When Sony introduced its first iPod friendly wireless audio system earlier this year, I have quickly acquired the tasteful look of the dock itself, its design and wireless capabilities. There are a gazillion of iPod docks available on the market and some of them simply do not deserve to hold an iPod.
This wireless audio system arrived a few weeks to my house and I gave it a fair use. And since PC Magazine just published their review of it, I thought I would provide a few pictures and thoughts about the system.
This product consists of a few components that come in a pretty big box and being Sony, it is well packed and protected as usual. There is a pretty dock itself, and 2 wireless speakers which I was surprised at first to see, as Sony usually likes to tease you by providing one accessory and eager to sell you more if you want to expand your system. Accessories that came with it were: a remote for the dock, and two more remotes to control your wireless speaker, a bunch of batteries and wireless cartridges. Talking about the latter, those cartridges kind of threw me off and made me think it was 1989, as they look like those Nintendo game cartridges we used to insert in the game consoles. Why didn’t Sony think of integrating those in the speakers and the dock itself (you have to insert the three supplied cartridges in each), left me wondering too…
There is also another little something that sort of made me wonder why it was implemented that way it was …. the on/off function of the dock. You would probably think what could be wrong with it? Well, first of all you won’t find an actual button on the dock itself, instead of it was placed as a little switch(!) on the back of the unit. I thought it was odd.
The rest of the functionality and the use of the S-Airplay went swiftly. The setup was easy and did not require any tinkering or settings to be messed with, it just worked (Apple’s influence and statement, you know). The streaming of the music was also seamless and audio played without any hiccups throughout the house. The speakers could have been a bit more stylish but will leave it to the designers for the next generation.
At the end of the day though, isn’t it all about enjoying the simplicity of use and nice music flowing in the air from room to room? Sony Air-SA20PK certainly delivers that.
