Home :: Audio :: Portable Audio :: Boomboxes  

Boomboxes

Cassette Players & Recorders
Digital Voice Recorders
Microcassette Recorders
Minidisc Players
Portable CD Players
Radios
Philips AZ2555 CD Boombox with USB PC Link

Philips AZ2555 CD Boombox with USB PC Link

List Price: $119.99
Your Price:
Product Info Reviews

<< 1 2 >>

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: An excellent (but not perfect) product.
Review: If you are looking for a portable CD player that sounds really good, then this attractive, but rather unusual styled, product is the machine to buy.
Even without the dynamic bass boost system operating, music played on this system is very "rich", and about the best I have ever heard on a portable Radio/CD player.

I was a little disappointed with sound quality from the FM tuner. Mine suffers from slight distortion and just noticeable background hiss, even when tuned to strong signals. But you have to listen pretty carefully to hear it.

The "Power Meter" is a bit of a gimmick as it displays "internal" signal strength, and not the output power to the speakers.

I have owned another Philips potable Radio/CD/Tape player for a long time, and the only problem I have had with it is some of the mechanical slider switches and equaliser controls are starting to wear out. This model doesn't use sliders, so I am expecting to be as reliable as all my other Philips equipment.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A note about MP3 CDs
Review: OK, just to clarify. The AZ2555 does NOT play MP3s burned onto a CD, only via USB cable streaming from a PC. There is a newer virtually identical Philips "Expanium" model (AZ2558) that is exactly the same except for the fact that it can play MP3s from CD. Unless you looked very closely for the "Expanium MP3-CD" logo on the front of the boombox and on the product's box, you wouldn't know that they were two different products.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Not a happy bunnny
Review: Okay, saw the rave reviews for this product, then bought it for my birthday. What a dissapointment! The right speaker has a high frequeny rattle which gets really annoying on a unit which is supposed to produce bass with no distortion. So I took it back, was given a replacement, and it sounded exactly the same! Im going back today to buy the sony equivalent, all i can say is im gutted. The unit has great features, if only they hadnt messed up the sound.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Nice boombox, but not perfect
Review: The AZ2555 is a good sounding boombox with useful auxillary and PC-link capabilities, and one that's easy to transport if not exactly portable. I would give it a full five stars if it weren't for the minor quirks I've encountered with the unit:
1. The provided USB cable is short (about three and a half feet).
2. If you press "play" on the main unit rather than the remote, sometimes the remote playback features don't work.

I have been unable to get the unit to play MP3 CDs -- I placed a number of 192+kbps VBR tracks that I'd ripped from my CDs using LAME onto an MP3 CD organized into folders, but the boombox treated the entire CD as one large data track and was unable to play it. Perhaps it works with CBR MP3s at certain bitrates only.

I will note, however, that the AZ2555 worked right out of the box with WinAMP 5.x on my computer. No special drivers or plug-ins were required. Of course, the boombox is treated essentially as a set of USB speakers (and thus works with pretty much everything), but WinAMP was able to accept most of the button-presses on the Philips remote without user configuration. "Shuffle" was incorrectly treated as a pause button, but being able to switch shuffle on and off via a remote isn't enough reason for me to switch from WinAMP to MusicMatch.

In short, I'm pleased with my purchase -- the unit's sound quality is excellent for the price and it works pretty well, all things considered.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: amazing
Review: USB PC Link: software has not yet passed xp logo test as of july 03, but is a cool idea, you play your music through musicmatch, your whole computer can store music to listen to.

gameport: works great with ps2, the gamecube doesn't really work. MOH: frontline was so loud and the attack scene in the movie pearl harbor was great.

mp3 cd support would have been nice... :(

wOOx: this is cool, sounds great for bass, it moves when it is kranked up loud, real neat.

nice controls, nice remote. looks very cool.

not to bad sizewise left to right, but very deep, little klunky.

overall, good sound, good looks, good product, 5 stars.


<< 1 2 >>

© 2004, ReviewFocus or its affiliates