Big Black Box, with no disaster. (I Want It IW900 2.1 iPod)

Member Name: paulhanton

Product:	I Want It IW900 2.1 iPod
Date:	19/03/09 (2088 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great sound, inexpensive.

Disadvantages: Heavy, ugly.

iWantit iPod Speaker System

iW900

Well, the Hanton Household is almost free of CD's now. We have maybe 20 or 30 left which we just cannot part with. So, the big amp, CD player and speakers are being given away to people that need them more than us.

Now we have a PC upstairs with some nice speakers for iTunes, a PC downstairs (in the study) with some nice speakers for iTunes, but what we needed was a nice set of speakers, come docking station for the living room.

Off we went to Meadowhall to listen to some Bose speakers we had heard good things about....not so good, and very cheap design. We listened to the 'zeppelin' nice sound but pig ugly....in despair we went into Curry's in Barnsley and tried the 'iwantit' speakers, which as you can see, is basically a big, black, oblong box set of speakers. Well actually, for the tecchies, it is 2 X 15 w speakers (30w total output) and a 40w sub woofer. What does this mean? It means we had to listen to be sure that the speakers were 'fit for purpose'.

Well much to Curry's annoyance we played about 20 songs at different volumes and listened to them at varying distances from the speakers. Crisp, clear, great sound which seemed to get better as we moved away from the speakers. I don't know about sub woofers and all that, but I do know that Charlie Parker sounded like he was in the room and Linkin Park rocked Curry's....as for the Sex Pistols....well, it's great that they can still raise eyebrows 30 years on, especially at full volume.

So we parted with our £129 and the box with speaker in (not lightweight) and tootled off home.


~~~In the box~~~

The box contained; the speaker system (gosh there is a surprise) an instruction manual on a mini DVD (have to say I prefer paper manuals), a power lead, a video adapter lead, several docking ports to work with different iPods and a remote control.


~~~Set up and ease of use~~~

It looked easy so I thought I would try and set it up before reading the instruction manual on my PC. It was easy, so easy that it seemed like a con, I expected trouble, none of it. Plug it in, remove the covering for the docking port and put the iPod in, hey presto, instant music. One slight nag is that the docking station works with the specific iPod adapter only if you remove any protective casing, which is a faff every time so I use the iPod and casing on a blank dock, works fine and is plenty secure enough.

Once 'docked' you can either use the controls on top of the speaker box or the remote control. The remote control has treble and bass which I did not use in store and this makes the sound even better. The remote also has a 'mode' button so the speaker system, which can be set up to show video's and pictures through a screen (hence the 'video output' function). I have not used this at all so cannot comment on it.


~~~The sound~~~

I have to say, I doubt that there is better sound from a set of speakers at this price anywhere.

The placement of the box is vital however. We have found that in a corner of the room, facing out gives the best sound. The centre of a wall seemed to leave the sound with nowhere to go, I know that does not read like it makes sense, but believe me, there is something about how the sound travels which makes it better in one corner. Not only that, this is not the most aesthetically pleasing speaker system and in the corner works well, lol.

We also got a pleasant surprise in that the sound travels well throughout the house, so when going out of the living room to the kitchen etc. the sound was still crisp and clear. Do not use too much bass (unless you love it that way) as it distorts a little.

The 'crispness' is astounding on acoustic numbers and we listen to a lot of female jazz vocalists and it is gorgeous on these speakers.


~~~ Finally~~~

If you want to remove the front screen and 'see' the speakers you can. The blue coloured controls on top are really quite nice lit up.

When not in use, the iPod (mine is gen' 4 Nano) charges, very important as some iPod speaker docks are not generation 4 compatible, this is compatible iPod's, iPod Nano's and iPod Mini's.

The whole box is not pretty but as it is quite solid, black and basically an oblong, it sits unobtrusively wherever you put it, in fact we stopped noticing it at all after a couple of days.

The whole thing feels well made and the remote control is slim and nice to the touch.

The sound is great, one year warranty, available in Curry's and many online stores; you could do a lot, lot worse.

As a final postscript, the last couple of days have been quite sunny so I have been in the garden, listening to the speakers from the living room, sound travels well outside too.

Summary: Great speaker system for iPod

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