR1007XR. It is a top-of-the-line reference model fully loaded digital media receiver
with navigation built in, a huge, beautiful 10.1-inch capacitive touchscreen. It has CarPlay
and Android Auto, which you can do wired or wireless. It has miracast, so if you want to mirror your Android phone to the screen, you can do that.
Garmin navigation built in, you can listen to HD Radio, you can connect a SiriusXM tuner to it, it has USB inputs, an SD card slot, and it is gorgeous. So let's get into what all it'll do for you.
Let's talk about the unit itself first. This 10.1-inch touchscreen is mounted to a double-DIN chassis,
that means the hole in your dash in your car needs to be about 4 inches tall, which is very common in many, many cars for many years now.
Once you get it mounted into your dash securely, you're gonna attach the screen to it. When
you do that you can adjust the screen up and down, so you can get it at just the right height. You can
also adjust how deep or how far it sticks out from your dash. Then you can still tilt the screen with
your hand. And it's got a nice tension mount on it which will hold it in place wherever you leave it, which is great
because then while you're driving if you need to adjust the angle of the screen to deal with glare
or anything like that, you can do that and the screen will stay put. So it's a
great mechanism for mounting the screen, and it looks great. With all those adjustments
as well as the 170-degree viewing angle, you should be able to see the screen clearly from the driver's seat; your passengers, even backseat passengers
should also get a clear shot of the screen no matter where they are in the car. Now let's talk about what's going
on on the screen. It's a 10.1-inch capacitive touchscreen, and the interface is super smooth.
Kenwood has done a really nice job of making it an easy-to-use experience. There's lots
of customizable features. You can download pictures to it and create your own custom backgrounds or use pre-loaded wallpapers; you can have shortcuts, you can move things around on the screen; there
are widgets, kind of like on your smartphone; you probably have some widgets, you can do
the same thing here so you have quick access to the features you want to use most. It's got a really neat feature called split-screen A/V control. This
has built-in navigation, so picture this: you've got on one side of the screen your navigation, your map. It's showing you where to go. And on the other side of
the screen you can have any number of things. You have a widget, you can have the weather,
you can have traffic information, you could even have Android Auto or CarPlay appear on the right half of the screen so that you can control your audio source; maybe you're playing some music
on Spotify or something like that; a split-screen experience is a great way to use a
10.1-inch touchscreen. Now let's get into all the navigation options on this Kenwood stereo. It's really
got all the navigations. So if you're using your smartphone, you'll be able to use Apple
Maps or Google Maps, or Waze, or whatever other navigation apps you have on your phone that
are compatible with Android Auto or CarPlay. But really, you'll probably just want to use the
built-in Garmin navigation system. Kenwood is smart, they've been partnering with Garmin
for years. Garmin is kind of the king of satellite-based navigation software, and its built-in, it's
got all the maps of North America on it. You get three years of free map updates, so you
can consistently keep your maps up-to-date with the most recent additions. And after three
years you'll have to pay for map updates. The way you get those map updates is through the
Garmin Express portal, that's PC or Mac-compatible software, and you're going to simply put the map updates on an SD
card and go stick that SD card into the SD card slot right here on the Kenwood radio.
Keep in mind if you do that the maps, the updates stay on the SD card which means it has to
stay in the radio, so you won't be able to use the SD card as a source for audio or video files if you're using it for map updates. But it's a
great way to keep your radio up to date with the current maps. We do a lot of testing of the
products we sell here at Crutchfield, and one of the things we do on radios like this that
have built-in navigation is we put them through their paces. We see just how long it takes them to
compute a route. Now that's a combination of the mapping software and the processor in
the radio. This one is kind of a top-of-the-line radio and it performs like it. It's very fast. For example, we programmed a route from here in Charlottesville to Los
Angeles, California, all the way across the country. It took it 7.1 seconds to completely calculate that route. When we programmed a route from Charlottesville to Baltimore,
it did it in 5.3 seconds. This is among the fastest radios we sell. It's got a very fast
processor, it's pretty quick, it will save you time when calculating your route to anywhere
you want to go. In addition to three years of free map updates you're also going to get
five years of free INRIX traffic and weather. Now this uses an app that you download to your
smartphone, and when your smartphone is in your vehicle connected to your radio, you'll be able to see updated information about the traffic conditions
where you're located, the weather, parking nearby, traffic cameras, travel advisories, lots of
very important information if you're on a trip or going through a city you're unfamiliar
with, this information will be super helpful and it's free for 5 years; you gotta pay for
it after that. If you're familiar with Garmin navigation software, you're probably familiar with just how it works, the buttons
that are on it. You're going to find this very familiar. It's got the "Where to?" button if you
want to plug in a destination. It also has "Where am I?" so that you can see points of interest
around you. There's six million points of interest loaded into the software from the factory,
so you can always find the nearest Starbucks or McDonald's, or whatever it is you want to go.
It's also got a "Where I've been," which doubles as a trip log, so you can always go
back and see where your vehicle has been, which is kind of cool to go see your trip after you've
returned home. You will most likely want to use your phone with your radio, and you'll probably want to do that
using either Android Auto or Apple CarPlay depending on which phone you have. This is
by far the smartest and safest way to integrate your smartphone experience with your radio
in your vehicle, especially while you're driving. It makes it safe for sending text messages,
receiving them without having to type or read on your phone, using hands-free calling, as
well as accessing all of the cool apps on your phone for streaming music and listening
to podcasts and audiobooks, and things like that. So that's the beauty of Android Auto
and CarPlay. There's two ways to use it, there's wired and wireless, and this has both. So if you're on a long trip and
you want to plug it in to keep your phone charged, you can do wired Android Auto or CarPlay,
but if you're just taking a short trip and you don't feel like plugging your phone in
every time, you don't have to. Just put your phone on your dash, or even leave it in your
pocket, it will automatically connect to the radio and give you the same CarPlay or Android
Auto experience as if it were wired. So the way it does that is it uses Wi-Fi. So it has kind
of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, it uses a combination of both to make that possible. The Wi-Fi that's built into this radio doesn't
create or is not compatible with any kind of Wi-Fi hotspot, it just facilitates that
wireless Android Auto and CarPlay connection. In addition to all of that, this radio does
have Bluetooth, and it's Bluetooth 5.0. So it's more powerful and fully featured. It can do more than many other radios
with Bluetooth. For example, you can connect two phones to it at the same time. And if you have high-res music stored on
your Android phone, you can take advantage of "LDAC" or ldac, which has a higher bitrate
transfer, which means better-sounding music from your Android phone to this radio. And
speaking of sound quality, if you are looking to build a great-sounding system using this
Kenwood as your head unit, it is well-equipped for the job. It has 6-channel preamp outputs
on the back, and they are 5-volt, so they'll provide very good, clear signal to your amplifier.
They're also gold-plated for the best possible connection...that's kind of a Kenwood Excelon
thing. You also have tons of control of the sound. You can adjust right here in the screen
what type of vehicle you have, so it knows to EQ the sound for a large vehicle or a
small vehicle. You can tell it where your speakers are, if they're low in your doors or high in your doors, it can adjust for things like that. It can also adjust listening
position. You're paying for this radio, you probably paid for the car...you should have the best sound in the vehicle. So wherever you're sitting, you can make sure that
that position has the best sound. You can adjust for time alignment to give you a good, solid stereo image, and there are two- and three-way crossover
systems built in, so you can really fine-tune exactly what frequencies you're sending out of the outputs
to make sure your tweeters, mid-range, woofers, subwoofers are getting the right frequencies. So you really can dial in
this system with precision. Once you've got it all set up the way you want, you can then
go and tweak the sound to your heart's content. There's an EQ built in with a bunch of preset
EQ curves, so you can just hit the rock, rap, classical, and dial it in that way, or you can
use the 13-band graphic equalizer as well as a parametric equalizer with full adjustments. So you can really fine-tune the sound all you want.
This Kenwood has 4 camera inputs. They are compatible with Kenwood's HD camera, the
CMOS-740HD as your backup camera. The clearest backup images we've seen yet. it really does look great. You won't be running over
any bikes with that camera on this big screen in your dash. It's also got a front camera input that is
compatible with the Kenwood dash cam that the DRV-N520. Two more inputs you could use for side
cameras or the trailer, and you can configure those inputs a number of ways. So it's a great
way to take advantage of this huge screen, and we know customers are loving this radio.
iI you go to crutchfield.com and find this radio, the Kenwood Excelon Reference DNR1007XR
and click on the reviews tab, you'll see a bunch of glowing reviews. People are loving
it. You'll also see many people have uploaded pictures of this radio installed into their
cars. It might give you an idea of what it will look like to have a 10.1-inch touchscreen
on your dash. And if you're looking to put a 10.1-inch touchscreen like this Kenwood into
your dash, definitely check us out here at crutchfield.com, find this radio, you'll also find a phone number
and a link to chat with our advisors, we have people standing by that can help you make
sure this will work in your car, and that you get everything you need to install it, and that it's the right radio for you. You can also post comments right here on YouTube
in the comment section, we do look at those and we will answer your questions here. And as
long as you're here, go ahead and like us, subscribe, and turn those notifications on so when we
put new videos out you'll know...and thanks for watching.