Kenwood ships new DNX multimedia navigation receivers

Mirror your smartphone screen in your jalopy with Kenwood’s new DNX receivers

Kenwood, makers of a host of in-car entertainment systems, has announced that its new line of DNX multimedia receivers are currently shipping to retailers and should be on shelves by the end of March.

We first saw them this January at CES, where Kenwood displayed the five different models that will make up the product line. “We received positive reaction from our retailers, both during CES and through sales focus groups,” said Kenwood Marketing Manager Tony Mercado. “Not only are they excited about selling the newest Kenwood gear, they look forward to delivering a product with key improvements that enhance their customers’ daily drive.”

The new DNX models will have updated versions of Garmin navigation that’s already built in. An expanded relationship with traffic info provider INRIX means two years of free up-to-the-minute traffic condition updates are available when drivers connect a phone with the INRIX app.

Also, since any car made after 2018 will be required to have a rear-view camera installed, it may spur vehicle owners to update their cars if they are sans camera. The DNX receivers make this easy by being designed to accommodate either Kenwood or other third party cameras, and overlaying a distance-measuring grid on the display.

All this sounds pretty handy, but the real party piece is the DNX’s compatibility with Miracast, a technology that lets drivers mirror their smartphone screen wirelessly on the display. It cost an extra $120 to get a required USB dongle to make it happen, but anyone who’d want to watch or browse the web (while stopped. Safety first, folks) on a larger screen would find this tech quite appealing.

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