Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

After reading the reviews that were already posted here, I purchased this item with great anticipation. I ended up returning it to Amazon.com within one week. The only thing I enjoyed was the cosmetic appearance and light weight for carrying. I was terribly disappointed in several important features. Most importantly, the sound quality was surprisingly poor. It only sounded reasonably good with the "sound virtualizer" turned on. The four preset equalizer options always worsened the sound. Classical instrumental music sounded okay, but music containing vocals had a serious balance problem; the vocals were too soft in contrast to the instruments and it was quite difficult to hear the lyrics clearly. I tested the same CDs on an older, much cheaper boombox and did not encounter the same problem. Many important features are only accessible from the remote control, so if the remote became damaged or lost, many of these functions would also be lost. The interface is not user-friendly or intuitive. For example, there is no general on/off or power button for turning on the CD player. You have to load a CD and then press play in order to "wake up" the boombox. Then, if you want to display the summarized track information or the total playing time, you have to STOP the CD while it is playing. You cannot use the search button to go backwards from the first track on a CD to the last one; I therefore could not access hidden bonus tracks on a collection of newly-released CDs that happen to have them hidden before the first track instead of after the final track. Most CD players have search buttons that do allow you to search backwards from the first track or forward from the last track to the first. Many of the other features on this box (including programming a desired sequence of tracks or accessing the radio presets) also require a bizarre set of steps using the remote control. I found myself having to refer repeatedly to the user manual, and it would've taken me a long time to memorize the steps. The designers should have put more control buttons right on the box and not just on the remote control. The display is small and poorly lit. The cassette player is also rather poorly made. I tried to listen to an audiobook and heard too much white noise when I set the volume high enough to comfortably hear the narrator (not very loud). The cassette player is only for "normal setting" tapes (not high position or metal). The radio had fair-to-poor reception despite the digital tuner. This boombox actually made me want to turn off my music or book, and that is why I decided to return it.