Weighing up Panasonics latest ‘boomboxes’

Well today we're going to take a look at the

latest

Panasonic boom boxes that put boom boxes and quotes in there because, well, they're little portable cassettes, ah, no radio, cd players, forget the cassette look that's been golden, yes, the

latest

panasonic. with a cassette this was the rxd 55 and it was a decent quality machine, in fact I suggested it was the last decent portable stereo cassette player on the market and it's gone now, they've taken it out of reach, you won't win it. I can't find it on their website at all, it's not mentioned anywhere, so if you find any of these it will be old stuff, but the reason I like this is that it had good sound quality, it wasn't great to record. cassette, but most people just wanted to play their old cassettes on this and for that it was fine, it had an am fm radio on its cd player and it came with a nice remote control, plus a quality machine that you can see in the way I'm lifting it here it weighs quite a bit and it's also a substantial device, good quality sound, decent bass, take it out of the range along with anything else and a cassette so that's the end of that one so now, if you want a decent.

Portable stereo radio cassette player. The latest from a reputable brand is a Sony CFDS 70. It has been around for quite some time. It's not a patch on this as far as quality is concerned. It feels like an empty bag compared to this thing so far. as the cassette mechanism works, it won't damage the cassettes, it's good quality, put it out through a headphone output, it will be fine, but the built in speakers and all that is very thin, light and doesn't sound good at all, so It's a shame that this is gone, but you know, time passes.

Panasonic must have decided that's it, we just have to stop making cassette players. Now that's holding us back. We could launch a new range of stereos if we took away the cassette and that's what they do. I did it because this was the rxd55, this is the rxd5, so it sounds like a success, isn't it tag two at the end? So this upgrades dab plus which is the digital radio standard here in the UK and many other countries. the world no, not in the US, there are a lot of people in the US, can I listen to dab no? you have your own stuff sirius Put it this way, if someone wants something that does this, this does that, but any cassette.

There is no more in it and that is the end. I'll remove the remote control now. The strange thing about this is that this is the top model here in the UK. There are a couple below this one where they take away things like the bluetooth or the dab plus makeup is that kind of thing, so this is the top model rxd552. If you look on the German Panasonic website, there is another model that I actually think is better than this one, so I went on amazon.de and bought one of these. Also, you can now see that it will be a slightly smaller machine, at least based on the box here, and in fact the price shows that this, even in Germany, is the more expensive of the two.

This costs 170 euros, that is the suggested price. cheaper than that at the moment and this one is 139 euros over the suggested price, but it definitely seems like a better machine to me, it has a large screen on the front with clear and proper text, whereas this one only has an LCD screen and since we are seeing dab plus here, you need the text information to be nice, clear and big both dab plus both with bluetooth both with a CD player I thought, well, what's missing from this? Why is the only one cheaper? What I think might make this one cheaper is that this one mentions that it has a remote and has a total output of 20 watts which doesn't mention the remote or the power output so maybe that's just what it does May this one be cheaper, I'm not.

Sure, but to me at the moment it seems like the best bet from the Panasonic range even though it's not available in the UK, so I think we should get them open, play with them and see if it's really the one you can get. Not entering the UK is the best one to get, let's find out. Well, first of all, I should mention that it's clear that this one has already been opened, not by me. I bought it as a refurbished model on eBay, I think it's a catalog return and since I'm going to buy both myself.

Panasonic is not going to supply them to me. I thought I'd try to save myself some money and plus I'll buy two stereos that I don't really need right now, but For the purpose of making this video boombox, we used to call those ghetto blasters that everyone knows and no one cares about. You always wonder with these catalog returns if someone just ripped it up and then put it back in the box if you just have to buy something. that is broken, well everything is present and correct so far, we have the instructions, the power cable, another power cable, a European one, the UK and many remotes with battery, so I have the remotes there, I thought they might be missing and that remote could be a vital feature because in the last one there were some functions on the remote that were not available through the buttons on the machine, but as you can see in the last one, the remote was quite larger, so there is a lot more space for the buttons, so it is quite possible that all of these will be included on this device.

