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Sony CMT V10iPB
by ginger321
I got this for my teenage son's bedroom - we didn't want something that would rival a motorhead concert, or a tinny lame sound, and on this count the Sony works well. As with other Sony gear these days, looks seem to be important and it does look really sleek on his shelf. Having the speakers connected is a neat solution in a ... teenagers bedroom and prevents him strangling himself by accident or ripping the speakers off the shelf when the wire is round something he needs "NOW!".
Functions he likes are:
LED on front changes colour according to function that is in use - colours even correspond to function button on remote.
Sleep timer lets you drift off to your favorite thrash metal or Mozart.
Bluetooth connectivity - set up was simple then lets you stream all your phone music to the unit whilst controlling tracks either with the remote or from the phone
Plays CD's - this is becoming a bit of a novelty but as some of us still have these strange old discs, it's worth having for a while (Plays MP3 CD's too)
Radio is DAB & FM - DAB is actually quite good.
Funky touch sensitive buttons are nice.
A couple of gripes:
Display is flat on top - for a front facing remote unit this means that you are guessing at track names and numbers when using the remote.
IPod dock - retracts, which is nice, but pops out very easily when you touch or move the unit and then seems to be reluctant to stay in - strange but fairly trivial.
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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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