MUSIC TO YOUR EARS..... (Philips FW-C280)

Member Name: broksababe

Product:	Philips FW-C280
Date:	03/01/02 (442 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Sounds Great, Looks attractive, Reasonable Price

Disadvantages: None as yet

I Decided to treat myself to a Christmas present and what better than a new Hi-Fi, the one I chose was the Philips C280

This Hi-Fi is described, as a mini but in fact is more in-between mini and standard.

It is silver in design with silver and black speakers, made up of a CD player, tuner and twin tape deck with lots more features added.

The first thing you will notice when you first switch on is the front display panel, full of lights in orange, turquoise and blue, these show you the fluctuating volume, track information, plus any other settings you have on.


~ ~ CD Player ~ ~

This contains a changer tray that will hold 3 CD’s, you can select either direct play by pressing the 1, 2 or 3 button above the tray, this also flashes orange, so you can see at a glance the number of CD that is playing.

It is programmable and will hold up to 40 pre selected tracks; these remain in the programme until you either switch off or cancel the programme memory.

Shuffle of course plays all your CD tracks in a random order; this is fine if you have only one inserted, however if there are 3 in, it switches between them all the time, causing delays.

You can play your own home made CD’s here too if you have a CD writer, this again is a bonus as most others I have used struggled to read them.


~ ~ Features ~ ~

The front of the Hi-Fi is jam packed with various buttons, and it is wise to take a little time to familiarise yourself with all the features.

 Digital Sound Control Panel - This allows you to view all the current settings and display settings.


 DBB (Dynamic Boost) – This button will enhance the bass sound if required or from here remove the bass completely.


 VEC – Change your listening environment to one of the pre-set effects, Hall, concert and cinema..hmmm, Hall is v
ery strange, just makes the sound echo and very hollow but the other two are fine.


 DSC (Digital Sound Control) – once you have selected one of the above, however you do not have to use any of them, you can now add a desired effect to your playing tracks, rock, jazz, techno or optimal are available and believe me they really do alter the end effect a lot, but I find the drawback here is you get your track sounding perfect, however the next one to play will not sound right, unless you have a CD with all the same tempo of songs!. So it can get a bit annoying having to alter each, however optimal seems to sound good on any kind of music so I tend to settle for that.


 Incredible Surround – By pressing this you have the choice of having incredible surround sound or not, this I would say always leave on as it is superb and its just not nearly as good without it quality wise.


 Alter Display – Press this one and you can change the front window display, if you do not want all the lights for various things on, then simply remove some, or even dim the display or remove it altogether. I personally leave them all on as it looks great and makes the Hi-Fi very appealing to look at indeed.


 Clock/Timer – This one is for setting the time, advisable as if you choose not to, you will find every time you put it in standby, it will switch itself back on again!. You can set it to use as an alarm clock to wake you up or even set it to switch off after so many minutes or even set it to turn on the tuner, CD or tape at a desired time, perfect if you want to tape something.


 News – The news button, will take you automatically to a pre-set news radio station, this of course only works if you have correctly installed and stored the stations.




~ ~ Tuner ~ ~

On first time operation of your tuner, the words plug and play
will be displayed on screen, this feature will automatically scan through all the stations it can pick up on LW, MW and FM, these are then stored up to a total of 40.
This I do not recommend as I found it did store them, however they were all very poor quality and fuzzy and in fact, I had to opt for the manual tuning and storing at a later date to get clear stations.
A good idea but not very practical it seems!.

However it is capable of receiving RDS radio, for example if it tunes into an FM channel it can display on screen not only the name of the station but also the type of broadcast that the station offers, so you can see at a glance.


~ ~ Tape Deck ~ ~

Nothing out of the ordinary here I’m afraid, a twin tape deck with synchro record, one touch record and dubbing.

So this is what you will find on your new Philips C280,it is very stylish looking indeed and does not look cheap or tacky in any way.
Of course it also comes with a remote control, which will operate and change all of the earlier mentioned features, so you wont even need to leave your armchair to operate it.

The sound quality I found excellent, especially with the surround sound and available effects.

Ease of use is relatively simple, however as I mentioned earlier there are a lot of things to push and twiddle so I do recommend you spend a few minutes with the manual and experimenting in order to get the maximum effect and quality of your music.

And the price, a mere £149.00, a bargain as it looks far more expensive, this is available at all main high street shops and will probably be even less in the sales.

As you can tell I am very pleased with my purchase indeed, looks great, sounds great, a reasonable price and a trusted manufacturer, what more could you want?

Anyway I’m off to finnish listening to my Dido CD, so I will leave you to look over the specifications…bye….



Amp – 2x 35w RMS
2x 70w MPO

Speakers – 3 way, bass, reflex, surround sound , woofer and tweeter ( ??? sounds like a cartoon,lol)

Dimensions (WxHxD) 265 x 310 x 340mm)
Weight 6.04 Kg


Guarantee – 12 months

Summary: