Sony CMT-U1 BT > Reviews (2)

I bought this after my previous ancient hi-fi stopped working. It was quite expensive at just under £300 but I liked the look of it. I bought it because of how much smaller it was compared to my old one. I also have a thing about silver as most of my other electrical's are that colour.

I like the way that the buttons are not too cluttered on the Hi-Fi, on the top of it there is a power button, eject button and a standby light. There are a few buttons on the front but they are not hard to get the hang of. There are buttons for volume, sound customisation, Tuner search and there is a hole for USB connection, Headphones jack and a remote control sensor for use with the supplied remote control. The remote control requires 2 AA batteries which are also supplied. Some of the settings you can change are a little more complex than others but not hard to figure out. The Hi-Fi itself weighs less than 10 kg, the main unit is 24.1cm x 16cm x 21.8cm and each speaker is 24.1cm x 15cm x 22.5cm. It is a cool silver colour with matching speakers. It also has a very modern and Hi-tech looking LCD display so you can see what songs you are listening to.

The stereo takes 1 cd at a time, there is no cassette player and it doesn't take DVD's. There is a USB plug and play option which is handy, if you have a USB memory stick that you use with a computer you can plug it in to the Hi-Fi and play any music tracks that are stored on it. The Hi-Fi can play back from CD's / CD-r's and CD-RW's. It will play MP3 cd's and audio cd's. There is an FM/AM tuner with 30 channels already preset.

You also get a Bluetooth transmitter and receiver that allows you to listen to music from a Bluetooth mobile phone or similar device using a wireless connection. The system supports A2DP and AVRCP profiles. If you want to listen to music from another device via Bluetooth it has to be within a metres distance from the Hi-Fi.

When you start using the stereo you have to plug in the two way speakers and aerial. Once turned on you can set the clock which I found very easy to do. If you want to listen to a cd you simply pop one in and press play on either main unit or remote. When done you simply eject. To set up wireless connectivity there is a great user manual that is included in the box that will take you through it step by step. You can listen to any of the preset radio stations, although depending on where you live depends on what radio stations you will receive, it's really easy to tune in other stations as it does it automatically. You are able to adjust the sound of your music and even the text that is displayed on the LCD screen. There is a sleep timer that will turn the Hi-Fi off at a certain time if it's set.

I have really enjoyed using the stereo with all the excellent features but I do feel that it fails on not having a tape deck, although not many people buy tapes anymore they do still own some. I think its great that you can wirelessly connect to a pc or Bluetooth device to listen to music files and it does take a wide range of CD's. The quality of music is fantastic and the radio stations do not crackle or sound distorted. The usability is pretty good, its very easy to get used to it, so far I have had no problems. I like the fact that it doesn't take up to much space and looks very modern. All in all I would say that there is a lot more good points to bad. I would definitely recommend it to someone who wants a small hi-tech stereo.