Let's take a look. First impressions. It is not as substantial as the other one, like the previous model, the rxd55. This one doesn't feel hollow, but it also feels a lot lighter, so there's our handle and as you can see, it's actually a pretty deep device that could give the speakers enough room for a little bit of footing. There you can see they are plugged in at the back, the CD cover is one of those pop up ones they are just a cheap thing like that, the previous one had a charger on the front because the cassette was on top, doesn't look bad , a nondescript USB port on the back, power here and the batteries.

At the bottom you can see that it contains eight batteries and they are C cells. I'll just put a couple in there to show that I'm not going to fill it up, although I think I'll plug it into the wall, yeah, right away. I can see a couple of buttons here that aren't on the machine. We have automatic shutdown, sleep and silence. In fact, I can't see a mute button here. There may be others that are tagged. differently, but I think it will be important to bear this in mind now if the omission of a cassette deck from the Panasonic portable stereo range was a sign of the changing times, well, changing times when I was away 20 years ago, there are another more recent issue on here and that's the headphone output, yeah, there's no three and a half thousand sockets here for either headphone or line out, the only input we have on the back here is this USB on the Regarding the entrances in the front. we have bluetooth cd usb dab fm radio all these buttons are reasonably decent quality click switches they are not rubberized it feels good enough although you may notice here it says demo on the top right and this has a built in demo to play some music , I think it mentions it in the instructions here now notice my instructions are stapled together, presumably whoever returned this had lost them and photocopied some of them, but yeah I think the first thing we need to do is plug it in and hold it down and see what the demo sounds like now.

I wonder if this will match the content. If you do, the next few seconds will be silent, but let's turn it on first. Says hello on the screen. There you can see a fairly basic LCD screen, but let's wait. To press this demo button you have to hold it down for a few seconds, wait, so yeah, I wonder if that's the music of someone who's going to play at a match, we'll certainly find out in due time. Okay, let's put a CD in here and try some of the other functions, so I have a candy blue CD.

The reason I'm using this is because they were kind enough to send it a while ago. The content doesn't match, which is great, but they also put text on the CD. on your CD, so if there is any text on the CD, we will see it appear on the front screen. I highly doubt it on a screen like this, but then we could try this again on the other machine and I think that one looks like it should have text on CD since it has a nice big screen, but we'll find out probably not, let's press play yeah, this It's basic, you can see the time that appears there, we will press show just to see if there is anything else that comes no, that's yours, let's try to increase the sound, that is, increase the bass, increase the voice, it has a good quality of sound, no problem, I'll play you something through a different microphone on the camera so you can get a better idea of ​​what it should sound like although of course it won't be perfect.

Well, first of all, we'll listen without the bass boost. Okay, let's try the bass boost. Now I know that I have criticized dab in the UK in the past. and that's just because some stations actually use too low a bit rate but if you choose a station that doesn't do that then I really prefer listing to dab and dob plus and there are a lot more options too so if you just look here if we check these names look that's BBC Mersey you have to wait for it to scroll through Oh Merseyside actually it goes further so yeah BBC radio doesn't even fit so you've got BBC Radidie. and then we have to wait there what we hear oh radio one and what is this bbc raddie again radio one extra you see how a screen like this is not really suitable for dab but as far as dab is concerned it seems to work to sound a bit thin, but I don't know if that's more due to the radio than this device, okay, well, that's enough for the moment, we'll look at some more features, maybe in a moment, but we've played a CD and listened to the radio, so I think we should take the other one out of the box now.

Oh, and I mustn't forget my CD. Here we go, this one is new and this one doesn't have one. No one opened it before, at least it shouldn't have been and as it comes from Germany it certainly won't have a UK plug. Fortunately, it's just your standard figure eight wire, so you can easily swap it out. Thickness of that instruction. book on that one there where it's okay, the first thing I noticed is that there is no remote control with this one, I don't think it's a major problem, but maybe for some people, there we are surprised that there is nothing to take off on that screen.

