PHILIPS Portable CD Player Bluetooth Boombox With Bass

SUMMARY of the Philips AZ700T boombox

The best feature of this little 12-watt stereo is that it accepts five sources of input:
* FM radio
* CD
* USB
* Bluetooth
* Auxillary

For the average person, the sound quality will suffice for use in the kitchen/garage/patio/yard or at the park/beach/pool/gym.

If you need good quality sound in a portable FM/CD stereo, you are out of luck. No one makes them anymore. Better portable stereos are on the market, but they only work with Bluetooth.

PROS
* It is very light weight (6 lbs, 7.1 lbs with batteries)
* Uses a normal 120V AC power cord, not an adapter.
* It can run on batteries (six “D” and one AAA for the remote.)
* Mine, purchased June 2023, came with a different remote control than the one shown on Amazon.
* There are 5 music sources to choose from: Aux (stereo 1/8” plug), USB, CD, FM and Bluetooth. I tested all but the USB port, which has a rubber cover to protect it.
* Pairing the Bluetooth with my phone was easy. I tested moving about with the phone (within 20 feet) and the Bluetooth connection never dropped the signal or stuttered.
* You can repeat, shuffle, stop, pause, FF, rewind or skip songs on the CD Player with the remote.
* Plays both normal CD and MP3 CDs
* The maximum range of the remote is at least 20 feet.
* The antenna for the FM radio is on the short side, which means less chance of it getting in your way or getting broken.
* The FM reception is good. It clearly picked up 36 stations here in Indianapolis.
* There are 30 FM presets. You can manually set them or let the box set them automatically. You can move forward or backward through them with the remote.
* The FM tuner is digital, which is more precise than using an analog dial.
* It has a sleep timer (can be set to turn off between 15 minutes and two hours)
* Has a 1/8” stereo headphone jack
* The volume is loud enough for you to hear 100 feet away.
* The controls on both the box and the remote make sense and I did not have to read the manual
* The remote has a mute button as well as an on/off button
* The metal speaker grill is very strong, but cannot be removed.
* I liked that the display screen is wide and lights up well. The backlight will stay on all the time, but you can turn it off with the remote. The display really looks nice. However, it is LCD and like all LCD screens, there is a viewing angle problem – see below.

CONS
* It is all plastic, except for the volume knob, antenna and speaker grill.
* The top of the cd player is a glossy black plastic which is easily scuffed and scratched. The same glossy black plastic is also partially used on the front of the box around the view screen.
* There is no indicator to tell you that the FM station is tuned perfectly. However, for powerful stations that do bleed into several channels, your ear can determine the correct frequency.
* The Volume Control on the box is a dish you press and spin with your finger. A normal knob would have been easier to use.
* The display screen is slanted slightly upwards. You cannot read it if the radio is at eye-level. It has a narrow viewing range (approx. 35°). With the radio sitting on a normal 30” tall table, I can read the display as I stand in front of it, and as I back away from it, I can read it up to 4 feet away. Once beyond that, the LCD is unreadable due to the angle. An LED display would have solved that problem.
* The FM channel change buttons on the remote are right next to the volume buttons. I accidentally changed the radio channel once when trying to change the volume.
* It does not receive AM radio.
* Is not DAB (i.e. does not pick up digital FM which can tell you what song you’re listening to and sounds better than analog FM)

SOUND QUALITY
Portable FM/CD stereos with quality sound have not been manufactured for almost a decade.
If FM/CD is what you need, this Philips unit is representable of what is available today, i.e. low quality.
If sound quality is more important, your only options are Bluetooth-only devices (meaning you have to stream music to it from a phone or computer). In which case, check out the Bluetooth boomboxes from JBL.

Sound quality is a very subjective thing and whether you like this stereo or not depends on how picky you are.
* This device is completely unacceptable for audiophiles.
* Most people will find that this device can play some songs at a minimally acceptable quality level, while other songs have too much treble and sound muddy.
* According to other reviews, some people are quite pleased with the sound quality.

The music from the FM radio did not sound as good as music from any of the other sources. That is normal as the THD (distortion) is worse with FM than it is with CD or other digital sources.

I wish this thing had an equalizer, or even some tone control knobs. Instead, it has four sound modes to choose from – Classic, Pop, Rock & Jazz. I found them worse than useless.
It has two boost settings for the bass. They add a very small bit of boost to the bass and is helpful for certain songs, but don’t think this boombox is going to be doing any booming.

This box plays some songs well and some songs poorly, across all genres.
I listened to country, alt, rock, hip hop, rap, R&B and classical. There were songs from each genre which sounded ok and ones which sounded bad. Fortunately, it was about 50-50.

Perhaps it will sound better once the speakers get broken in, say in 100 hours. Right now, it is new.

I would hope this sounds better than any phone or 1-speaker Bluetooth speaker.

Any music is probably acceptable through this box if the volume is low. That is what I expected when I bought it. That some songs can be played at full volume and sound ok was a bonus for me.

It is made in China.

Philips does not give any information about the speakers. It appears to have a 3.5″ woofer and a 3/4″ tweeter on each side.

AMP SPECS:
Max output 12 W
Freq Response: 125-16000 Hz, -3dB
Signal to Noise Ration >66dBA
Total Harmonic Distortion <1%

CD supports CD-DA, CD-R, CD-RW, MP3-CD

USB port supports USB 2.0 or USB 1.1 that hold MP3s, up to 99 folders, nesting up to 8 levels

I’ve never had problems with boomboxes, but this is the lowest-quality one I have ever bought, so I went ahead and spent $13 for a 3-year warranty offered through the Amazon web site.

This is very powerful and sounds really, really good! I am an audiophile and musician. I am replacing my former boom box with this one because my other one put pauses between songs that were supposed to flow together (CDs). Unfortunately, this one does the same. I haven’t read the instructions yet though, so maybe it can be set to not do that. Awesome product!

Lo compré para mi mamá, para que puede reproducir sus cd’s, tiene buen sonido y un volumen bastante bueno. Llegó antes de la fecha estimada. Recomendado.

If you would had provided 240 to 120 step-down transformer would had been great. Anyway it’s philips symbol of performance