Hitachi AXM77

Author's product rating:   

How is the Sound Quality?	Good
How is the Look & Design?	Excellent
Range of Features	Above Average
Durability	Satisfactory
Value for Money	Good

Advantages:	Very neat  -  seemingly a lot of kit for the money
Disadvantages:	Noisy FM in weak reception areas .  Choosy CD player

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Just when I thought that I’d NEVER think of anything else to write about, being ‘challenged-out’, having used all my ‘any old c**p from A-Z’ options and not a new gadget in sight, there comes a howl from the galley slave.

‘This bloody ghetto blaster in the kitchen’s never played CDs properly – can WE do something about it?’ I like the ‘we’.

Anyhow, some people are never satisfied - I paid good money for that, I’ll have you know – it was all of £12!

OK, so maybe ‘ghetto blaster’ is a bit of an exaggeration - this baby couldn’t blast the ‘ghetto’ of Legoland let alone Harlem.

However, to keep her in the kitchen was obviously going to cost me a few sheckels more than £12 this time, so off I set, in search of a ‘proper’ mini hi-fi, possibly with separate speakers, and a decent FM section and CD player. If some kind person were to throw in a remote control and make it come in at under £50, I’d only be too happy to take one off their hands.

So, after all the nasty things I’ve said about DSG (Dixons, Currys and PC World) in the past, this is where I end up, buying a Hitachi AX-M77 CD Micro System for £49.99. I have to say, that for something costing 50 knicker, I was only expecting to come home with something, shall we say, a bit more ‘own brand’, a bit more ‘Matsui’ let’s say.

The purchase bit was easy – they were piled five-high at the end of a display cabinet, and not even the Currys assistant in Hounslow would have dared say ‘….and would you like an extended warr…..’ at these prices, or at least, maybe the sales pep talk they’d just been given (I got there as they opened their doors) had been just too much to take on board all in one go. Maybe it was the ‘go ahead, make my day’ look I was giving him.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

I have to say that the packaging was enormous, which at least bodes well for ruling out any ‘D.O.A.s’ due to damage in transit, and thankfully, this proved to be true.

The system is, as anticipated, in three parts, with two identical loudspeakers, each with a couple of metres of cable, and the main unit. The latter is designed to work from the mains-only, with one of those detachable two-pin leads so popular with most portables. The mains plug itself is moulded, as you’d expect these days (I later had to cut this off, just to pass the cable through a work surface in the cause of a neat installation, but no matter, that was my decision). You still need three AA batteries to maintain the radio section’s tuning memory though.

That other item on my cheeky wish list, a remote control, was also present. No batteries are actually supplied.

First impressions show the unit to be an almost all matt-silver affair, which is, I suppose a neutral enough scheme to fit in with most decors.

All three main units are oval in frontal cross section, and the speakers have removable facias, although why you’d want to expose speaker cones to kitchen fumes and the occasional UFO when hers-truly is having a ‘funny half hour’ with the liquidiser, I don’t know.

SPECIFICATION

Even now, this hardly represents much of a power boost at 5 watts per channel but it’s loud enough to drown out Ruth’s singing.

The radio section has both FM and AM (medium wave) bands – 10 stations from each can be stored in memory.

The CD section has a three-beam laser, which seems to play most discs OK, with the exception of badly soiled or scratched ones, and some of our CD-Rs, so in this respect, it’s only a margin better than what we’ve ousted, which was starting to get VERY choosy.

There is also provision for an ‘AUXilliary’ input, say an MP3 player, or maybe a TV. You can tell which input you’ve selected by the background colour to the illuminated display – AM/FM is red, CD is blue and AUX is mauve (no doubt created by switching both of the former on at the same time)

The rear panel provides for an output to a ‘sub woofer’, although it seems unlikely that anyone would have one of those in the kitchen.

The FM antenna plugs in, although not through a standard co-axial socket; this is a pity, which I’ll come to later.

You can also connect the supplied AM loop antenna, but this is a bulkier affair and can be seen sticking out from the rear of the main unit.

The main unit boasts a headphone jack on one side.

The display has a clock and you can set a sleep timer to turn the music off after a selected interval – there is NO alarm clock facility, so it’s use at the bedside is limited to those that can wake up for themselves

WHAT DOES IT SOUND LIKE?

Ah, yes, the acid test. I have to say, that sound quality-wise, I’m quite impressed – with the so-called ‘X-Bass’ button pressed, it sounds a lot bigger than it really is. You can also fiddle with EQ (equalisation) to suite the tonal balance to Classic>Rock>Pop>Normal, there being no actually bass and treble controls. Speaker placement is quite critical for getting the best from them as with any stereo – now that mine are on top of the kitchen cupboards they sound a bit more plasticky than they did when they were at eye (or is it ear?) level under test.

The circular volume knob only needs twisting and holding there, for the volume to change – don’t try rotating it, it’s not meant to!

My major gripe is with radio reception – since they only supply you with a ‘bit of wire’ for an FM antenna, which you are free to deploy in any convenient vaguely upwards direction, you’d need to be very near to a transmitter to enjoy noise-free stereo FM reception. Clearly, a combination of being 15 miles from Crystal Palace with built-up area all the way between and being installed downstairs is expecting too much. Even switched to mono, the reception can tend to come and go, although the background hiss is totally squelched. This wouldn’t be so bad if the antenna socket was a standard one so that those with access to a ‘real’ antenna could take advantage of it. Curiously, the clarity of the tuning improves if you put your hand on the unit, but a) I’m not standing like that all morning and b) I’m not standing like that all afternoon either; besides which, if you stand around leaning on something in our kitchen, you get given something to do.

Equally annoying is the fact that some stations react well to the vertical placement of the ‘bit of wire’, which is how I’ve fitted it, up the inside of a cupboard, but others, Radio 4 in particular seem to prefer a horizontal placement, which I can’t do, unless I tack on another bit of wire to hide across the top of the cupboards in question.

I’ve tried the unit upstairs and it’s fine there, so anyone in a first floor flat will reap more benefits than I am at the moment – at least you could switch the radio to stereo!

UPDATE 14/11/04 - As you'll see in the comments, Sweary has had good results by lengthening the wire or connecting it to some suitable other metalwork, so this is what I have done too. I can now at least get noise free reception, at least on mono, and some of the stereo sounds OK too

Given those provisos, and that you do need nice clean, preferably shop-bought CDs, it’s a good unit that’s nice to have around, especially if you go to the trouble of hiding the wires wherever possible – as I said before, my speakers are atop the kitchen cupboards, and the main unit is on one of those open shelves that so often go on the ends of wall cupboards.

Do check out the space needed by the sideways-hinged ejection of the CD tray to the right-hand side before doing anything permanent, like drilling holes to pass cables through work tops though. You need to leave about 4 inches to enable you to get the CD in and out without too much contortion on your part.

CONCLUSION

Ironically, this only represents a slight upgrade to what we had, but that’s mainly down to my own lack of FM signal quality in the kitchen, which has dogged every single radio we’ve used there – at least CDs now sound like they’re stereo since the speakers are six feet apart!

My first instinct, which was to say ‘phew, not bad for 50 quid’ as I got it out of the box is only a trifle tarnished by experience.

p.s. The remote control doesn’t float, so don’t try this at home kiddies.