Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Hardware Review ( iLive Boombox )

I was at Kohls and I saw this on sale for $60 ( originally priced at $120. ) For an early Birthday present, I got this.

The iLive Boombox comes in two colors black and white, and both feature: FM/AM Radio, side subwoofers, ability to listen to CDs, iPod mini/nano/stands, iPod shuffle output, and more.

The sound quality of the iLive Boombox is OKAY. When you put your iPod in and listen to the music there is a little bit of slight background noise, almost like static, when you play any song at any volume. It's not too terribly annoying, and at $60, the quality is damn good. Also, you can turn the bass up a fair amount ( not much, but a little bit. ) The volume can also BLAST out of this thing, so loud I'd get cops coming to my door if I had it up all the way.

I do have problems with it, though. For one thing, the blue back-lit screen is HARD HARD HARD to read unless you are looking directly at it, and the FM/AM Radio tuner on my iLive Boombox only detects one radio station. Even when I keep changing radio stations, it still only detects the one. It was working fine at first, but then quit out. I don't know if this is common, but it doesn't really matter. No one would buy this thing for the radio.

There is also another problem I have. The remote control is very unresponsive to the boombox, and 60% of the time won't even read what button I'm pressing so I'll have to press it numerous times. Very annoying. The last tiny problem I have is with the remote itself. The remote is rounded on the top, and flat on the bottom. For me, it just gets me confused and I sometimes hold the controller upside down. That's a minor problem, though, when compared to the other flaws.

All-in-all, the iLive Boombox is just SOMEWHAT worth the price. If you see this at $120 and consider buying it - think twice... it's really not at all worth it... but at the price of $60, the iLive boombox may seem more appealing. It looks great, works decently, and is pretty sturdy.

3.5/5

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