Philips Fidelio DS8550 30-Pin iPod/iPhone/iPad Speaker Dock

Premium Product at a Budget Price! In general, a large part of the rating I give to a product is based on its value. This speaker really comes across as a premium product. The build quality seems to be excellent, it looks very good and most importantly it sounds great! A very good range, I was surprised by the clarity and treble, it also goes fairly loud with some decent bass. I already own the DS8000, but am amazed at how much more useful this is with (I think) slightly better sound, bluetooth and rechargeable battery - all for $90! It also comes with a sleek remote control. The only 2 caveats I would have are 1) It does not have a "Next" & "Previous" buttons, (though I think the remote more than compensates), or a built in mic to take calls. It is in my opinion a great compromise between portability and premium ($150+) sound, not a hands free alternative. 2) It is an older product (3-4 years on the market) so I don't know how that might affect the internals or customer service. For me, I just felt the price was too good to pass up.

Bluetooth range is 3 feet if that. Phillips failed on this part. If you want to use dock, then sound is great. Make sure you use equalizer to boost higher frequencies.

I'm very impressed with the sound quality of this unit. The features on it are also amazing. Everything I was looking for. Bluetooth wireless connection for my iPad 2... Battery power... Plus physical device docking. In my opinion this unit sounds about 15 - 20 percent better than the Bose Sound Dock plus this one is Bluetooth... Not to mention $100 less expensive(retail). I have no issues with any of the features. Bluetooth connects fast and delivers clear, precise sound. Bass is strong but does not overpower high and mid ranges. Overall I am very pleased... Philips has a product here that delivers on all fronts including value and performance.

I shopped extensively before buying this... for a couple of months. Read reviews and specs, etc. In late January, the price on Amazon dipped from $299 to $249, so I ordered it. The packaging of this unit for shipment was -- indifferent. Packaging in the manufacturers box was a couple of egg-carton braces at the ends of the rectangular box. And Amazon shipped with a couple of yards of twisted brown paper in a roomy Amazon box. The manufacturers box basically sloshed around inside the Amazon box. How careless can one be in packing electronics? Particularly when Amazon ships books with a yard of pillow-wrap. I loved the sound. Very nice appearance with a small enough footprint for an end table. Light enough for the thing to be truly portable. Sync with my iPod was perfect. I downloaded the Fidelio app, but it seemed to be redundant with the iPod controls. No complaints in terms of performance at all. It exceeded my expectations. Unhappily, one night while playing at a fairly low 'background level' of volume, the unit simply stopped playing. It stopped charging my iPod as well... so I'm guessing there was a complete failure in delivering power to the device. At that point, the unit had between 6-7 hours of use. Very disappointing. I returned it to Amazon the following day. I don't know whether it got knocked around too much in shipment, and I have no way of knowing. But Amazon should be a little more diligent in packaging this fragile item.

I did a lot of research on this product before I bought it and was really looking forward to it. It seemed to have everything I wanted (iPad compatibility, portability, rechargeable battery) plus some (Bluetooth connectivity and a remote). Contrary to some others' experience, I had no trouble at all with the Philips app or the Bluetooth connectivity. All of those worked great, and the sound was fantastic! At first I was thrilled! But then I tried using the remote. Contrary to what it says in the book, I was unable to bring up a playlist or scroll through it using the remote. I had to manually open a playlist. I could advance a song or go backwards within a playlist, but I couldn't navigate using the up or down arrows at all. I called Philips and they shipped me a new remote immediately. Still not dice. I bought this to take by the pool and room to room. Battery life was important to me. My last iPod player had tremendous battery life. This one, however, died after no more than an hour of play. What's even more infuriating, and what ended up being my reason for its return, is that it would come on by itself in the middle of the night at full volume. I had to remember to disconnect my iPad at night, lest I be awakened by music blasting. The combination fo quirks just made me realize it wasn't worth it for the price. I didn't really care about the remote but the combination of short battery life and coming on by itself at full volume really made me decide to just return it. I've not read that anyone else has had any of these specific problems, so maybe I got a lemon or, as someone pointed out, maybe it's a function of the way it was packed (mine came precisely the same way). Either way, I was very disappointed.

The most important fact is that I'm satisfied with the sound quality (after I changed the equalizer to flat, but I guess that's personal) and the basic functionality. Look is nice too. Otherwise I'm not too impressed by the system. - bluetooth connection Once setup, bluetooth is well integrated on the iPad. On the other hand, as soon as the connection is severed (power off, or docking the iPad), we need to press the bluetooth button on the unit for reconnection and that takes a while (around 10 seconds). - iPad docking If your friends dock their iPod, they'll get an annoying error because they don't have the fidelio app. Even when you have the app, docking the iPad will often generate one or two errors (only one device can be used at the time, and/or this device is not supported by iPad). Worse, if you were playing music using bluetooth, the music gets interrupted for a couple of seconds and the bluetooth is severed. Taking the unit off the dock at that point will stop the music completely, you then have to press on the bluetooth button of the unit and wait 10 seconds for music to resume. - auto power off This "feature" can't be turned off, and it is inconvenient. The power saved is minimal and I dislike having to power the unit manually. I use the line-in to play music from an airport express so music plays from my mac to everywhere in my appt, and I wish I didn't have to power the unit. - line in Doesn't seem to auto-detect, and there is a button only on the remote. At least, when you un-dock a unit, it defaults back to line-in. - remote Lastly, the remote doesn't work well, maybe because my unit is placed quite high, I have to raise the remote. To make this worse, there is no feedback, either on the remote or the unit, so it's even harder to figure out when it works or not. - fidelio app Not too surprisingly, it's pretty poor. Equalizer is hard to find. Gives no access to the important settings (like setting up the bluetooth connection or even the app's own setting for auto-connect (which is off by default??)). Player is entirely redudant with iPod app and not as good. Good news is there is no reason to use it except for the equalizer!

Unfortunately such a niece piece of engineering will go with one star as it became defective. The left channel only reproduced low frequencies and with noticeable distortion; the speaker is a full range so it is possible that the speaker came damaged and not capable of reproducing mid and high frequencies. Anyway, even looking really nice, this one ended up as a return. Other than this problem I think I would've liked it. Well, I am re-editing this review as I bought a second unit, which came in perfect status and I love it. 15x2 total watts and with a deep bass the new baby sounds great! And it features portability and blue tooth connectivity, which makes it a multiuse speaker. It is great looking and with a perfect size. Very recommended product. Hooray for Philips! I'm changing the rate to 5 stars. New addition to previous review, first I'm changing the rate to 3 stars only, why, because 4 months after purchase, the internal battery died, thus the speaker dock is not portable any longer, and that's the only reason I bough it, otherwise I would've bought a Sony not portable but with a lot more power for some bucks more. Bad purchase after all.

The speaker puts out great, room-filling sound. The bluetooth works great for both Android and iOS devices. It is really nice that it has rechargeable batteries inside so we can pick it up and take it out front or out back. I also like that we can have the device be in a different room/location than the speaker when connected via bluetooth. Only con is that the newer iPads sit a little tenuously on the dock connector. So far no problems, but I have some concern over the longevity of the connector when connecting and disconnecting such a heavy device. I would have knocked it down a half star for this except even if the connector breaks we'll be able to use the bluetooth connectivity. I like a good backup plan.