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JVC NXPN7 Portable Audio System with Dual iPod Dock

JVC NXPN7 Portable Audio System with Dual iPod Dock

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Brand: JVC
Category: CE

List Price: $149.95
Buy New: $121.87
You Save: $28.08 (19%)



New (29)

Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars 9 reviews
Sales Rank: 1286

Media: Electronics
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Shipping Weight (lbs): 6
Dimensions (in): 6.1 x 12.5 x 5.7

MPN: NXPN7
Model: NXPN7
UPC: 046838033438
EAN: 0046838033438
ASIN: B0015A8ZE2

Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours

Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 6-9 of 9
 « PREV  
1 2

4 out of 5 stars Quirky in some ways, but no other way to get two iPhones in one dock!   September 3, 2008
My wife has a 1G 16GB iPhone that she carrys in a leather belt holster. Nothing else we found would let her dock the phone without removing the phone from the case. Well, this one does: just leave the adapter out and cram the phone down into the dock.

Which brings me to my first complaint: for the price this should include a full compliment of dock adapters for the various iPods and iPhones.

The different colored lights are somewhat useful because it shows us clearly which dock port to use for each of our phones (hers in the case and my 3G outside of the case.)

The sound is reasonable for a clock radio.

I'm dissappointed that a lot of the functions have to be operated from the remote (sleep timer?) and that the remote is a cheesy "chicklet" type.

Would I buy again? I did! I got a second one for our second bedroom in the house...



4 out of 5 stars Dual IPOD Dock   August 27, 2008
This is something that is very wonderful for individuals with 2 ipods. Other companies need to make more.


3 out of 5 stars Sort of okay, bad interface, strangely engineered   August 10, 2008
 5 out of 5 found this review helpful

Do I like this product? yes and no.

I bought this for the purpose of having a nice alarm clock and charging station for my iphone and ipod touch. It does that. I'm an engineer... I have several complaints. JVC designers didn't do a very good job on several area's, although the overall look, sound, and dual nature is fantastic.

Complaints:
1) Bright display is too bright at night. Wrong color too. It should be red... you can turn off the display (ECO mode) sort of, but then, the ipod charging quits too... so you wake up with ipods not charged. That sucks. There is not a good reason why the display couldn't be fixed. I know, because I've done it myself in commercial products which I've designed.

2) The remote was obviously created by a retarded chimp throwing darts at a chalkboard. The locations of the buttons make no sense whatsoever (ZIPPO!), and there is an ipod looking silkscreen on the front of the membrane of the remote, made to simulate and look like an ipod, but it doesn't behave at all like an ipod. The folks at JVC messed this up greatly; next time JVC, you can hire my cat... she can do better than your dart-tossing monkey. Great main unit JVC, so why did you stop when it came to the remote?

3) I have yet to find a use for the colored lights. It would be cool if they would work like the color organ lights of the 60's and 70's...throbbing in sync to magical mystery tour music, but they don't. They just sort of sit there... doing nothing. They're useless. I would make them pulsate to the music... make the remote double as a bong, and you'd really have something.

4) The time clock, and the AM radio... hard to tell the AM radio from the clock display, because they both have "AM" in them. Again, dumb dumb dumb.

On the plus side, the sound is great for a bedside radio... the aux input is nice (I have an ipod shuffle too). And, the best thing... it has two docks. Docks are nice. They have doors to cover the dock when not in use which is a nice touch.

Most of the functionality is built into the remote. Too bad the remote stinks. Nice radio though.

JVC managers shot the engineer too soon on this product. It could have been so much better; still could be saved. Fix the display brightness problem, make a new remote, and I will overlook the useless lights and AM radio/clock issue. I would have given this 4.5 stars.... but with crappy remote and brightness issue, I give it only 2.5 or 3 stars.



