Price Paid:  $142.00 from Circuit City

Summary:
This was a birthday present for my son, but I wanted something that sounded better than the typical boombox. I was very disappointed in the sound of the Sony on sale at $129, and a Philips at slightly less. Very boxy and congested. The Aiwa is much better than these, and was pretty equal to Panasonics and others that were up to $50 more expensive. It has jacks for an extra input, and also subwoofer out. It unfortunately is like a lot of similar products, crammed with useless features. Q-Surround is painful to listen to, the EQ settings are too strong, and even though there are three levels for the bass boost, the lowest of these is still too much. You could eliminate all of these and never miss them.

As far as sound, it's acceptable. Male voices are kind of tubby, it's a bit spitty, and there is no soundstage to speak of. It's not high fidelity, but you at least get a sense of the music, and female vocals are listenable. There is some bass, which is why adding boost at anything other than low volume is intolerable. The FM tuner is not that good, I may play around with a different antenna. And the speaker cable is as thin as you can get. This might be worth an upgrade if I can figure out how to get to it in the speaker. I did not audition enough of the competition to give 5 stars, but there is much worse-sounding stuff out there.

Strengths:
Reasonable sound and good feature list for the price

Weaknesses:
Tuner, speaker cabling

Similar Products Used:
Anything from $90 to $180 at Circuit City