A cheap Sony micro - but what do you get? (Sony CMT-BX70DBI)

Member Name: rabidbadger

Product:	Sony CMT-BX70DBI
Date:	01/09/09 (229 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: iPod dock, Digital tuner, Price

Disadvantages: Sound quality, features could be thought out better

After years of faithful service from my Aiwa separates, the amplifier finally gave up the ghost earlier this year so I decided to look for an inexpensive and smaller alternative. After several days of shopping around online, I decided on the Sony CMT-BX70DBi, tempted mainly be the low price (around £115 at the time).

I must admit I viewed it as a stop-gap purchase at the time but now, several months later, I have still not been tempted to replace it with a more expensive unit. Here is my review...

The unit is quite compact and light enough to be placed on a sturdy shelf (but don't place it too high up because the controls are on top of the unit). The speakers are detached from the main unit and the wires are around 6 feet in length, providing further placement options.

The rear of the unit has sockets for AM, FM and Digital (DAB) aerials, all of which were supplied, meaning I didn't have to buy anything else to set the radio up.

Apart from the main power lead, the only other connections on the rear are the speaker sockets, which are the bare-wire type, allowing you to extend the speaker wires if necessary - although I would have liked to see the same bare-wire connectors on the back of the speakers to make this easier.

The front has a 2.5mm headphone jack socket as you would expect.

The front of the unit also has an audio-in 2.5mm jack socket. As far as it goes, this socket does what it should and I have had my computer connected to it for months without any issues - but why is it on the front? I suppose this allows for ease of use if the user has multiple devices to switch between but in my case, I would have preferred a pair of phono sockets in the back.

There is also the iPod dock that comes with an array of plastic adapters to suit your particular iPod model but, bizarrely, I found that my iPod (a 4th generation full-fat classic) didn't sit properly with any of them and worked much better when I left the adapter off.

Once mounted, the iPod charges from the unit and the iPod can be controlled from the unit's remote control - although I found this feature to be practically useless because I had to stand close enough to see the iPod display so I might as well have activated it manually.

I also found that when my iPod is in place, the time is constantly displayed when the unit is on standby, but when I remove it, the time disappears from display when on standby - which I thought was a strange "feature".

I would describe the sound quality as "adequate but not great", but for £115 what can you expect? I actually found that by using my old Aiwa speakers rather than the supplied Sony units, the sound was beefed up a lot and lost a bit of the "tinny" cheapness that the Sony speakers displayed.

The CD player and Tuner do exactly what you would expect them to do - although both are much easier to use with the remote control rather than the buttons on top of the unit.

The CD player plays MP3 CDs as well as the old-fashioned conventional type and the program facility works across any folder structure on the disc.

There is a sleep timer that can be set to switch the unit off after a given time (10 minutes to 90 minutes in 10 minute increments or after the current disc has finished if set to AUTO mode), and a play timer that can be set to switch the unit on at a given time.

Summary: Does what it should, easy to use, and at a great price

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