Sony Air-SA20PK S-Airplay reviews – affordable dock for your iPod

Monday, January 5, 2009, 6:02
Mp3 Players
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The Air-SA20PK S-Airplay from Sony is a dock for your iPod. The Airplay is priced at $399.95 and enables you to enjoy music without worrying about the wires. The Airplay wireless system is made of three different units- one main and two sub units. The main unit features dock for the iPod, outputs for audio and video, connections for AM/FM antennas. Both the sub units houses built-in speakers along with wireless transceiver cartridges at the back panel. The package also includes remote for each unit, AM and FM antennas, iPod dock adapters.

The main unit of the system is 1.7 inches high, 11.6 inches wide and 4.3 inches deep whereas the sub units measures 5.3×11.8×4.5 inches. All three units are designed with rounded corners and come in black color. Both units sports 2.5-inch LCD screen which display the information about signal strength between the main unit and the sub unit along with the song titles and other information. The sub units can also be used as alarm clocks. The main unit also sports a display which remains hidden in the surface when you are not using it.

The wireless system has a range of around 40 feet. The system is designed to use in different rooms but the walls effect the connectivity between the units. So, it does not serve its actual purpose. Moreover, cell phones and Wi-Fi devices also interfere with the signal between main and the sub units.

The remote that comes with the main unit is capable of complete navigation of the iPod’s menus. This feature is ignored by most manufactures as they offer only the basic features like play/pause and track kipping. But the remotes for the sub units are not capable of navigation through the iPod menu. They can only be used for play/pause and skipping tracks. The remote is also capable of switching between different radio presets. The display on the sub units shows the various menus.

The Airplay offers mixed performance. Like most speaker systems, the sound shows distortion at high end and the system is not able to handle deep bass. At medium volume levels, the system provides decent playback with crisp audio.