Now our experience of flat panel speakers has been a mixed one, with the high end HiFi proving that it is a more than capable technology, although low end implementations seem to lack character and are more of a gimmick than a serious offering. Kensington have taken the NXT technology and packaged it to form the 410 x 180 x 100 mm SX2000's which styled in ice white will compliment your iPod perfectly.

The SX2000 ships with adaptors which slot into the universal iPod dock which sits to the tight of the flat panel speaker, these include the 3 / 4 / 5 G iPod's  and Mini but not the shuffle which requires an optional adaptor to be purchased. The idea is that all new iPod's come with the required inserts for devices that user the universal adaptor. You can use the Kensington unit with other MP3 players by plugging them into the 3.5mm stereo jack socket (cable not included) but it does rather ruin the style to have an empty dock and cables running everywhere.

Slide the iPod into the dock and its not a bad fit but not the tightest we've experienced, the player is charged while sat in the dock although it is not linked to a host PC or Mac like some systems. Controls are fairly limited with just on / off buttons and volume control via the SX2000, all other controls are performed on the iPod as if it was not hooked to the system at all, to be fair this works well especially if the whole set-up is on a desk perhaps at work or in your study.

So with iPod safely nestled in the dock and on charge and our tunes ready to rumble its time to see just what this implementation of NXT technology sounds like. At first we were impressed by the clean sound, its quite fresh and clear and it suited some of the middle of the road test tracks, however things started to go down hill when we switched to The Streets latest album and its complicated back beats and rhythms. The Kensington SX2000 starts to struggle and the bass sounded lifeless, almost tinny and quite wearing when you know what the track is supposed to sound like. The lovely smooth flat speaker panel does nothing for the sound of anything with more than a modicum of bass, tracks sound washed out and lifeless and should you increase the volume the audio quality remains about the same no better, but no worse, so in this respect it is better than most cheap iPod speakers.

So we end up with an iPod speaker system that looks stunning and oozes class drawing comments from colleagues and passers by and then it still lacks real guts like many of its more expensive competitors have by the bucket load. We also note that there is an amount of amplifier hiss in quite passages or when the system is powered but not playing, it is also possible to hear the iPod's hard drive if you listen carefully as it spins up.

So a wash out in terms of performance and frankly we were upset that something that looks so good and uses the latest in sound technology can fail to deliver on such a scale. Even its low price of £80 its difficult for us to recommend the Kensington offering as its clearly outclassed by the Bose SoundDock and the IM5 and IM7 or JBL's systems, in fact it is beaten by the £30 Logic3 iStation, which delivers a slightly better more rounded sound for less cash.

Published - 02/05/2006

More - iPod Speaker Systems

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