Buy For Sound, Not For Looks
Pros:
Good power and sound quality
Cons:
Big, heavy, and ugly
The Bottom Line:
If you need volume and sound quality from a boombox, this will deliver in a way very few other units can match.
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Overall Rating:
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Author's Review
I bought this product for one purpose - to be usable in a noisy ice rink. It does the job, with ample volume and good sound quality.
Yes, there are things not to like about it - it's big, heavy, and ugly: its aesthetic screams "male teenager", not "middle-aged figure skater". And it's a little strange that people have started addressing me with "what up dawg?" whenever I show up with the box.
But it does what I need: play CDs with ample volume.
It also plays cassettes, has a digitally tuned AM/FM radio, and a remote control. You can plug it in or run it from eight D-sized batteries. I've never used batteries, but I don't expect particularly good battery life: boomboxes this size are pretty power-hungry.
Aside from the excellent volume and sound quality, here are a few specifics:
- It has a limited sort of tone control: a "power drive woofer" button that lets you choose between wimpy bass, normal bass, and bone-thumping bass. Not a great design, IMO, but it does a reasonable job of covering the bases (pun not intended).
- There is no "mode" switch to choose between cassette, radio, and CD; it automatically switches. For example, if you press a button to play a tape, it stops playing the radio or cd.
- The cassette controls are mechanical - the sort of buttons you have to press down to engage or disengage the mechanism. This means, if you're playing tapes, you must control them from the box and not the remote. Everything else can be controlled from the remote.
- The unit has a sleep timer.
- My one mechanical complaint is about the FM antenna on the back. It is not secured very well, and I expect I'll accidentally break it off at some point. It was broken off on the demo unit I saw at the store where I bought it.
Bottom line: very few boomboxes even advertise their power output - this one does (20W). The reason to buy this machine is to get high volume and sound quality from a portable piece of audio equipment.
