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Sony CMTBX77DBI Mini Hi-Fi with iPod Dock
by ginger321
As you can see from the pictures this is a very chic, black "minimalist" style Hi-Fi, but don't be fooled by it's lack of flashing lights and chrome.
I have owned this for 18 months and have always been impressed with the sound quality. I like my music loud and undistorted and on this count the Sony is a winner - ... personally I have never listened to it for long over 75% power as it is too much!
If appearance and sound quality are all you are interested in then this is one for you.
I plugged my daughters iPod into the neat top dock (which comes with adapters for different generation iPods) and the controls using the remote were very good.
Plays CD & MP3 CD's well, although "tree" navigation on MP3's was a bit confusing.
However, there are a couple of issues:
The display is hard to read and the input controls on top are not the most intuitive and being all black with dark markings on them, they can be hard to read and see when you are having a "moody" evening!. I guess we are being spoiled with touch screen now, but it can be a bit frustrating.
DAB radio - love the idea of this but in practice I always end up going back to the FM frequencies as the stuttering and signal drop are so frustrating. I tried hanging the aerial wire all over the place but with little improvement - may just be reception in my area, but it is allegedly "good".
The speaker cables are a bit short - it seems like they intend you to have this on a book case or unit, but if you like your speakers spaced apart, invest in some extension wire.
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Pioneer X HM20 K
by punkrockpenguin
My boyfriend and I went halves on one of these pioneer hifis around two months ago. We bought it as we both tend to listen to music from our macbooks and the sound quality on them is really bad and I was gaining quite a collection of vinyl so we needed something to hook a vinyl player up to. We had a very thourough search both online and ... out in the shops. We came across this system in tesco and for the price (cant quite remember how much but under £100), it was so much better than anything else we had seen/tried out. We had another snoop around online and found that the cheapest place to buy one of these is tesco so we went for it!
As music students, we were keen to try out lots of different types of music out on it. I put some punk on, my Boyfriend put some power metal on, my housemates decided to try some trance, industrial, house, tech metal. Everything sounded brilliant! Its a good allrounder! There is slight EQ options in that you can alter the bass and treble (not the mid for some strange reason). The volume control is also great in that we have had it on very quietly to very loud for parties and the same great quality has come through!
This awesome little system features an FM radio (a bit outdated but we dont need a radio so we've not touched it), a phono/RCA line in (perfect if you want to hook up a vinyl player), USB line in for an IPod and of course; a CD player. The speakers are 15 Watt each and sound lovely. There is also a remote control for the system (although, we've gone and lost ours becuase its quite small).
To conclude; this Hi-Fi is top notch and you'll struggle to find something better for under an houndred pounds. Pioneer are known for their car audio systems but this compact little system proves that they produce high quality systems all round.
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Philips DC146/05
by illusiveman
-When I first got this Hi-Fi-
I first had the idea to replace my existing Hi-Fi system around May 2010 when my existing one started having problems.
I looked through various internet sites looking at Hi-Fi systems and eventually decided on the Phillips DC146/05 as I saw by looking at the picture that it had an Ipod ... dock built in.
I believe the price of this unit was around £80 at the time I bought it
-Features-
This Hi-Fi has an Ipod Dock built in as I mentioned above which is very handy for plugging in my Ipod Touch and listening to my music, it also also easy to hide away as it just pushes back into the unit until it clicks into place (make sure to remove the Ipod first though) and should sit flush with the unit.
It also comes with a remote which is very good for changing radio stations, source and volume etc, although I find when I'm listening to my Ipod it won't skip songs but this is cured by changing source and then back again (i.e. from Ipod to Radio and back to Ipod).
A cd player is located on the top of the Hi-Fi and is very easy to access as the lift lids up to allow you to place your cd into the holder, there isn't a button to eject it on the actual unit but you just lift the lid (it has a groove to allow you to do so), or you can press the eject button on the remote.
An FM/AM tuner is built in and can easily be tuned to your favourite stations, you can also save a station and use the remote to quickly access each station (up to 30 as far as I know), I haven't listened to any AM stations but the FM stations are of excellent sound quality.
The speakers are of excellent sound quality and are very easy to set up, the wire is long enough for you to have your speakers in a location separate to the Hi-Fi (I believe the wires are roughly 30cm long).
-Disadvantages/Limitations-
Radio signal can be hard to keep at decent quality as the unit uses the standard wire set up as an aerial, I find it helps having the Hi-Fi further away from where your sitting to mineralize signal loss, overall the signal quality is great.
The remote control as mentioned above doesn't allow you to skip songs on an Ipod when first plugged in and switched on so you have to change to another source and then change back again, this isn't too much of a problem for me though.
As the CD player is top loading this means you need clearance above the unit so that you can insert and remove CDs, this would prevent many users of this unit hiding it away in a Hi-Fi unit, this isn't that much of a problem for me as I keep it on the top shelf of a unit where there is plenty of space to insert or remove a CD.
-My Rating-
Overall my experience with this unit has been excellent over the past 2 years I've owned it and will give this unit a 5/5 as the disadvantages mentioned above don't affect me too much, for anyone looking for a micro Hi-Fi system under a £100 I would highly recommend this product.
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