Latest Winner of Kenwood KDC-DAB4551U Does Review.

Gwynn Malcolm was the deserving recipient of the latest of TEN digital radios we swagged from Kenwood. He had to spot the tweet from Kenwood UK and then respond in a fashion likely to impress the Kenwood executive who was to judge it. Gwynn took the whole Android thing and made a Star Wars ‘Droid reference that was droll.. it is reproduced below&;
@monkey_biz:
@Kenwood_UK The Fat Man Sent Me about some head unit that R2D2 can talk to? All I know is that’s not the droid your looking for! Move along.
The Swag, installed!

What follows is written by Gwynn who has given the unit a real pull through and is impressed:
Well, I’m not much of a Twitter fan, I can never think of anything useful to say. I mean, does anyone want to know what I do on a daily basis? In case you didn’t know, I am a trainee Podiatrist so me tweeting about the state of peoples’ feet isn’t really reading material. Well come to think of it, it’s a bit creepy and possibly unethical as well. So when The Fat Man says ‘tweet Kenwood saying the fat man sent you…….’ competition type thingy about the recent Kenwood  KDC-DAB4551U, I thought ‘At last! something I can tweet about.’
So what’s special about the Kenwood? Well the blurb said it was now Android compatible. At last, a non iPhone owner’s dream come true. OK the iPhone may well be a very popular phone but contrary to corporation belief, not everyone has nor wants an iPhone and in fact Android now dominate the US market.
So why is Apple so well catered for?
Kenwood have thought about this and made their new DAB head unit universally compatible……. even my Blackberry connects to it, though not as well as an Apple or Android but it does me fine. So anyway back to Adam, the link was posted to take me to Kenwood’s twitter feed and I input a silly slogan and that was that.
I’m officially contributing to twitter at last! Then went off and forgot all about it.
The antenna inside a frosty window&;

Last week I got a message from Adam calling me a ‘numpty’ (polite version). Why??? well I didn’t think for one second that my twitter ID tag thingy had no reference at all to who I am and Adam had to do a lot of detective work to find out that it was me that posted the silly comment and it was the one that was chosen. (It was brilliant. Ed)
Forward a week or so and the delivery man delivered my new Kenwood head unit. So what is it like? Well I went from a stock VW Monsoon in the beetle to a full DAB head unit. So a slight advancement in technology I suppose. Visually it exactly matches the VW lighting colour scheme. Red surround and blue display, so I am over the moon as I’m quite anal about matching colours etc., so that’s 10 out of 10 for appearance.
Next up fitting the DAB aerial that’s included. Simple instructions and simple fitting, less than five minutes and it was done. Slotting in the head unit was simple. Swap the red and yellow wires for VW fitment as in the instructions, pop in the aerials and slide in and that was it. No fighting with huge wiring looms and lack of space. It was as if it had the Beetle in mind for fitting. Switch on and press DAB button and within twenty seconds I had the vast array of DAB stations to chose from. I chose Forth One as it has my traffic announcements for my daily commute of 35 miles to my University. So 10 out of 10 for fitting.
Living with the head unit. Well its been a couple of days and so far I’ve only used the CD and DAB and it excels on both. OK the CD is fairly standard but it does what it is supposed to do and does it very well. The DAB is outstanding. If I were to be critical then there is only one pre out and no fancy things like Time Alignment and full blown EQ but what it has is honestly enough for most users on a daily basis. The USB is at the front. It would have been nice to see a rear one as well for a hide away USB source and also the Bluetooth module is an optional extra. So 8 out of 10 for functions.

Ah the time of the ‘droid invasion is upon us. But I don’t have Android, all Blackberry here but once I have the BT300 that should sort that problem. So I borrowed my daughter’s iPod touch and connected it up and it seemed to do its thing very well. Mini female me seemed quite excited about it so I’ll take her word for it and give it 10 out of 10 for Apple connectivity and her pen drive seemed to produce sounds as well; if you call a teenage girl’s choice of music, sounds! So I did what every good parent does. I stole her pen drive and over wrote it with the Razor’s edge by ACDC and can confirm that ‘Thunderstruck’ does play very nicely indeed. So I placed her pen drive back and I’m currently waiting for the ‘DAAAAAAAAD!!’ shout emanating from her room. So another 10 out of 10 for pen drive music. In fact I think 12 out of 10 may be in order when the aforementioned daughter finds out that all she has on her pen drive is ACDC.
So, all in all a very nice head unit that will be staying put in the ‘Bug for a very long time. ‘This really is the Droid I was looking for, crowd around, crowd around’
Gwynn Malcolm