exwrx

I'm a little short on time... but here's some food for thought.

Alpine W-505/205 (not a big fan of the 205... in fact I think it's garbage and should be branded as a Dual/Jensen, even though that may be too much credit here) will dock with the Blackbird... pretty cool, as it'll give you a flash based (rather than dvd) nav system. Does BT, and a number of other tricks, but no voice recognition with the Blackbird. It will accept voice commands with the NVE-N872A... but it's DVD based. flash based systems are much faster, and don't rely on a disk. Think of them as giant memory sticks. Prepare for sticker shock on this one though!

Pioneer.... Both the Z2 and Z3 will take voice recognition.... they're good units, but expensive, though not near the astronomical Alpine prices. Pioneer has never failed... but also never impressed me. Think of it as a camry. Nice, good looking, reliable, and sensible choice.... but nothing to go bragging about. The have an internal hard drive that will store "some" but not all the Nav info.... meaning you should never leave home without the dvd's, even though you might never use them. The screen is decent, interface is smooth and intuitive.

Kenwood DNX7120... now is a ringer in my book. I've not really been a fan of Kenwood over the years, but they've been pretty innovative. It's a Garmin GPS (Flash) based unit, that can also control trunk/garage door devices. Big thumbs up for thinking outside the box.... but no voice recog. P-Nav packages are also worth looking at.


From eclipse... AVN 6620 is the newest unit... no voice recog there either. But I like Eclipse nav units. It's a little different, a class in itself if you will. Good quality (only lately, they had a rough patch for a few years)
and AVN 5495. Both good choices.

Personally... I'd get the kenwood. Either a P-nav or the 7120. But that's me. If you need more feedback, help explaining features between the units.... let me know.