Kensington SX 3000R Flat Panel iPod Speakers

Reviews: Multimedia

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Kurtis Kronk
Brian
Kensington
Apr. 4, 2007

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General Usage

I'm relatively pleased with the design of Kensington's SX 3000R, but there are a few things that bug me. First of all, the size is a little much for me, personally. I feel like for the quality of sound, the unit doesn't really need to be so wide, and furthermore, I think that since a flat panel loudspeaker is implemented, the overall footprint should be much shallower than it is.

There is also a limited selection of buttons on the device itself compared to the remote, though it's not really a big deal considering you can perform the same functions on the iPod itself ! with the exception of the FM mode, bass boost, and power button. Why Kensington chose not to implement the FM and power functions on the device itself perplexes me. The bass boost is utterly useless and has no noticeable effect in my testing, so I couldn't care less about that missing from the main unit. Back to the remote, I think its design is trying a bit too hard to mimic the speaker unit. A plain flat remote without high-heel thing going on would have been preferred as this one feels really awkward in your hand (yeah I know, I'm just being picky now).

I was quite pleased with the FM mode offered by the SX 3000R. The quality was nice, clear and free of interference or static. To tune to a station, you use the seek buttons on the remote and the current station is displayed on the iPod's LCD. There is no smart seek mode, and you have to seek in .1 increments, but you can hold the button down to seek faster. I should note that if you don't have your iPod docked, you will not be able to listen to the radio.

If you so desire, you can use these speakers as an alarm to wake up and fall asleep to your favorite music (though there are certainly more fully featured iPod alarm clock radios out there). The user's guide does a good job of briefly explaining what you need to do to take advantage of this functionality, so make sure to give it a look if you're interested.

As a side note, the glossy black plastic exterior of the speakers is a bit of a dust and smudge magnet, as is the case for pretty much anything that is a glossy black.

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Page 1: Introduction & First Impressions
Page 2: General Usage
Page 3: Sound Quality
Page 4: Conclusion

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