Customer Reviews

iLuv i199 High-Fidelity Bluetooth Speaker System with AM/FM, CD, Dual Alarm, and Dock for iPod (White)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Cumbersome, slabby, placticky design. USB port secured under a pop-up panel that's hard to open without a pen or coin. Startlingly bad FM reception. Unable to access content on my jump drive; locked up when accessing content on my MP3 player, so that the off button didn't function and I needed to unplug the unit. Overpriced even had those features worked. I returned and went with the JVC EP-25, a less expensive, far superior product with approximately the same features.

I wrote this review for another site but feel it is worth posting here. That being said I would give the iLuv i199 3.5 stars.
After looking for a long time to find a radio with features like the ILuv i199, I still feel like someone who has gone out on a date and spent all this money and still came up short... just a peck NO ROMANCE! I really wanted to like the i199 and I think with some improvements it will be a must have for iPod owners and anybody that loves the radio, music and the sonic vibes this machine is capable of. The CD player sounds great and makes this player shine!! With the added Bluepin (bluetooth) and usb support the future is looking up. The minus marks come because the i199 just doesn't have the chops and falls short on volume. Just when you think it will stand up and roar it loses it's voice. Also it NEEDS to have treble and bass controls! I known its the jAURA sound thing that they promote but it NEEDS a treble and bass control! The nice thing is this box is luscious and soothes your ears!! mmmmmm! BUT!!!!! I just can't get frisky with something that has all kinds of "Things" hanging off of it! Yech. The AM loop antenna has got to GO!!! I have a $25 radio that gets better AM reception without the added extra. And forget AM without the thing. FM fairs better but the unit also has to sport a second wire antenna to deal with that. The radio reception lacks and needs improvement maybe it's the antennas?? iPod convenience, charging and playback, not to mention the included remote control was a must and was just the thing for me! It works just great but I would pay more money for this if it had better iPod menu accessibility than just track forward and backward. This is something that would be right at home in any students room or family room with it's rich sound, solid performance and many features. It is my sincere wish that the powers that be at ILuv add and subtract to this product because it could really be a winner. Right now it is a wanna be. I give it a 6 out of a possible 10. I'm taking 1 point off because you can't crank the thing! Having a loud party forget it! 1 point off for no treble and bass controls. 1 point off for the lack of specific iPod controls and 1 point off for the tuner's performance, gotta have radio! And the antenna thing has got to be someone's cruel joke to turn this glossy black beauty into a shiny ugly duckling. Shame on you! Give me version 2.0 with the improvements and similar price and you've got a winner! Hands down!

This sounds like a perfect product, however in function, there are several serious short comings. First and foremost, this has a very poor bass heavy sound. With no tone control, there's no way to compensate. Second, the radio reception with the included AM and FM antenna is very poor. Third, the Bluetooth adapter included with the radio does not work with most Bluetooth phones (including Verizon Motorola KRZR).

First I'll start by saying this does what it claims to do, all the functions work and I've never had any issues with that. Except for the radio reception, which is sketchy at times. But if I keep the antenna in the same exact position (wrapped around a reading lamp next to the unit) it works ok. I've had it almost 2 years, but I still find it frustrating. The most annoying thing I find in this unit is the very strong light that it emits unless you turn the display off. I use this as a bedside unit, but I have to turn the display off every night because it fills the room with a large amount of blue light. It's like the biggest (and brightest) nightlight I've ever had, even at the lowest illumination setting (there are 3 intensities of illumination and "off"). So, while I do use it as a clock radio/alarm I can't keep the clock on to see what time it is during the night.

The alarm clock features are fine, the dual alarm is excellent, no complaints there. But the huge issue I have with the clock is that it doesn't keep time correctly. It is FAST, so about once a month I have to reset the clock because it has picked up 8-10 minutes.

The CD player is very slow to start playing, but sound is decent enough. It's no Bose, but it works for the bedroom.

Finally, the most tedious and annoying thing and this is just my own personal issue b/c I think it's dumb. ON the display, the features of the radio scroll by. (CD, USB, radio, ...) over and over and over. All the time. I contacted their customer support to find out how to turn this off, figuring it was some sort of store display mode, and learned that you can't turn that off. It just scrolls by incessantly, forever. Why would I want that? Why would anyone need that? The fact that I can't turn that off astounded me and in all the electronics I've purchased over the past 20 years, this seemed like the stupidest "feature" I've ever seen.

great sound, amazing sound quality from a compact devics . Could probably use a base & treble function but great out of the box

great features,USB, ipod, CD & remote work great

poor radio reception- my last kmart boombox had much better FM reception . You would think that a company that has the capibility to put out such a high quality device could do better in the radio reception area. I'm experimenting with a dipole external anntenna

overall excellent buy for the $$

I was happy with the sound and the features of this thing, but it had two annoying attributes I couldn't get past, and I returned it. First, the display did not have a dim setting that was dim enough for sleeping. I had to turn the display to the off setting at night. Second, the display constantly scrolled the iLuv brand name and the features of the device, and there was no way to turn off the scrolling! I don't need an alarm clock with a constantly scrolling advertisement on it.