Disappointed, no no, it has the exact same CD mechanism in this one, although it actually looks a little different, but it's a little better. I can't see the flat cable for example, could you on the other one, how many batteries do you need? There are six. those d cells that look bigger, yeah the d cells are this one, there's a c cell next to it for comparison, so yeah, slightly different in that sense, yeah, I'm going to say I prefer the look of this one, this square look Even before I turned it on, it looks much more sophisticated and stylish even though it is the cheaper of the two and notice here the USB port on the front instead of the headphone out aux input on the back, so you are already winning in that sense by 20 euros. minus this certainly looks like it could be the best one yet if I turn it on and it sounds terrible then that might change my mind so I think we should plug it in and find out a little tip here while I'm doing this it's often worth searching on amazon .de if you are in the UK and get things sent from there because very often it is cheaper than here in the UK and in the case of this, they have things that we don't Not good, now that screen could do with be more vibrant, maybe it will light up once I start using it, so let me turn off the lights here so we can see it a little bit clearer now that it looks so bright.

As you go, yeah, a little too dark now and as you can see here, we're picking up all the reflections in the room, but that's okay, let's put in a CD right now. Will it show the text of the CD? I think it's very unlikely but I'm about to find out, no it just says it's 16 tracks out of the total length but of course there's more information you can see on the other screen so let's press play and we'll go back to that same clue number five. I'm going to turn off the base. I noticed that we have some preset EQs here, so they may already be on heavy.

What we have here is vocal, flat, heavy, soft and clear, oh yeah, so I think we're already in heavy. so I think it's as bad as we have it, let's listen again. Yes, certainly lacking bass compared to the other doesn't make it difficult to listen to, but it would be nice if it had a little more boom. Now I'm just changing some plugs and cycling the power. You may be able to make out that it shows the time and date there. If I just press one button, you'll see it light up and look better on the camera. which in person, that's pretty hard to read at some angles, but anyway you'll see that of course that information is incorrect at the moment, sincewhich disappears again when I turn on the dab radio, it should pick it up from the radio now.

Of course, this radio is dab plus and dab. I think if you sell a dab radio these days, it has to meet both standards. I'm going to turn the volume down here. I can't see the mute button but anyway once it's close. the background and it disappears from the screen, you will see that we are getting all the information we need on the screen, now much better than the other one. You'll get the name of the track that played on this station, as well as the full station name at the top. there, let's jump to one of those BBC programs that were on before, so we select at the bottom, here we press play on that BBC radio, everything is displayed on the screen with room to spare, you can see the different bits. of information it can show, like the multiplex, is in the frequency, the fact that it is 40 kilobits per second, but it is dab, also it does not mention if it is stereo or not, but it sounds like we can only have the clock. showing there if we wanted it all the date so yeah having a screen like this is much better than the other screen I just wish it was a little easier to see now the two things I'm showing are supposed to be able to play files mp3 via the USB inputs by the way, the instructions for this are not just the different languages, in fact the UK language one is separate, it's just this little thing here, but it mentions that as far as USB goes good.

I think they are just mp3s and you have to use a 32 gig USB stick or less. It seems very outdated. Now I have this 64 gig USB stick here. He mentions that they might work, but there could be some problems. I formatted it as x. fat and I have several different audio tests here it's supposed to only be able to read f-18 and fat-32 we'll see if it can do it x f-80 this is a 320 kilobits per second mp3 right that's the only one appears there, so yes it can read xf-80, however it does not read the other files here and there is a review, there is a wave, there is a vorbis, I think there is also another one, but yes, only mp3, but xf- 80. seems fine, let's just take that out and we'll try it on the other one too.

Oh, and if we turn it off, it should show the correct time and date on the screen. With a little luck, there we go on August 1st. so we take it out of the radio, okay, let's try this one with the USB stick, of course, we have to plug it in the back here, turn it on, move it through the USB and see if this can read it, I'm sure. I will be able to because I imagine that the internal parts of these are very similar ah no, I was wrong look at that just to show that these videos are not fake.

I haven't tried them before, they are not compatible, so this one really only wants f- 80 or f-1832, okay, let me try a different USB stick. Oh look, we have some text appearing on the screen. Well, we had it for a second. Let me put the display button back so that this shows the title. of the track that's playing, look again, we're dealing with these reflections, we don't have a backlight on this one either, so it's quite difficult to show it. There we go, we'll do it from that angle when it comes to mp3 playback. via USB turns out these two systems are a little more different from each other than I anticipated.

