Well, after thinking for a while that installing it had made

my ESP malfunction which involved me fitting it twice I

thought I'd share a few pics of the old H/U vs the new one.

I previously had a Sony Xplod which came across from my last car

(and the one before that) It was a good reliable head unit but

apart from not supporting the ipod my main issue with it was that

I kept my music on memory sticks and whilst it was ideal for playback,

I often found my hand hitting normal size memory sticks when it

went from indicator to gearstick.

So, I bought an 8gb Sandisc mini memory stick which stuck out half

as far so I didn't keep catching it.

Also I thought it looked ugly with the stick poking

out at the front. Apart from the display being blue the buttons were

green (or red) and matched the dash perfectly, it was also predominantly

grey in colour and matched the dash plastics too.

When I plugged my ipod into it for the first time it displayed "No Support"

and spazzed out spectacularly resulting in me having to reset the unit to get

it to work again. I immediately started looking for a suitable replacement.

Here's the old unit.

I opted for a Kenwood KDC6051U,

Here's what was in the box.

I wanted one with a rear usb port to keep the dash profile cleaner and this one

came with a metre long usb female socket which I fed through into the glovebox

It works with all my old memory sticks which is handy for when I don't

want to take the ipod out with me.

Here's the ipod plugged in. It can live either in the glovebox or

I can stick it to my phone magnet for direct control if I prefer.

But by far my favourite feature is the custom colour feature so

you can make it match any cars illumination, I've tweaked the colour a bit

since these were taken and it's spot on now...

Headlights off display

Headlights on display

All in all a good unit and the ipod controls on the facia

keep navigating my tunes really easy when on the move.

It also has a huge amount of soundstage settings and you

program in the size, type and location of all the speakers

plus the general type of car it's in and it does all the rest.

It's really made the best of my standard fronts and 6x9s in the

parcel shelf.

I was happy at the price of £139 delivered via Ebay and my only

real criticism is it's very easy to coat with fingerprints but

I already have a microfibre cloth in the glovebox to keep it looking

shiny.

Hope you enjoy the pictures

Thank you for posting and taking the pictures. Is the time alignent in ms or cm steps? and is the green the same green as the rest of the dashboard?

Edited 18 February, 201214 yr by fabia55

What's that under the hu? Not seen that before!

What's that under the hu? Not seen that before!

thats the storage draw that comes with the Elegance