Lasonic X Famous i931
Review by Robert Young-Pullman | Published May 2008 | Review Archives

For the extremely ironic hipster in your life that rollerskates (not rollerblades) to work and grew up beating Run-DMC in the ghettoes of Rolling Meadows comes this modern version of the old school boombox from boutique electronics company Lasonic. Manufacturers have been missing the ball in writing off something like a modern boombox - sure, your iPod rocks, but try playing it on your porch for a couple of friends.

The Lasonic X Famous i931 is, at least, a start in that direction... sort of. It's not as clunky as most larger mp3 players, and the weird boombox motif will surely draw attention. It doesn't make much sense - the boombox was two speakers bracketing a tapedeck, after all. Here the tapedeck is replaced with an mp3 player, and the effect is... well, a little off. This is basically an empty shell in the shape of a boombox and screams old school without really being such. The design will earn fans among the self-obsessed hipsters but probably not too many others, because what worked great for a tapedeck and radio doesn't work at all for an mp3 player.

The Lasonic can play iPods, SD/MMC cards or USB sticks, and also has a microphone jack. The problem is that it's extremely complicated to use. Nothing could be simplier than tapping a tape into the deck and pressing play. With the "modern" boombox, it takes no less than about six button clicks to play a song. Worse, all information is displayed on a tiny LED screen - how analog! - which is impossible to read in the sunlight or actually any kind of natural light. In their desire to make this seem as ghetto-fab as possible, the iPod dock is where the tapedeck was located on a "real" boombox, and the darkened plastic makes it impossible to read there, either.

So in other words, if you care what your stereo looks like more than how good it is, this is a great product for you. If you just want to blast some music on the porch or in the street, you're probably still better off buying a lot of speaker wire.