This device, when it's here, the mp3 files will show the track names, put it on the front of this even though we have this screen here it could show a lot more information, all it will show is the track number and that's regardless Whatever you do with this display button and this one will accept USB sticks formatted as xf-80, while this one will not. Anyway, let's do a little comparison by playing the same track on both. Whatever bass boost option you guys have, they're going to be activated on both of them and we're going to listen to this one first and then we're going to move on to this, so let's try that now, I hope that came across in the video because the sound quality really is noticeably different. between the two.

This one is quite thin, it doesn't have the base or richness of the other one. It is not like this. the 552 is kind of a basic powerhouse but it really seems to be lacking in that area, the sound quality coming through here is more like what you'd expect from a small portable radio or perhaps an old clock radio, looking at the specs that has here. 2 watts per channel at 6 ohms, so yeah, I mean it doesn't sound very loud, but that's not the problem, it's just the fact that the sound is not very rich when compared to the other one, the 552, according to these specifications.

There are two different output levels, you have six watts per channel at six ohms, so it's a little bit louder than this, but that runs on battery, if we connect it to the AC power supply, then it's 10 watts per channel at six ohms so really the other one drives a lot louder but it sounds better whatever volume you put it at let's go ahead and play with the bluetooth okay so I'm going to put this in bluetooth mode and that It should start pairing if I hold it down I think there we go, there's rxd70bt now let's see if the mp3s text is displayed on the screen here, that's it, that's all you have there, let's see if we can control it from this end. come on, yeah, so it just says connected, that's all you press here.

It's strange that they didn't use the screen real estate on this to show a little more information. Let's try the other one. There we will look for it on the phone right at the end. below, so it should connect, now the iPhone is shown. I didn't think it was shown before. Let's keep playing, so there we go a little more information on the screen, but still no track information displayed. I'm trying to think of the top. Now ask if tracking info on shows via bluetooth isn't something I use a lot but anyway it doesn't show up on any of these now besides dab both can pick up FM frequencies of course neither of these It has AM or Long Waiver shortwave reception capabilities, but when it comes to the FM side, they both seem evenly matched.

I'm getting the same quality in each at the same stations. Both have access to rds. Both have the ability to store. 30 presets on both FM and DAB as far as rds are concerned, although the screen here is quite small so you are limited to the information it can display. We just got the name of the station here. shows more information, the center line shows the top hits, but below that is additional scrolling text that the station can send as long as those 30 presets are going well, this one has quick access to five of them, while this one has the complete set of digits.

So you can write shortcut to any of those 30 presets that you have stored there now. If anyone has any mp3s burned to CD, both machines are capable of playing those discs, but on the rxd552 you will be able to see. the track titles scroll across the small screen, while on the rxd70 again, even though it has the larger screen, all it shows are the track numbers and both machines have a configurable countdown timer for sleep, as well as on and off timers that can be set automatically. play any of the sources at your chosen time so that if you want, you can use them as a big alarm clock while I record this video.

I've taken great care to get the best angles for these screens so you can see them. Clearly, though, in real life, of course, you don't place things as perfectly as this and you usually don't have much light, so let me turn these lights off so now it's almost impossible to see the screen. And notice there's no backlight on this either, but now you're looking at the older discontinued model, the rxd55, and that one does have a backlight on the screen, so I'm wondering why they took that away from the new one now, since it's updated. The model has lost the headphone output jack of its predecessor.

I thought maybe they had updated the technology and given it a bluetooth output so you could stream your audio to bluetooth headphones, so of course I tried connecting the two things together, but no, it doesn't do that, it just doesn't have it. headphone output. Oh, and I'll just show you what's behind the grille. We have a single speaker on each side and although it is not that easy to see through this grille, there is only a single speaker behind it as well, according to the box it says it has a three inch wide full range speaker and it also mentions that it has a base reflex port, which really just means that there is a hole in the back of the case and again I'm looking at the previous model here, the rxd55, and as you can see, we have two speakers on either side, the main one of eight centimeters, the tweeter one and a half centimeters and yes, it is a real tweeter, there are no fakes inside this one and I feel that the sound virtualizer is also worth mentioning.

