THEY DON'T SACRIFICE QUALITIY FOR SPACE (Philips FW-C280)

Member Name: vincent.buchan

Product:	Philips FW-C280
Date:	03/01/02 (377 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: almost everything

Disadvantages: no karaoke mode

I love listening to music and my old stero system was starting to get a little out of date. I bought my old sony system around 6 years ago and it is getting too small and old to satisfy my musicial needs. I thought I would make a change from a Sony product and I saw this and was instantly intrested.

The requirements that a system had to have to satisfy me was that it had to have a tape deck, be able to play CD's and CD-R's and a minimum of a 3 CD-changer, but obviously it had to sounds great and not break my budget. If I bought a new sound system, my sister and mum would want to use it aswell so it needed to have one of those equalizers with the different settings like rap, rock, techno, classicial, jazz, concert hall, etc. There was also the appearence factor coming into play here. It had to be a decent size and not be too bulky but still look cool and sound amazing. So I browsed quite a few shops, looking and listening to all kinds of different systems that met these standards. I decided to look for one that costs around 120 pounds or less and I found this beauty and it sounds great and looks cool.

The Philips FWC280 does, as I said earlier, everything I wanted it to do and a little more. It sounds miles better than my old system and is a lot better than most other ones in the same price range. I would recommend that you take along your own CD that you listen to with you to test them. It will give you a better idea of how they handle playing your type of music. I tried out quite a few but they all sounded pretty bad in the store (you should usually expect this and they usually do get better at home) with all the background noise (I also tested the radio to see what they were like). I was happy to find out that this one sounded decent in the store and the only one that I tried and was better than the Philips model was (you've guessed it) a Sony one (I can't remember what model it was as I didn'
;t buy it). This was to be expected as they are still the masters of the sound market but it was around 50 pounds out of my price range and included a whole bunch of features that I would never use. The only thing it had that I might use was the many different inputs it had, like an input for a games console.

The thing that sold me was the 3 CD- Changer. I was willing to splash out that little more for the Sony but it didn't have a 3-CD changer so I went back to the Philips, and plus this looks better. I think a CD-Changer is a must as it is annoying to listen to the same tracks over and over again and everytime you want to hear a different CD you have to get up and change it. I like to put in 3 cd's and whack it into shuffle mode so it makes it a little more intresting, like a radio show. You know you are going to like nearly all that is played but you don't know in what order.

The overall features this system has is: a remote control, a 3 CD- Changer, radio, plenty of equalizer settings, some useful in/outputs, two tape decks, a timer, bass control, and I think a microphone input (not totally sure on this as there is an unmarked hole on my system). I think that is them all. It is fairly easy to figure out the controls and use the features.

Summary: