0ur opinion:

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CD player with built-in M0SFET amplifier (22 watts RMS/50 peak x 4 channels) * plays CDs, CD-Rs, and CD-RW discs, including discs loaded with MP3, WMA, and AAC files (will not play Digital Rights-protected music files on disc) * dual zone capability so you can listen to different sources over the front and rear speakers * inputs: front auxiliary and USB inputs *


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Buyer's feedback: - * DPX502 No Voice Dial Option ...

OVERVIEW
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This is a fine deck audiowise. It's solid, the sound is nice, and you get three pass filters you can play with, front, rear, and sub. I have no complaints with taht aspect of the deck. The onboard amp is plenty powerful for after-market speakers, and fine with your original speakers too.

The USB device will read your mps or AAC files on any thumb drive or other flash media. It has proved flawless so far, and never loses it's place among hundreds of songs inbetween shut downs and power ups.

Navigation is a little cumbersome, but for everyday things like radio and CDs, it's fine.

The unit will not do HANDS FREE calls from your phone in that it WILL NOT do Voice calls either. You can dial out from the deck, but you should read my review for problems with that also.

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I previously had a JVC XG700 DD head unit with BT (See my review). I've gotten the DPX502 unit 90% figured out after a call to Kenwood.

First of all, let me say that this unit WILL NOT DO VOICE CALLING.

I called Kenwood today and they confirmed that this deck WILL NOT DO VOICE ACTIVATED CALLS. You can make calls from the head unit though through a menu system. After the phone connects, you get a message "downloading" which means the deck is downloading the phone book. After about 2 minutes, depending on how big your contacts list is (mine has around 30 contacts), you get a "completed" message. At this point, you can hit the ATT button for over a second, which pulls up a section where you can scroll though and pick a number and dial it. It's pretty easy, but it is NOT hands free. My JVC unit simply had a one button method and then you got your phone's voice dial system asking you what you want to do.

I have no idea why Kenwood did it like that. Most BT head units simply pass the voice message along to the phone, so you actually hear your phone over the speakers and talk to it through the BT microphone, WITHOUT having to download the phone book EACH TIME you need to reconnect with your cell phone. Yes, every time you shut the car off and the phone disconnects with the head unit, and then needs to reconnect, the deck goes into "downloading" mode. Preeeeeetty lame.

So let me give a fast summary of the good points and bad points of this unit:

PRO

BLUE TOOTH
1. Blue Tooth paring is almost automatic. Very easy to pair your phone.
2. Blue Tooth microphone is crystal clear. I can drive down the road at 60MPH and talk and people report my voice is very clear with virtually NO ambient noise.
3. Incoming calls are answered automatically if you wish, and hangs up automatically when the caller hangs up. Returns to your music where it left off. No hick ups.
4. The button push and phone book download to the deck is a pain, but since you don't use voice activated calling, you never have to repeat yourself.
5. USB and CD play AAC, Mp3, WAV, and a couple more I think, and you can plug a small reader directly into the FRONT of the deck with any USB card reader or pen drive. If you use a card reader, you need memory of some sort, like that which you use in your digital camera, for example. The JVC XG700 I had previously could do the same thing also with a front mounted USB port, but it had the tendency to skip folders after you turned the deck off and back on. The DPX502 has never done that to me yet, picking up exactly where it left off. This is a perfect USB solution to your music, as I have over 100 disks made with 160bit AAC files on an 8GB SD card. Beautiful.

CON
No voice dialing. You have to wait EACH TIME you connect to the BT module for the contacts to download--it doesn't save them. Other than this, it's a solid BT device.

DECK LAYOUT

PRO
1. The lay out of this deck is your traditional square horizontal, and familiar but boring layout.
2. The LCD panel is the right size in that it isn't overly large, just to take up space, or overly bright or annoying.
3. You can set the LCD panel to blank out after 5 seconds if you like. Hitting any key or volume turns it back on.
4. Has a dimmer switch that acts with your head lights and dims the units lights. You can turn this on or off.
5. Has separate high pass filers for Front, Rear, and Low (subwoofer). That's a very nice touch.
6. You can shut the subwoofer totally off with one button.
7. The options on the menu STAY there until you push a button--any button--as opposed to some units where it automatically defaults back to your album list, tuner station, etc after 10 or so seconds. That's really annoying when you are trying to read the manual.
8. You can shut the decks amp off through the menu system in the deck.
9. FIRMWARE UPGRADABLE. This means when new options come out for music, such as MP3, or other things, Kenwood can update the program through a firmware update installed on the unit through the CD player. Very nice!

Other things that are nice you can read about on the Kenwood or Crutchfield site, but the above were things I always look for in a deck.

CONS
1. There are five different menus you need to use to set all the settings in the deck.

The first is the volume knob that you push once to bring up the bass, treble, fader, sub volume, and that sort of thing.

Then you hold the volume button down for over a second and you get another menu: high pass filters, sub phase, etc. The volume press for menu isn't actually too bad, and it's not a con really. The problem is that you have no less than three other menus to navigate. Yeah, we're just getting started with the old hillbilly Kenwood boys.

For menu three, you will need to be in the source called "STANDBY." Then you push the MENU button on the front of the deck, and then you navigate by using the multicontroller on the right side opposite the volume control, the same one you use to navigate through your songs lists.

Then you have menu four by navigating the source to "ANYTHING BUT STANDBY" mode, such as CD, tuner, AUX, anything BUT standby. You hit the same "menu" button after navigating away from the STANDBY mode. This menu has most of the same options as the menu option in "STANDBY" source mode with the addition of several others unique to "ONLY IN STANDBY" source mode. You navigate the same way with this menu system using the joystick knob.

