You see that skeptical look on Stacey’s face? That’s because this combo boombox that plays CD’s DVD’s seems too good to be true, and it is.
Sure, it plays CDs and DVDs, it has a Bluetooth connection for streaming music, and HDMI input for hooking up another video source like a FireTV. It also inexplicably has composite video out. You can even power it with 6 of those chunky D batteries if you want. So what’s the problem?
Aiwa used to be a a reputable audio component manufacturer. In 2002 they were acquired by Sony, who held onto them until 2008. In 2015 the brand name was bough by another company and pretty much like all resurrected electronic brands, the original quality is not there. The holding company counts on the legacy of the old brand name to retain the good will of the consumer. I know it worked on me. Thank god for the return policy.
Although I didn’t test every single function, you have to believe it does everything it says. The bummer is, it sounds like crap.
You can pick these things up anywhere from $100-$200. My thought when I bought this was my old Aiwa equipment sounded great, and if $200 was the ceiling, a temporary deal on Amazon for $99 during Black Friday was probably a steal. Most of the listings are for $129, $149. or $199 these days. I was mostly interested in the CD playing aspect as a gift for my son. It’s hard to find a decent CD playing boombox these days, even though the format seems to be enjoying a resurgence. I figured if it also played DVD’s that was kind of cool. With the HDMI input I had visions of using it as a monitor for a a Raspberry Pi based arcade emulator I built. Still, I hadn’t seen any Aiwa products in over a decade, so I thought best to test the quality before gifting it, and I’m glad I did.
The first test was a CD, and the result was immediately disappointing. It almost sounded like a bad mono speaker. Even though I immediately knew I was retuning it, I decided it would be fun to pop in an old skate video to see how that worked. The choice was obvious, I went with the Bones Brigade Video Show. I shot a few quick pics, admittedly in low light and with an older iPhone, so they don’t look great, but you get the idea. I was in a rush, trying to get the thing put away before my kid got home. For some reason, It sure was fun seeing the Bones Brigade video show played on a boombox, and hearing the initial audio cues, even if the sound quality was poor.
Surprisingly, the audio quality seemed a little bit better. I didn’t do extensive side by side testing with multiple DVDs though because if it couldn’t deliver with multiple CD’s from different eras, there was no point in keeping it. The video waits on this DVD doesn’t look amazing but that’s probably because the original source was standard definition and the DVD was released before upscaling technology was advanced. In some cases there’s only so much you can do with footage shot on old video formats.
Here’s a product gallery showing some of the features and a few of the mostly bad color choices it comes in. Ultimately it’s a really poor execution of what could have been a really fun, exciting product.
I should also mention, instead of a standard power cord that you might expect from this and of appliance, the power source was a small power brick with a flimsy cord that goes to the back of the unit.