Review – Monitor Audio i-deck 100
Morph your pocket player into a powerful boombox
The launch of the iPod also gave birth to a cornucopia of third-party accessories and add-ons, designed to turn this portable music player into anything from a fashion statement to a mini-projector. However, one of the biggest success stories is the iPod speaker dock. There are hundreds of them. And while a great deal do nothing more than turn your music into a barely legible continuum of white noise, a choice few can morph your pocket player into a powerful boombox.
It’s among the best of its breed…
The Monitor Audio i-deck 100 is such an example. Nicely built in terms of styling and components, this iPod dock has a number of built-in audio technologies designed to get the most from your music. Automatic Position Correction works out where in the room the i-deck is placed and adjusts the sound to fill as much space as it can. While the Bass Level Management system tweaks the audio at lower volume levels to give you a better balance of frequencies. In practice it works well, and while the i-deck will never fill a music hall, it will compete in terms of clarity and power with the average home hi-fi system.
The svelte little i-deck 100 is bijou enough to blend with any space but can fill the largest rooms with clear full-frequency sound
Getting technical for a minute, the i-deck 100 has a 28/56-bit dual precision digital to analogue converter to feed a brace of 3-inch ceramic-coated aluminium/magnesium alloy drivers and 19mm C-CAM tweeters.
Translation: it’s got the gear to sound great.
The i-dock 100 supports both the iPod touch and iPhone and has a separate remote control for adjusting volume and controlling basic playback functions.
Compared to the other big players in the premium iPod speaker dock market (B&W and Vita Audio), the £300 price tag isn’t exactly extreme. However, it’s not cheap either and for the same price you could almost pay for an entry-level Sonos (www.sonos.com) system that would allow you to stream your digital music collection through a couple of existing home audio devices.
Nevertheless, it’s among the best of its breed and will surely feature under a few Christmas trees this year.
Price: £299
