i picked up an Eonon VWA12S the moment it was released. it seemed perfect. nice big screen, upgraded cpu/ram, and runs the latest Android. and it supports the Dynaudio speakers in my Autobahn. so why am i reviewing a Kenwood? well, the Eonon didn't even last 3 days. and in those 3 days, the wireless Android Auto was pretty flaky -- only worked like 1/3 of the time, so on day 2 i already plugged my phone in by default. after it died, i contacted support and the turnaround time was terrible since they were on the other side of the world. they gave me a update to flash the unit but that didn't work. i had a brick. my hypothesis is that the recent crazy hot weather fried the electronics inside. it's a fanless design.
anywho, the RCD330 is up to $400 now. there were earlier reports that it didn't work well with Dynaudio/Fender that could be fixed with coding, but even after that people reported that it was "almost as good" as the original. since i care about audio quality, and my experience with Eonon already soured the idea of buying something from the other side of the world, i decided to bite the bullet and try a Kenwood, one of the grand daddies of car audio.
install was easy, since i already had practice. flashing the Maestro RR was straightforward as well. i had Crutchfield do all the wiring for me so it was all plug and play.
pros:
so i guess there you have it....for the things that matter; stability, wireless Android Audio, audio quality; it is awesome. for everything else, it's subpar or terrible. for the amount of money this thing cost i'm not sure it was worth it....
anywho, the RCD330 is up to $400 now. there were earlier reports that it didn't work well with Dynaudio/Fender that could be fixed with coding, but even after that people reported that it was "almost as good" as the original. since i care about audio quality, and my experience with Eonon already soured the idea of buying something from the other side of the world, i decided to bite the bullet and try a Kenwood, one of the grand daddies of car audio.
install was easy, since i already had practice. flashing the Maestro RR was straightforward as well. i had Crutchfield do all the wiring for me so it was all plug and play.
pros:
- rock solid stability. wireless Android Auto is flawless. connection is never dropped and it auto connects within 10 seconds of getting in the car.
- superb sound quality. it sounds amazing and tons of EQ options.
- steering wheel integration -- the bottom-left button brings up Google Assistant.
- literally everything else....
- it didn't help that immediately before this i had the Eonon installed which had a gorgeous 9 inch 720p screen. it makes the 7 inch 480p of the Kenwood terrible in comparison.
- responsiveness is garbage. the Eonon was like a big tablet and worked like your phone. the Kenwood has a 200-300ms lag between a touch and action.
- i kid you not, the USB music navigation on my old RNS315, which is more than 10 years old, is faster/easier to navigate than this garbage.
- this looks to be pretty common across all these head units. from YouTube reviews, Alpine and Sony head units have similar lag.
- unintuive UI. it's 2023 and you can't swipe the screen... you have to hit arrow buttons like the 90s.
so i guess there you have it....for the things that matter; stability, wireless Android Audio, audio quality; it is awesome. for everything else, it's subpar or terrible. for the amount of money this thing cost i'm not sure it was worth it....