For those of you with iPod HIFIs, consider yourself lucky to have such a sweet piece of equipment. For those of you who don't have it, then you better act quickly because as of a couple weeks ago, Apple has stopped production and has discontinued the product. And I can imagine people making a killing on eBay with overpriced units.
Anyways, on with the review. First, my unboxing session:
Here's the box opened up. You'll be greeted with a black box on top of the styrofoam packaging that protects the HIFI.
Inside this black box slides out two other boxes: The AC power cable and the accessories box which holds the remote and an assortment of dock holders.
The remote is a VERY nice thing, and if you're like me and you have an 8-month toddler to attend to whenever you arrive home from a day's work this will help you control your music from anywhere around your room without having to walk up to the HIFI. The range of control is very impressive, and I hardly need to even point at the HIFI to control it! It works better than my SONY Bravia's remote does with the TV! If this thing uses IR (infra red), then thats pretty good, strong, bouncy IR.
With the iPod HIFI you get a bunch of dock cradles (I just call em dock holders) to fit a range of iPod models. For those of you with 10GB 3rd gen iPods, number 6 will work best for you.
When you remove the top styrofoam packaging, the iPod HIFI is there in all it's wrapped-up-in-yet-some-more-protective-packaging glory. Take the HIFI out from the box, and then out of this nice, soft styro bag. Keep the bag yo -- you'll need it when you want to take the HIFI around (although I don't recommend long walks out in the ghetto with this heavy beast!)
The HIFI has yet some more protective stuffing between the speaker grille. Take this out before testing out the unit. Once you take it out, it's pretty hard to put back in place though... so don't bother with it once it's off -- it's ok to put back in the box with just the styro bag.
Once the iPod HIFI is out of all the whitey-nice protective packaging, it's time to rrrrRRRUMBLE.
Sound Quality
The iPod HIFI is soooooooo clean. In its appearance AND its sound quality. I've tested the iPod HIFI against the JBLs and the BOSE's and the Harman Kardons and still the iPod HIFI comes out with the nicest, cleanest treble and a very, very nice, resounding bass (especially with Bass Boost enabled in the speaker/HIFI menu on the iPod). I tested this with Justin Timberlake's "What Goes Around Comes Around" around 5 minutes and 20 seconds into the song where the bass punches and trails in very low. Only the iPod HIFI was able to play the low, trailing bass whereas all the other speaker systems just punched the sound (without the low, trailing bass). Overall, the other speaker systems come out as muffled compared to the HIFI. The HIFI is well balanced.
Speaker Power
The only problem that the iPod HIFI faces is power. In a fairly sized room it does alright. But I tested my HIFI in a classroom with 4 students chatting away with their business. With just 4 people the detail in the bass seemed to disappear in all the chit chat. Also, at louder volume levels the overall bass detail was lost. The HIFI is great in a living room or bedroom, but not really a good performer if you want a mini disco party (get about 4 HIFIs for that, LOL).
iPod Integration
On older 5th gen iPods, an additional menu is added to the iPod's screen when the iPod is plugged in. This is the "Speakers" menu. The menu contains controls for the iPod's backlight (on all the time, off, or when a key is pressed), sound enhancements (bass or treble priority) and full-screen Album Art. With the iPod Touch you find this additional menu in the Setting Menu named appropriately as "iPod HIFI". On the Touch though, there's only the sound enhancements listed in this menu... one might wish they can turn off the backlight completely on the touch when in a dark place, but that isn't the case as the backlight will go on when using the remote or any other function. You basically can't use the iPod Touch without a backlight whatsoever. As for Album art, it doesn't get any bigger than you want on the iPod Touch! As for future integration with future iPod models, I don't see why Apple should create an iPod without HIFI support... that would fetch a class-action suit.
Surface
This baby scratches easily. If you thought keeping your 5th gen iPod free of scratches was bad, you may as well give up with the HIFI. It's going to get scratched eventually, no matter what you do. Unless you keep it and somehow play it in that nice, styro bag.
Batteries
The HIFI can turn portable ghetto blaster with 6 D-sized batteries. Unfortunately for me I had bought some el-cheapo batteries from a company that calls itself GP (Green Power). They didn't last even a minute at medium volume!! Not one minute! I suppose if I had gotten the 'regular' batteries which were 4 times the price of these GP batteries the HIFI might have lasted the 6 hours that Apple advertises. Sorry folks, I'm not spending nearly a thousand baht on batteries to test this. I'll wait till I'm about to take the HIFI on vacation first, then I'll get rechargeable batteries -- and you can be sure they won't be the "GP" branded ones (I'm thinking Energizer for this).
3rd party Players and Audio Input
Yes! The iPod HIFI has a duo optical input (via mini toslink)/audio in port. This allows you to connect any other player through a 3mm audio cable or an optical cable with mini toslink. You can even switch between connected devices with the remote by pressing and holding the MENU button on the remote for a couple seconds. With external players, this simply mutes the player connected via the audio in port when you switch to the iPod, but pauses the iPod when when you switch to the external source. If you're feeling really creative, you can connect TWO iPods and control both with 2 remotes - one remote for the HIFI and one remote for an iPod dock connected to the input. If you read the manual you'll also find that you can lock the remotes with a single device (so your remotes don't try to control both devices at the same time).
That's all for now with my iPod HIFI review. The one last thing I would like to say is that I wish I could have bought TWO of these! And if I didn't have any more use for the second one, I could always sell it for a bloated price on eBay!
Linear Mode
