For my bedroom (12x14 feet), this system is working well. The sound produced from the lowest to highest volume is full and free from noticeable distortion. The highest volume is more than enough for me, however it does not have near the power, depth of bass or the very crisp highs of a high end system. But considering the price, this system sounds very good.
The Bluetooth works well with a Fire HD. The remote's control buttons for skipping tracks and pausing playback work with Pandora and Amazon Music. That is the positives, now for the negatives.
Plastic speakers without a grill in my opinion look cheap, but I would not expect much more for what this system cost. Since I grew up with cheap being particle board with a vinyl wood grain covering, this might be my age at play here.
The speakers did not come with near enough wire for my room. If you have anything bigger than 8 by 8 foot room or do not have the amp/sub-woofer located in the middle of the front or rear wall, the speaker wires are going to be too short. It took me about half an hour to splice all the speaker wires to make them long enough. Plan on extension wires with RCA male to female jacks if you have a large room and do not want to splice wires. With a push of a button on the remote you can switch between stereo and 5.1 surround and the difference is huge, so using all the speakers is worth the effort.
The remote control will not work unless it is pointed directly at the amp/sub-woofer. If you are pointing the remote off by more than a foot from the front of the amp, it probably will not work. You cannot bounce the remote output off a mirror floor or anything I have tried.
At the time of this of writing, the description on Amazon stated, “remote control has controls for bass and treble EQ”. The remote has separate volume controls for master, front, back, center, and the sub-woofer. There are no base, treble or EQ controls, unless you want to call the volume control on the sub-woofer a bass control. Fortunately for me this has not been an issue, but could be for someone else.
If you turn the power off (switch on the back of the amp) or suspend the unit (Power Button on the remote), the volume setting for all the speakers reset to level 30. Meaning you have to readjust all five of the volume levels after every time you wake-up or turn on the unit.. Thinking there was something wrong with my unit I contacted the manufacturer. They responded quickly but unfortunately told me this was normal for this unit.
Putting a Kill-a-Watt power meter on the unit indicated that suspending the unit did nothing to the power consumption. At idle my unit uses about 12.7 Watts. When it is suspended it uses the same 12.7 Watts, so all the power button on the remote does is clear all your volume setting and absolutely nothing else. Turning the volume all the way up or all the way down has no effect on the idle power consumption, nor does muting the unit. Fortunately, there is not any noticeable noise, even at high volumes, coming from the speakers while it is idle.
I use this unit primarily for a clock radio with Pandora and Tune-in Radio. Both limit you to one alarm so Pandora is used M-F and Tune-in is used for the week ends. It also gets used while getting ready for bed doing cleaning and other things. The point being this unit gets used a lot.
Since my preferred volume settings are all different I just leave the unit on all the time. This adds about 9 Kilo-Watt-Hours or a little more than $1 to my electric bill each month. I am not real happy with this but can live with it. It would not surprise me if other similar units had the same power issue. If you live outside of California your power rate/bill is probably going to be much less (along with most everything else) than mine. The power and other issues deserve a one star rating. However, the sound deserves five stars. Given that sound is the most important item, an overall three star rating was awarded.
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Makes a loud noise in switching channels even when turned down low.
Reviewed in the United States on January 7, 2018
Works so far ,makes a Weird noise when switching channels very loud clicky noise, even when turned down low. A tad disappointed as it went to my son in the military.
Reviewed in the United States on January 7, 2018
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Reviewed in the United States on January 7, 2018
Makes a loud noise in switching channels even when turned down low.
Reviewed in the United States on January 7, 2018
Works so far ,makes a Weird noise when switching channels very loud clicky noise, even when turned down low. A tad disappointed as it went to my son in the military.
Reviewed in the United States on January 7, 2018
Images in this review
