Good sound. Not great. A small sub-woofer would help a lot.

EQ sucks ! A manual EQ would have been better then the 2 mode EQ on this thing.

I have a audio system sever thousands of dollars in my office. I use this the XR-M99 in the living room. I like the blue light and the 3 piece design. The sound is great as long as your not expecting a sub-woofer type of sound. It was a gift from my mother. I read that someone has had trouble with this units quality. I am not sure where the units made but I understand that more and more stuff are no longer made in Japan. I try to avoid Mexican and European electronics from many personal nightmare experiences. Maybe this unit is made in Finland like my phone. =)

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JVC mini home stereo system from about 12 years ago. The old JVC actually sounds better then the new Aiwa.

Looks cute, small.

Sound is horrible. Remote can only get pre-programmed stations, so you can't surf.

Good thing I got this for my girlfriend. She thinks it is cute. This is a piece of WIZ/Circuit City crap that is overpriced at the $399 I paid. Expecially so when Denon and those guys are coming out with under $500 sets that sound reasonable.

This is for the boom-box set.

Easy to learn controls
Small footprint
Nice sound
Relatively good remote

Q-Surround
Speakers are poor at extreme volume ranges

I was not looking for anything terrbily impressive, just something that I could use in my apartment. I have had it for close to a year now and I love it. I purchased Aiwa's Powered Subwoofer that can attach to the system along with the Tape Deck (additional component). The speakers are not the best in the world and unless the volume is turned up a bit start dropping the highs and lows pretty badly, but for the size they produce quality sound. The Q-Surround feature often makes the music sound worse rather than better, but that is easily turned off. All in all it is a great system for a small apartment and a person who is not too concerned that their music sound "perfect".

3 piece component, 3 speakers, 3d sim sound,

Speakers a a tad position sensitive,

Personally I don't know what the guy in the first review is talking about. the XR-M99 is a higher end system with good sound. I researched plenty of systems of all price ranges below $500. JVC, Panasonic, AIWA, Yamaha. All rated very well by yahoo and this network. I debuted each one at the store after reading reviews online. I bought the XR-M99 for my bedroom and to use as a speaker system with my PC. I was looking for good dynamic range and resonable features like EQ settings and a remote along with an AUX input. This system is worth the price I paid. I bought open box at CC so I got it for 199.99 (299 reg. price). I would have bought it at reg' price -they only had the floor model. The speakers are impressive sounding. The EQ setting leave a little to de desired, although I have only had the system a few days-not much time to test it out. The 3d simulated sound is awesome-it really fills the whole room well. I really did consider preformance over looks in this new-clad exec system market. I looked really hard at the panasonic MO3 exec system, but the AIWA has more power, better speakers, but is 50 bucks more. If your looking to spend 300 on a mini system I reccomend checking this one out. If it had a tape deck or Mini disc it would have gotten 5 stars from me.

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a long time ago I had a sony mini system

great sound

Put simply, this thing breaks down a lot. Currently neither the CD or tape player work. I have a smaller Aiwa system that is just as bad - my mistake.

I'll never buy another Aiwa product.

Impressive looks and design.
User friendly controls.
Unit has a general "solid" feel and is well made.
Quality sound at an affordable price.
Sleep mode great for bedroom.

Moderate pre-selected equalizer settings.
Avarage to better sound quality.

The product I was looking for was a mini system for
a one bedroom apartment. Not one that was extreme
looking with a million displays and lights. The
Aiwa XR-M99 was generally simple to operate and
sounds pretty good for it's size. When I had guests
over for a party they did'nt have to spend 5 minutes
trying to figure out how to use the system.
It was fusterating trying to tune the equalizer,
due to the fact pre-set settings lacked
flexability and q-surrond was not impressive.
My best results with this product were to
turn off the Q-surrond and pick "pop" style
presetting while setting "bbe" and "t-bas" to
the middle and just let the volume bring the
cd quality sound out.
I would purchace this product again knowing
what I know now about it, the Aiwa XR-M99 would
make a great gift for a student ( that you still
have living with you ) or a casual listener that
wasent over conserned about sound quality.

3d sound fills the room very well. Remote has good range. Speakers have good dynamic range. Eq settings are reasonable.

no mute on remote. Although it is 3 individual components one of the ribbon wires is so short you are forced to stack two of the units.

I am adding to my previous review.
I would like to first respond the other reviewer who purchased this system for his girl-friend. First, you CAN surf radio channels via remote-so his review is inaccurate that way. He claims the sound is horrible. I challange anyone to find a mini system with two 4 inch mids and a very accurate soft dome tweeter in EACH speaker. They also have bass reflex/are ported. Most systems in this mini/exec category have ONE 4 inch and some weak tweeter coupled with some over-powering bass BS, or they're just 'tinny' sounding speakers that are just to damn small; regaurdless of being a "mini" system or not. This system mixes small components with good sized speakers which have excellent dynamic range. The speakers are also constructed very well-they are "heavy"- they have good resonance. Like I said in the previous review, if this had a MD or tape it would have gotten 5 stars. Check out the pro review of this via etown.com or yahoo in shopping/electronics/minisystems.