This is a feature that is only on the previous d55 model and when activated it gives the impression that it has a much wider soundstage and I prefer how it sounds when it is on and I just had to go. it's on all the time now, since they are both new models, I don't think the energy efficiency is that good when it comes to running on batteries, I say new, I mean this one came out in 2021, I'm not quite sure when this one debuted for the first time but it will be relatively recent we'll start over here so this is the cheapest and it uses six d cells and if they're alkaline you'll get eight hours of CD playback or nine hours if we were using the radio or bluetooth or usb, so yeah, nine hours of six d cells to listen to the radio, but here on this side this uses c cells, so the smallest battery but it uses the most uses eight of those and with Eight of the ones here, if they are alkaline you get 10 hours of CD playback, 11 hours without USB or 13 hours without radio if you are listening to dab or FM.

Now I'm used to old stereos eating up. via batteries, but I would have thought things would have become more energy efficient in recent years, but having a CD player in this one running for eight hours out of six of those when you think you could get one of those CD Walkmans, it I mean seriously. It must be eating up everything in the amplification of this and maybe that screen on the front is consuming a little power, but given how dim it is I wouldn't have thought it would take much. Now, this is going to be a bit of a rant, I guess I don't mean to, but we could get there because, after all, I'm not particularly happy with what happened here.

I can understand why Panasonic has made some of these decisions or at least I think they did. I will have good reasons behind them. I don't necessarily know what they are, but, for example, removing the cassette deck from something and then re-releasing it as a new model, I imagine it's probably because the cassette mechanism parts were no longer available. I don't think that's too far out of the question as a reasonable thing because, after all, the last time anyone made a decent cassette deck was maybe 20 years ago, so we're really at the end of the road. here and they probably just thought, look, let's start again, we'll have a CD and we can also insert a dab radio.

Keep in mind that this is the top of the range and there are other models below it with fewer features, so this is the flagship and it's pretty mediocre. I actually liked the sound quality of this one in the past. The cassette mechanism was never the best in the world, but it's perfectly adequate for playing your old cassettes and speaker amplification and everything else. They sound as good as you can get on a portable device these days, well now that this is gone you're left with lower quality devices, but you think that's ok, change the cassette deck and put a dab radio in there.

It makes a lot of sense, you have something new, a new launch of a completely new product range, you've been stuck for about 10 years with this old design you've been producing, you really wanted to start again, so you throw it all away. on this and making the best possible that's not what happened here, they've cut out so many things compared to this, I mean first of all this one just sounded better, it's a more substantial machine, it's heavier, it's better quality , has better sound quality. but just looking at my list here they removed the tweeters they removed the backlight they removed the lining they took out the headphones and instead we got a dab radio instead of a cassette deck now just a quick mention of this d70 I went into this thinking maybe It would be the best option.

It looked like a more modern machine. I still prefer its appearance, but its sound is very poor. Very thin sound quality. I have a small dab radio here from Sony. and honestly the speaker on this one sounds pretty much the same as the ones here, you'd think something that size would produce decent sound quality but no that's not what happened so maybe if they merged these things if they took Take the speakers out of here and put them in this one, which will probably be the best option, but also the fact that thisIt has that big screen that doesn't show things most of the time, for example mp3 or mp3 text. on CD, so the programming behind this, this type of software, is also connected to the screen, but, again, the screen on this is too boring, hard to read sometimes on the generous side, I will say that the radio on these very good reception on dab actually comparing it to this in the same room with the antenna extended over them this wasn't picking up some of the stations it was getting a lot of burble so if you wanted a radio then yes it's fine and it will play CDs and those things, I mean in general. it's a reasonable quality, I quite like the sound of this, not as much as this, but if we just take it out of the equation, it's fine on its own, but it's certainly not what it could be, they could have done a great job.

Honestly if you spend like £160 or something I would have expected something a bit better than that but then again there aren't many companies making things like this which is what has made this worse because since Panasonic is still in the game. You would have expected them to have gone out on a high note. They said: right? Does anyone still do this? We are one of the companies that will do everything possible to make it the best possible. sounds brilliant over bluetooth everything else good quality screen on the front and then everyone will be happy text on CD all that kind of stuff, but now they just took out the basic components of this and took out some things a different case and I said there what You are, yes, sad, really, aren't you?

But anyway, that's all for now, as always, thanks for watching.