2 out of 5 stars Could Have Been Great, But Instead Fatally Flawed   July 26, 2008
 11 out of 11 found this review helpful

I bought this because I wanted to reduce the clutter of multiple chargers and cords and docks, and I wanted the convenience of a set of powered speakers for my iPhone 3G and clock radio all in one. While I can say that my basic needs were met with this, I can't give it a ringing endorsement for a number of reasons. But before I get into those reasons, a quick basic overview;

The JVC Dual Dock is a fairly compact unit, and the overall quality is fine. Not what I'd expect at this price, but no different than most clock radios. The glossy finish does come off as a bit cheap actually, but overall the unit is handsome. The buttons are clearly labeled and simple to operate, which is nice for those features that can be accessed with the buttons on the unit (more about that later). I'm irked that one of the few buttons on the unit is dedicated to the rather silly and pointless color LED function, but I can't weight that too heavily in the review. The one real downside of the design of the JVC Dual Dock is the power brick; it is absolutely huge. Bigger than I've seen for almost any electronic device ever. Maybe that won't matter for some folks, but in my case I put the unit on my bookshelf and am not able to put the power brick on the floor because I have to run the cable through the back of the bookcase. The power cords do not detach from the unit, so that means I have to have the power brick hidden behind the unit on the bookshelf. Though not removable, the power cord is plenty long from both plug to brick and brick to unit, so hiding the brick somewhere shouldn't be too much trouble for most.

The sound quality is adequate. I would compare the sound quality to a $20-$30 set of computer speakers. But for a bedroom system where high audio quality isn't a necessity, this unit is just fine. It does have a bass enhancement feature, but I found that this decreased audio quality. The radio has good reception with the two included antenna (one FM and one AM).

The clock features are just a little better than your average $20 clock radio. Up to three alarms can be set, each with its own setting of daily, everyday or weekday. And each can be set with its own source for alarm, iPod (#1 or #2) or radio. This is pretty handy for couples, for instance, who have separate wakeup times (which I imagine is the primary audience for this device). While this sounds great, it falls a little short of what it could have been, since having 5 or even 10 alarms would have been just as easy, but added a lot of flexibility to those with more complicated schedules. And when it comes to clock/alarm integration with the iPod, there are some real problems. For example, the alarm function does not work when the unit is left "on" at night. So if you like to listen to your iPod when you're drifting off to sleep, and like to wake to the radio, you can't do it unless you take extra care to set up the sleep timer on the clock radio.

When an iPod is used as an alarm, the unit wakes and presses "play" for you, then fades the music in from 0 to whatever volume is set under the alarm function (nice detail, that - you don't have to wake to the same volume that you last used). But if you want to wake to a particular song on the iPod you'll have to leave that song playing on the iPod or set the alarm on the iPod seperately to have it play. The alarm on the iPod will not wake the JVC - only the JVC can wake the iPod. This makes sense, but is somewhat complicated for those that like to wake to particular music. Of course, you can just leave the JVC unit on and set the iPod itself to be the alarm, but this would only work with one of the iPods because the source would have to be set the night before.

All functions are handled through a small, one line monochrome LCD on the unit. The interface is done through hierarchical menus that, once you understand, are fairly easy to navigate. But there is nothing graphical to suggest that the menus are hierarchical, so it does take a bit of practice to understand exactly what is going on, especially when setting alarms.

The remote is where we start running into the fatal flaws of this unit. Sadly, JVC made the choice to have some functions - almost all functions, actually, accessible only from the remote. Philosophically I have a big problem with this, since remotes can be lost or broken and then you're left with a big expensive paperweight. To add insult to injury, JVC decided that of the limited buttons on the unit itself, one of them is dedicated to the color LEDs, which is just stupid. But what's most egregious is that the remote is one of the worst remotes I've ever used. The buttons are the sealed sort - all under a common piece of plastic. Very cheap feeling with almost no tactile response. Half the time or more, the buttons don't even respond, which makes setting alarms or tuning the radio station incredibly tedious and frustrating.

So overall the unit is pretty good at providing an easy way to get rid of clutter and bring iPod music into the bedroom, and it throws in some nice clock features. But its reliance on the poorly designed remote kills this unit dead. Until that is fixed I would not recommend anyone buy this at any price. And speaking of price this should be closer to $80-$90, better reflecting the value of a $20 clock radio combined with a $20 set of speakers with a pair of $30 docks.


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