Cheap Sharper Image Beetle CD Stereo with FM Tuner (GT112YEL) (Electronics) Price

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Customer Reviews of Sharper Image Beetle CD Stereo with FM Tuner (GT112YEL)

Looks great, sounds good, nearly perfect
I just bought the beetle bug stereo because i am a HUGE lover of beetle bugs. The stereo is very adorable, and, despite some people's opinion, the sound quality is very good. Yes, it is a little hard to position because of the stereo's speakers, and the fact that you can never tell what radio station you're on are a little bothersome. But if you are someone looking for a stereo for decoration and just to listen to your fav songs on, go with this one. If you are the type who buys stereos for parties and stuff, don't use this!! it was made for just a couple people to listen to while they hang out, not to blast the bass at a party.

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Looks great, sounds terrible
Like many Sharper Image products, this one is over-hyped, stylish, but under-achieving. It's cute, especially if you are into the New Beetle fashion. (I am.) The CD tray is hidden in the bumper, and there are a total of five speakers: four in the wheels and one on the underside. The controls are under the hood. The head and tail lights turn on when you power up the player.

But, alas, the sound is terrible. It's worse than my 10-year-old Sony radio alarm clock! Whether you throw pop, rock, jazz, classical, or anything at it, the boombox delivers mono-like sound. Words can't describe my initial horror at the poor sound quality when I played my first CD in this... It's that bad!

The controls are also very limited. Get this: there's no way to set your favorite FM stations (there's no AM)! Each time you want to switch a station, you have to use the "scan" feature, which is quite bad at picking up good stations. So the FM part is pretty useless. Well, the entire boombox is useless because the sound is just bottom terrible!

In the end, this makes a nice piece of furniture, and when hooked up to a set of headphones you get decent, but not great, sound, but that defeats the purpose of having a boombox. It also has a line-out jack, which I did not test before returning it to the store. Oh, and there's no handle, so you can't take it outdoors with you.

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Terrible sound quality
I owned the alarm clock version, and as alarm clocks rarely have good sound quality, I was not too displeased with the product. It came with a remoted control with a snooze button, which was just decadent. However, when the CD played there was always a soft, high-pitched whistling sound which was just unbearable. This may have been an individual product defect.

More troublesome is the idea of buying this to actually listen to music or the radio. Since the music comes out of the speakers on the side, it is difficult to find a good position for this little Bug, so that you can hear the sound well. Furthermore, the speakers simply are of terrible quality.

I give the product 2 stars rather than 1 because let's face it--it is ADORABLE, and if you need a radio around your desk or someplace where it will mostly be for show, then go for this product! The controls are intuitive to use--very user friendly. Just don't buy this product for real listening--especially to music, where sound quality matters. This Beetle does not live up to Volkswagon's quality, nor, for that matter, Sharper Image's reputation.