Poor design but might be value for money..., 4 Jan 2005

Features on paper it looks good and it does indeed have DAB and play MP3 cds (one of the few around that does both these things). My issue is not with the technical specs but rather with design. For something supposedly portable (it has a carrying handle it must be intended to be portable) it has a number of flaws..

Batteries: it takes 8 C sized batteries, fair enough its a lot but I guess it needs them... BUT it also takes 4 AA batteries just to preserve the DAB memory and power its feeble clock.

Power lead: move the unit around much and the lead falls straight out the back at any provocation. Then when you grapple the unit to put it back in the cassette drawer and CD hatch both open at the slightest touch leaving you with your CD on the floor and your hands full. The same applies to putting batteries in, you have to turn the unit totally over and can guarantee the same thing will happen. Now I know why it shipped with tape keeping the CD and tape drawer closed!!

DAB: Quality can be poor but this depends on reception and bitrate so I wont blame LG. "No signal" is a frequent sight.

CD: It takes a while to count how many MP3s are on a disc and if you switch to e.g radio and back again it will count them all over again AND forgets where you were up to, so you have to repeatedly press next track to get back there (50 times.... what fun). In a bizarre twist of user interface design if you hold down the next track button it counts up MORE SLOWLY than manually hammering the button! There doesnt seem to be any shuffle mode either.

Tape: Yes I found some old tapes and used them. They played but this deck doesnt have auto reverse.

Sound Quality: poor - the speakers are no more than 3 inches despite LGs liberal use of plastic to pretend otherwise. The sound has almost no bass. Perhaps this is the norm for such units but I find it hard to believe.

Technically its good but I think LG has a real problem with poor design.

Construction: This is a unit that has been made artificially large to try and impress, most of it is empty space. This makes the unit bulky for no added benefit to the consumer. There is an amusing bit of "Engrish" on the front where it talks about "Decording" DAB signals. The headphone socket is tucked away at the back to ensure you have fun accidentally disconnecting the mains lead and ejecting your tape and CD while trying to plug your headphones in.

Display: its blue its not bad but they made the DAB stations scroll so you have to wait a few second for each stations name to scroll into view which makes looking for a particular station painful and annoying. Buttons arent arranged in a particularly good layout.

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