Menu five (still with me?): The last menu system is the Blue Tooth phone book menu. You hit the ATT button for over a second and it brings this menu up, which you also navigate using the joy stick.

So in all, five menus with different ways and means of operating them in a total of two different source areas. Thanks Kenwood. I'll make sure I don't smoke a "J" before I try to navigate your deck's menu system. To be fair, there is a need for multiple menus, but in this case they could have been relegated to less buttons, such as the two selected by the Volume knob. They could have gotten rid of the ATT Bluetooth menu for the phone book by simply adding that option as a double Volume click. Or switched the second menu for the volume knob and press and hold for two seconds to get the Bluetooth menu.

2. The JVC XG700 is actually laid out better (see my review). The Kenwood puts the volume/control knob on the left, and the music selection/control/joystick knob on the right. So when you are changing songs on a disk or a USB device, you have to reach all the way over to the right side of the deck, which when you have 100 folders to go through gets a little tiring on the arm. With the JVC deck, everything, including presets, is on the left side where it belong--closest to the driver. The navigation for all menus is also on the very left side and is a more easily used rocker type button, with a very positive feel, large and easy to use. It's a very innovative design that has tons of potential. I hope other deck makers pick up on it.

Another example of poor layout is the ATT button is at the bottom of the deck whereas the display button (changes what the LCD displays) is at the top of the unit, while the button that turns the unit off is in a different location. Since all of these buttons have to do with muting, turning off or on, or display, they should be grouped in the same location because they are the buttons that relate to each other and the buttons that get the most use--why spread them out all over the place?

It's not bad, but could be a little more intuitive.

3. The joystick controller knob used to change folders/files/and tuner stations is sloppy. It needs a much more positive feel where you go from up and down to left and right. It's too easy to move the controller up when you really wanted to move it right. It also needs to be on the LEFT of the deck closer to the driver. In fact, it should be directly below the volume knob on the left.

DECK SOUND
The deck sounds great actually. I think it may be a little cleaner than the JVC I had, but they are both close. I think the Kenwood does a better job of managing signals to the speakers, which result it a tighter subwoofer and cleaner low, mid, and high frequencies.

CONCLUSION
The menu system is a little confusing, but do-able after you mess with it. The deck's layout could be improved, along with that sloppy joystick. The unit is advertised as "hands free" but you cannot do voice dialing with the BT unit.

Firmware upgrade means that if Kenwood wants to extend the intelligence of the device, such as with new MP3 encoding processes, then can offer that upgrade as a free download from their site. The deck seems solid and works like it says, except the for BT voice dialing. The BT voice microphone is crystal clear for out going calls.

It's a pretty darn nice deck, worthy of 4 stars, but it is getting a little expensive and the 300.00US price tag moves it into a solidly midrange deck price wise. (The XG700 can be had for less than 200US, and it has voice--but my experience was that the Bluetooth microphone was very noisy while driving.) If you want a deck that is more tool than toy, you're simply gonna have to spend around 800 plus dollars to get "good" voice BT and other nice things--like layout--that these mid range decks don't have, without having to clown around with "stupid navigation tricks for humans." The Kenwood navigation large screen touch LCD is a good example as are the Pioneer models. You get everything with that deck you get in a fully loaded Lexus with navigation. On the up side, as a purely music oriented Head Unit, it doesn't get much better, even with high costing decks. Technology is no so advanced in the tuner/cd/amp area, that virtually anything name brand deck you buy, including the 100US models, will sound great, even with their stock amplifiers, when linked to decent speakers.

Edited June 11, 2008
I had a chance to take the deck's BT capabilities on the road today. As you know, the deck will not Voice Call out. In fact, the call out feature, which requires several button clicks, is all but useless while driving. As stated beforehand, the joystick controller knob is too sloppy to actually "push for two second" to call a number. You end up jumping around to the phone book option, going to recent calls, and so on, but you will not be able to hold the joy stick button pushed in for two seconds while driving, unless you are in a limousine or other smooth car with absolutely no bumping.

Again, the deck is a solid music performer, but so too are the 100.00US decks these days. If you need call out features for your Bluetooth, like I do for business, then do not waste time and money on this ill conceived Blue Tooth concoction from Kenwood.

Also, originally I said that the BT phone call via microphone was crystal clear. It seems from using and asking others that this is not so. Many people still report it's about the same as my JVC. I can hear others fine, but they report they can't hear me as well. I'm not sure why this is, but I do know many people have difficulty hearing sounds at certain ranges, and the range of ambient noise may make it hard for some to understand while others are fine with it.

Last, I forgot to mention that when I called Kenwood tech support, they were really nice and worked to solve my questions by actually finding the manual and going step by step with me over the phone. Good service.

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Buyer's feedback: - very good receiver
installed my dpx502 last week. have been playing with it. i bought this mainly for the front usb port. i plug my portable mp3 player in it and this receiver sees it as a drive. this works like a champ. very intuitive ui. traversing through the folders and files is quite easy. although, it uses generic names (i.e. folder1, folder2) instead of the folder names (i.e. artist names) on my mp3 player.

i rated this 4 stars because i haven't tested all the features of this receiver yet. if they are anything like the usb, it is definitely 5 stars.

the only minor complaint i have is that the volume knob is slick and doesn't stick out enough. so turning up the volume is not easy. don't get me wrong, its not hard either. just a touch inconvenient. hey, i had to complain about something...