JBL Radial iPod Speaker > Reviews (1)

Firstly, let me tell you a little about my husband- he adores gadgets and electronics but will only accept the highest quality, which normally means the highest price too!

He has Harman Kardon and Naim amps with a Kef surround sound system amongst other items. We don't buy things in our house unless they have been reviewed to within an inch of their lives as I firmly believe "quality will last - rubbish won't."

OK - the new "must have" gadget was an ipod docking station, and my job was to review and find, hopefully, the best one out there which wasn't a B&W Zeppelin as we couldn't afford that, although he was salivating over that one...

Having reviewed a number of different stations my attention was drawn to the JBL Radial for a variety of reasons.

The sound quality

We have a fab home system but sometimes something that sounds good but is a little more compact and mobile would be really useful without having to resort to my nieces boombox! In my opinion the sound quality we get from this machine is outstanding, and we were both incredibly surprised! I like a little more base than the Naim system provides for example (which is why I prefer the Harman Kardon) and this little thing really delivers. It fills a room easily with pleasantly balanced sound although if you crank the volume to max it does distort a little - not that this matters though as your ears are bleeding by this point and distortion is the least of your concerns...have I mentioned it can go really loud??

We have played a variety of music from Michael Buble to Lily Allen with classical thrown in for good measure and it copes beautifully with each different style.

Aesthetics

OK this was more my thing than my husbands, hands up there. I didn't want some ugly box sitting in my dining room like a large white or in this case black elephant staring at me...there are an amazing amount of ugly looking docking stations out there you know. I saw this one (albeit I preferred the black version, which we eventually bought) and really liked the look of it, I know it looks a bit like the gate out of Stargate but I didn't hold it against it as overall I found it very attractive and unusual to look at.

It's not the smallest of stations that we could have got (12" x 10.5"), there is a JBL micro radial but having read the reviews of both I steered clear of the micro, but it's not so big that it doesn't sit very nicely on the shelf of one of my bookcases and it certainly is a talking point.

Compatibility

It is likely in the future my husband is going to want a new iPod, in fact it's pretty much inevitable let's face it, so I wanted something which would be usable with a variety of music machines per se. This model is OK with not just iPods but MP3 players and a host of other things such as lap tops and computers so I felt pretty secure that it should outlast his current iPod classic with video.

Durability

Overall everything about this docking station so far seems perfectly fine but I can see that there are a couple of areas where we are being a little more gentle, for example, where you stand the iPod into its slot and where you plug the power cable in.

The place where you put the iPod itself looks like you could easily damage it if you don't get the iPod in the right place first time and sometimes you don't - best to not wiggle it around but take it off and try again, it just takes practise. With the power cable at the back that can be truly irritating as it doesn't take much to dislodge it and there isn't much you can do about that apart from not moving it around whilst playing music.

Value for Money

For me personally it was fantastic value for money as I got one half price, however we had already decided to purchase this at the full price which currently is just under £160 from Amazon. When we heard it for the first time, I would have expected it to have cost a lot more and therefore would heartily recommend it to anyone.