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The speakers are pretty bland.not much range. The screen is hard to read also when using the CD player. I expected something a little "beefier" for the price. Beyond that, it is great to have a "portable" satellite radio now.
I now have to buy aux speakers so that the music sounds half way decent. So why are they there. I swear that now it doesn't even sound like it's in stero.
The speaker sound is below average, any 30 dollar boombox sounds better and can be turned up louder. I love Sirius but hate this boombox. Where do I start.
The remote has volume up and down buttons but they don't work and the company says they were not made to work. The remote control is the worst ever. The battery casing easily breaks and the springs push the batteries out so hard it is near impossible to fix.
STAY AWAY FROM IT.
The products are poor, the repairs are poorer and the customer service is non existant. DO YOUR HOMEWORK BEFORE BUYING FROM THIS COMPANY. They will not refund anything, even if your product dies twice in the first 9 weeks.
I wrote to them several months ago and did not receive any response. ALL of the same problems, right down to not being able to receive KSEG.I had a conversation with some PR people from Sirius about this and they directed me to write to the manufacturer, US Electronics in New York. And I am NOT even close to their transmitter(s).Then there is KSEG 96.9; which I can not receive at all. Typically in a radio receiver design you have to choose between good selectivity (ability to select one channel and reject adjacent channels) and good sensitivity (ability to receive weak broadcasts).
But I used the same set of (dead) batteries to play CDs (at least when they'd play) for well over a week at a fairly high volume.The CD player is not without its problems either. Then I found out the same unit was on sale at Costco. I was out in the forest recently; a good distance away from any terrestrial transmissions. The fact that the XS027 does not have an external FM antenna (nor AM antenna) was surprising. For example KHWD 93.7 comes in just as good when the receiver is tuned to 93.4, 93,5, 93.6, 93.7 or 93.8 MHz. The new unit works so identical to the prior unit it is scary. Sirius came in just fine.
Once off, the load on the batteries was removed and so the satellite receiver powered back on. But if I turned the volume up too high, without warning, the satellite receiver simply powered OFF. EVERY other receiver I have (including some that cost less than $10) pick them up just fine (on 96.9).What gives. On and off like a flasher.
And it is not the only station to do that. This design is so bad that it can not even be used for the purpose for which it was sold. Combine that with the fact I live in the Northern California (Sacramento area) where there are an abundant number of 50K Watt stations on the air, I the last thing I expected was not being able to pick up a very strong local station.But to my dismay, the AM/FM receiver design in the XS027 is pathetic. Obviously if the batteries are not brand spanking new there is not enough power to operate the satellite receiver.
I have been a broadcaster and electronics product design engineer for over 30 years. I am in their grade A area, but their signal will not lock in on the XS027. Well there is a slight bit of truth to that, but there are issues there too. The AM/FM "radio" in this model is pure junk. The spec claims to have a 45 second ESP, but even with the unit sitting solid on a table operating from AC power, CDs often skip, jump or stop playing altogether.After all these troubles I decided that I must have a bad unit.
I was down in a canyon and unable to pull in anything on AM/FM (no surprise). So I returned my unit to Best Buy and bought an entirely new unit from Costco. Must I give this unit 1 star. NO sensitivity AND NO selectivity.Oh I suppose you really dont care about the AM/FM receiver since you figured that everyone would just use the satellite receiver. It deserves ZERO stars.I purchased XACT model XS027 Boom Box from BEST BUY.
KSEG's signal is "best" on the XS027 when I tune to 96.7. I figured that perhaps it had a little bit better RF amplification and therefore would perform just as well. I can get some channels even though I am selected as much as 300KHz+ off frequency. To me that seems like a case for the FTC.
The lcd display is tiny, not backlit, and hard to read. Yes, I know it comes with a home antenna but if you have an extra car antenna laying around and want to ever use it (say you permanently mounted the home antenna on your roof and want to listen to Sirus at your neighbors bbq with your car antenna) you are SOL unless you want to do what I did and hack the back of the unit up with a sharp knife so you can plug the antenna in. The radio doesn't even have a scan or seek function. All that said I am overall satisfied with it. I think they hired the cheapest engineer they could find to design the radio and CD because there was zero thought put into it. I could probably give our company intern a hundred bucks and a soldering iron and get something more innovative.Another frustrating issue is that you cannot use a "universal" car type antenna with this unit. The fact that XACT shipped this boombox without supporting the volume function on the remote is criminal.
Do not buy this item if you want to use it for anything other than satellie. Basically I spent $130 for a pair of speakers. And now everytime I want to adjust the volume I have to walk across the room.It's pretty neat the way the designed the box to 'flip' from satellite mode to fm/cd mode.The cd player / radio are junk. For the money I would expect a nicer speaker setup than cardboard 4" full range but the sound is pretty decent and it looks cool hanging on my wall.
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