 |
Gear4 Streetparty PG466
by CallMeRalph
I have recently moved into a new home and one of the things I wanted in my new house was a decent sound system. I listen to my music via my iPhone so basically I wanted a docking station that would give decent quality. The only slight issue I had was budget, after buying everything else to kit out my new home, funds are very low. So I ... wanted something cheap with good quality. My brother in law owns a Gear4 docking station and he had told me it was decent and not to expensive. The day after being told this I happened to find myself in HMV and there I spotted this, the Gear4 Streetparty PG466.
The thing that caught my eye was that it was reduced from £50 to £25. Great news as that was well within my price range. The docking station looking fairly simple and it said on the box it had good sound quality and was compatible with my iPhone 4S. So I decided I must be getting a bargain and so purchased the Gear4 Streetparty.
An hour later I was home and ready to try it out. When I first took it out the box I noticed how flimsy it looked, I suppose for £25 I should not have been expecting anything to flash, but even so it looked a little cheap. The station has two little speakers and your device sits in the middle of them upright. The little extra feature of this one is that the speakers can slide apart and you can flip your device horizontal. However, when I tried this I found that my phone did not quite fit, I hat to force it into the gap that had been created. So not very well designed as my iPhone is just slightly too big.
I decided not to let this worry me as I would rather stand my phone up vertically anyway. So I plugged the power plug in and turned the docking station on. I turned up the volume and started my music. The sound I heard coming from the speakers was quite simply..... Appalling! The sound is tinny and sounds no better than my phone does on it's own. I turned the speakers up as loud as they would go which is basically not very loud and the sound of course got worse. I tried putting on a different track but with the same result, a really hollow tinny sound that was really poor. I was very disappointed.
I decided at this point that I was not happy with the sound system I had purchased. I checked online to see what other people were saying, the first thing I noticed was that you could buy these on eBay for £20 with free postage! Ouch, I was very upset with myself as I usually do check prices online before buying things. So HMV had obviously seen me coming and the price they were originally quoting of £50 was clearly much inflated.
I had a look at the other features of the docking station. As well as running off the mains you can also use four batteries to power the system. This would of course be handy for when you wanted to take it out with you. However, the name street party implies you could play this out in the street and let people hear the music, however, unless everyone on your street is willing to crouch down over your music player, I doubt this would be any use in a street party environment. The music that my iPhone 4S plays out of it's own speakers is almost as loud as is of as good a quality.
The fact that the whole system is very flimsy, the fact that my iPhone does not properly fit into the dock when swivelled around and the fact that the sound quality is abysmal lead me to one conclusion. So a few days later I was back in HMV asking for a refund, something I detest doing, but I felt I had no choice as it was such a poor sound system that really was useless.
So if you are looking for a new docking station then stay well clear of this one. Yes it's cheap, but it is so poor it defies belief. The picture on the box makes it look very good, but when you take it out you realise how poorly made it is and how cheap it really is. There are so many better docking stations out there and this is one that I should never even considered buying.
Read the complete review |
 |
Angry Bird iPod Speaker
by JesusJohn
I've seen these in hmv and a few other shops over the past year and I've always been tempted to buy one but never got around to it until lately. I bought this from www.amazon.co.uk for just 19.99 which I thought was a bargain considering I've been seeing this retail at £50/£60. I am an angry birds fanatic which I'm aware my sound really ... sad to the average Joe, so I'm not sure why I put this off buying for quite some time.
The design is pretty obvious really, it's the red angry bird. This is made of a thick plastic when I touch it, it feels really sturdy and good quality. The measurements for this are H 181 x W 175 x d 236 mm. It isn't too big that it can't fit on a shelf and it isn't too small so the sound will be rubbish. I have this on my shelves along with all my CD's and films and it looks quite good.
This doesn't have any features, it just have a power button, volume button and a sub woofer. You plug your ipod into it via the red wire and work all the tunes through your ipod. Which means someone as old as me can work this without any difficulties. I thought it might of charged my ipod at the same time like I have seen some of the others do but this one doesn't which is a shame.
I'm not too good with the technical wiz kid side of things but this has a large speaker located at the base of the bird. the speaker is 30 W, I don't know if this is good or powerful but for what it is, this drowns out my full house when turned up full with my Ipod on too.
This turned up to the max along with the subwoofer gives off a clear sound with no hint of any distortion. It's really clear so every song sounds amazing, especially at full blast. Overall this is a really good budget speaker and fits in great with all my angry bird items even if I'm not using this.
Read the complete review |