I read several reviews of digital tuning alarm clocks at several sites and settled on the Iluv because of the digital tuning, options for the alarms and more reasonable price. After using it for several weeks, I would make the same choice.

I would give this multifunction iPod dock/CD Player/Radio five stars but for four things:

1) It's enormous. Really huge. Takes up half of my generously-sized bedside table.

2) It's clock face can be dimmed, but the settings seem to be "super-bright" followed by "really bright" followed by "completely dark."

3) It comes with a generous number of little plastic iPod docking adapters - but nothing for the now-ubiquitous iPod Touch. Since the directions stress the importance of using the proper adapter for your iPod model, this is problematic.

4) It doesn't have a headphone jack. I realize that the whole point of the thing is that it's a *speaker* system, so why dock your iPod at all if you want to use headphones, right? Well, my husband snores and so I got this system hoping that I could keep my iPod neatly docked (and charging) on the table beside me and run my ear buds out of the speaker system. I thought this would perhaps solve the problem of waking up in the middle of the night tangled in my earbud cords and laying on (and potentially damaging) my iPod. No such luck. Although you can attach nearly every peripheral known to man to this sound system, there is no earphone jack.

Now, on the plus side, good quality construction. Lovely sound. Nice bright display (if you consider that a plus). Not too hard to program. Blue-tooth adapter thingy included. Accepts may inputs and outputs. Reasonable price when compared with Bose.

We bought the iLuv for our newborn's nursery. I wanted something that had both a CD player and an iPod connection, preferably a docking connection for the iPod. The iLuv seemed perfect since it looked cool and wasn't quite as expensive as some other options. It also had Blutooth capabilities which I thought might prove useful.

When I first opened the box, I have to admit I was a little disappointed. The material was more like "cheap alarm clock" rather than "audio equipment". Yes, I recognize it wasn't a super high dollar item, but it wasn't cheap either, and I just thought it would be nicer. Though, I did like the "white on blue" LCD (when it was working).

Initially I tried using the iPod and it worked, but I found it a bit awkward for navigation. Being a docking station, you pretty much have to be in front of the iLuv to see the iPod screen. I just found that using the iPod dial was very awkward when not in my hand. Perhaps if the remote were full featured enough to navigate the iPod, I would still buy into the docking station. Without that, a corded solution would have been better.

Speaking of the remote, it's tiny and very cheap. It's not backlit and the buttons are all the same shape (circular "bubbles") so it's very hard to use in the dark. The layout is poor as well, making it very difficult to use day or night.

For whatever reason, we actually found we didn't use our iPods with it. Instead, we used CDs. Unfortunately it is VERY slow to load/read CDs. I also found that many CDs that worked fine in other CD players did not read right away in the iLuv. We would often eject and reinsert several times to get it to read. Sound failed to come out of it when it seemed like we should be hearing something so many times that we completely lost confidence in it. We should have done something during the warranty period, but it was just one of those things we tolerated. During the second year it got worse. We occasionally resorted to unplugging it and plugging it back in again to get it to work. It was at this point I contacted iLuv. I described our experience, explained that it was a fairly pricey item to fail within 2 years, but acknowledged it was out of warranty. I didn't expect much which is exactly what I got. They offered to fix it or replace it for about $50, but I would be responsible for shipping it. I wasn't going to spend another dime on this product, so I declined their offer. Since then the LCD only displays in the lower half and occasionally we can't get any sound to come out of it even using the iPod mode. Pretty sad for something only 2 1/2 years old.

When it works, the audio quality is fair. Not terrible, but nothing that blows me away. To be fair, I haven't really listened at higher volumes where it might make a difference. In retrospect, a cheap CD-player clock radio would have been a better choice for us.

On several malfunctioning occasions I have bordered on just throwing it in the garbage. I hate that I wasted money on this and would never buy another iLuv product.

This Player worked pretty well. The sound was great for my room. Its a little larger than I thought. But I returned it because when I would be playing from my ipod- it would just stop playing- almost like it had been paused. It would do it randomly. So I wasnt too happy with that. Everything else worked just fine.