Price Paid:  $99.00 from Sears

Summary:
Despite its nice futuristic looks, the motorized cd acrylic cover and its colorful display. This thing does not reproduce music as it should. The bass is not existent below 200Hz. Cries for the help of a subwoofer. Although it has dome tweeters, the high frequencies seem to fall at 12KHz. Seems like Aiwa performed some restrictions on the sound, specially the bass, to avoid over driving its power amplifier (16Watts/Ch) or speakers. But this measures hurt to death the sound quality. I performed some tests with a subwoofer conected (it provides a line output dedicated for subwoofer connection) and the bass improved greatly. I even conected an Aiwa AM-F70 portable minidisc recorder/player through its AUX input and it sounded much better than the built-in CD Player and Tuner.

In summary. I'll give it 5 stars for its looks. But I have to give it 0 stars for its sound performance.

Now the merciful and interesting thing. I paid $99.00 for it. It was brand new in a sealed box (apparently someone accidentalley marked it as return). I was not interested on it but at this price it looked like a fine deal. For $250 it really deserves a 0 star rating but for $99 I'll give it 3 stars.

Strengths:
Looks like something out of StarTrek Voyager or Enterprise! Colorful display, Nice motorized acrylic (not glass) vertical CD top loading door.

Weaknesses:
Sound. Lacks Cassette or MiniDisc

Similar Products Used:
Panasonic, Sony and other Aiwa's Mini Systems

Price Paid:  $250.00 from Circuit City

Summary:
After searching long and hard for a decent micro system, I had narrowed it down to the Onkyo DWS-500 and Aiwa. I listened to both (classical, modern jazz, new flamenco, and pop music), and they were both close, but at higher volumes, the aiwa system's speakers did not reverberate. Very tight bass even at high volumes. I highly recommend this system. Well placed controls and nice remote unit.

Strengths:
Great 3 way speakers. Tight Bass, not like the thumping unrefined bass of some other systems, Q sound, treble and bass controls, T bass, can choose the color of the display (8 colors)

Weaknesses:
No cassette deck, main unit takes up too much space (due to fan on rear) for a micro system

Price Paid:  $250.00 from Best Buy

Summary:
I am compelled to post this review so that none of you fine people have to undergo the ordeal that I recently met with.
Short Version:
Wanted to buy girlfriend an attractive micro system with reasonable sound quality. She is a music lover but not one to take the time to marvel at the great sound quality in a system. The XR-X7 has a "what is this!" cutting edge look that catches your eye and apparently confuses your ears. I bought this system at Best Buy which means that you have 100 or so competing systems booming all around you so that you have no idea what YOUR system will sound like when you get it home. I had it in storage at my house for a week when I read a helpful (negative) review on epinions.com. Realixing that I had bought it somewhat impulsively and primarily based on it's looks, I went to Circuit City, (smaller...better opportunity to make a judgement) turned off every stereo in my vicinity and played a CD-R copy of The Beta Band's latest......Sound was really offensive. Could not believe that the aesthetics of this system alone had prompted me to make the purchase in the first place.

I have owned an Aiwa system in the past and was very happy with it for a long time. I imagine that the cost incurred to produce a micro system with the XR-X7's interesting features-looks leaves little in the budget to bother with sound refinement.

My story does have a happy ending....
I ended up a happy consumer, now with a JVC FS-7000 in the closet, waiting for xmas and an unassuiming girlfriend. At $50.00 more....there was no decision to be made at all (except maybe for my call to bite the bullet and shop at Tweeter...sharks in that place.).

Hope this review helps somebody this holiday season

Strengths:
Cute, top loading (glass) system with some degree of styling sophistication.

Weaknesses:
The entire audio experiece. Hollow sound and absolutley no bass.

Similar Products Used:
Bose Wave Radio CD
JVC FS-7000