A cool radio for the non-audio connoisseur

If you're wanting a cool look for a small price, and don't care about how things really sound, this is a great deal! Not that the radio actually sounds bad. Not at all. It's just not a known brand name in audio circles. It's not Kenwood, it's not Alpine, it's not Pioneer, etc. But it still sounds fine for four standard speakers.

The two major pluses of this radio is price and looks. The motorized face-place will make even the biggest car-audio freak oooh and aaah. It has three positions total: all the way down (with the bottom slopped out at a 45-degree angle), completely closed (where the LCD screen is not visible at all), and half-way down (allowing CD access).

For CDs, the radio face drops down and slopes out half-way as the LCD screen behind it slides straight down about half-an-inch, exposing the CD slot. After it smoothly grabs the CD, the LCD screen raises back up and the face-plate drops all the way down and out (or back up, depending on what the original position was when you punched the 'eject' button). There are separate 'Eject' and 'Open' buttons allowing either CD access or viewing of the LCD screen. If the 'Open' button is pushed when the faceplate is closed, it skips the "CD access" position and goes straight to the faceplate dropping all the way down (without the LCD screen moving). All motorized movement is extremely smooth and works great. Has a beautiful affect for lookers-on, and isn't too cumbersome to get irritated with in normal use.

Where the radio excels in the motorized faceplate it lacks in the LCD screen. The screen has a very standard layout (track #, station info, etc) so there's no neat animations or "videos" of cars zooming by like the more expensive models (other than the tiny gridded cylinder that rotates while a CD plays). However, it is not at all lacking in information. It shows everything any other radio of its type would show as far as what information you're listening to. If it's an mp3 or WMA CD, there are 'explorer' capabilities where you can browse through folders to find the file you want.

One major complaint I have about the LCD screen is all the major information that a person would be interested in is toward the bottom half of the screen. With the faceplate slid down and sloped out your eyes have to be either straight in front of the screen or even slightly above it to see over the top of the faceplate. If your car dash is at all sloped back (as mine is) it covers a good half of the major info. So you find yourself either leaning up slightly to see what it actually says, or just guessing based on the tops of the letters/numbers.

Another little complaint on that same note is with my factory radio, the clock was always on the screen (even if the radio was off) and at any time while listening to anything you could toggle back and forth between the info (track #, station ID, etc) and the clock. (And the clock would always stay up until you changed the station or whatever.) I have yet to figure out how to leave the clock up on the screen for more than just a few seconds. It always jumps back to the other info. Kind of annoying when I'm used to seeing a clock on the dash all the time. (And when I do push the button to show the clock, I have to lean up to see the full time and not just the tops of the letters.)

Since all of the interface is on the front panel, it's no biggy to change anything (volume, track, station, etc) as long as you don't mind "flying blind". =D The little remote is easy to use too, and works great.

The predominant glow of the faceplate is blue, whereas the predominant backlit color of the LCD screen is green.

I've had the radio for over six months now, and I am very pleased with my purchase.