Neon Micro Hi-Fi System with Bluetooth MCB1534D-05 with CD/MP3/FM+RDS for DAB+

When I started looking for a new micro Hi-Fi on Amazon UK, nearly 50 per cent of the reviews for the Neon MCB1534D-05 were from people who had either received one free or at a reduced price so that they would review it. Nevertheless, as its features and dimensions fitted my requirements, I decided to take a chance.I purchased it as a replacement for a 2010-vintage Hitachi AX-M136i micro Hi-Fi which had a similar dual-unit configuration. In fact, although the two manufacturers' models look quite different superficially, the other similarities are such that I wonder if Chinese manufacturer Neon was the OEM of the Hitachi model. My suspicions were reinforced by photographs of the Neon remote for this model on other Web sites, as it looks very similar to the Hitachi remote, although the oval-shaped Neon remote I actually received looks very different. Anyway, unlike the Neon MCB1534D-05 the Hitachi was probably one of my worst purchases, as the mechanical background noise from the Hitachi CD player was noticeable from Day One (a widely-commented unintended 'feature' of that model) and lately had reached such a level that it was no longer bearable. So I looked around for a replacement of similar size and with similar features. My criteria were as follows: a) it had to have a CD player, preferably front-loading rather than top-loading; b) it had to have DAB radio; c) it had to be no taller than 27 cm (including the open CD door, if top-loading), and less than 30 cm deep in order to fit on my shelving unit; d) it had to have separate stereo speakers. The Neon MCB1534D-05 seemed to fit the bill (and, indeed, it does).DAB radio is an absolute 'must' for me, as radio signals are weak where I live and FM radio reception is awful: too much static and fade-outs. Although the DAB signal strength here is weak too, providing a digital signal is not too weak it can be decoded successfully and the resulting sound quality can still be good and free of background noise. The previous Hitachi did a reasonable job with DAB but the weak local signal did cause it to drop-out occasionally. Here is where the Neon MCB1534D-05 scored its first hit with me; it copes better with DAB than the previous Hi-Fi did. The sound of DAB radio from the Neon is crystal clear, with no background noise (even at high volume) and no drop outs. Bear in mind that the antenna supplied with the Neon turned out to be identical to the antenna supplied with the Hitachi. When I first switched on the Neon and selected DAB radio, the unit automatically scanned through all the stations and set everything up. It was then a piece of cake to select stations.Note: The internal circuitry in many makes of LED light bulb create interference at a frequency near the frequency used by DAB radio in the UK. Therefore, if your house has LED light bulbs, you may find DAB reception affected when you turn the lights on! I speak from personal experience. This is not the fault of the Hi-Fi unit, it is the fault of the LED light bulb manufacturer.The Neon comes with Bluetooth connectivity, which was not a factor in my decision to purchase the Hi-Fi. However, within minutes of connecting it up, one of my family had noticed it has Bluetooth capability and had already connected a laptop to it wirelessly and was happily listening to an Internet podcast and music. The younger members of the family assured me that the Bluetooth capability will be handy for connecting their smartphones to the Neon to play mp3s, and they lost little time in doing it. So another tick for the Neon. Unlike my previous Hi-Fi, there is no iPod dock, but the Bluetooth feature more than makes up for that and, in these days of smartphones, is of more use to my family.There is a headphone jack socket on the front of the lower unit, and two pairs of RCA stereo AUX IN sockets on the rear of the upper unit. The upper unit also has a USB socket, useful for playing mp3 tracks on a USB pen drive, but I have not tried that yet.The CD drawer pops out horizontally from the upper unit of the two. You just place a CD in the tray without needing to push it onto a spindle, unlike my previous Hi-Fi and most laptops. The Neon plays CDs without any background noise from its mechanical parts (a relief after my awful previous Hi-Fi), and the sound quality is good. A decent CD player is important to me, as I have a large CD collection and, although I listen to mp3s on my laptop, desktop and smartphone, I do still listen to a lot of music from CDs.The controls are straightforward and simple to use. The instruction booklet explains the functions well enough. There is a slight lag when you rotate the function selector knob (I suppose because the knob signal is being decoded digitally internally). Anyway, it's not an issue. I also like the separate Treble and Bass knobs on the lower of the two units. Treble and bass knobs might be considered by some to be old-fashioned but are very welcome to me, as pre-canned equalizer settings (typically 'flat', 'pop', 'rock', 'classical', 'jazz' and so on) on many devices these days are too restrictive in my opinion and I missed these knobs on the previous Hi-Fi. By the way, the Neon also has pre-canned equalizer settings, only selectable by using the remote, but I do not bother with them as I prefer to use the Treble and Bass controls (I could not use the equalizer for three weeks anyway, as explained further on).One of the problems with my previous micro Hi-Fi was the amount of heat it generated. Although summer has not yet arrived here and the ambient temperature is still low, so far the Neon is producing little to no heat. I suspect this is because the internal electronics are more modern and compact than in my previous Hi-Fi. The housings are brushed aluminium and there are good-sized air vents towards the rear of the units. So I have high hopes that the Hi-Fi will operate at a lower temperature in summer than the old Hitachi, which is important as the room in which I have put the Neon tends to get rather hot during the height of summer. The appearance of the units is functional and uncluttered. Thankfully there are no bright flashing lights or other 'bling'. The overall finish is good, although don't expect the finish you would get on a more-expensive Hi-Fi. Nevertheless, it is perfectly acceptable and looks good.And now to my one negative impression of this Hi-Fi... When I unpacked it and set everything up, I discovered the remote did not work. The two supplied AAA batteries were fine but the remote was dead. As it happens, some of the buttons on the remote of my old Hitachi Hi-Fi worked with the Neon, so I knew the Hi-Fi itself was not the problem. It seemed crazy to ship the whole lot back to Amazon UK just for the sake of a faulty remote, so I contacted Neon via my Amazon UK account's Message Centre and Neon replied quickly, offering me a £20 refund with the suggestion I use it to get the remote repaired in the UK. Now, the chance of getting an unfamiliar model of remote repaired in the UK is probably zero, and, in the highly unlikely event I could actually find someone willing to look at it, it would have cost more than that. Anyway, a brand-new piece of equipment that is defective should be replaced free of charge, no questions asked. So I declined Neon's offer and requested a replacement. Three weeks to the day after I contacted Neon, a replacement arrived from China via DHL, very well padded indeed. And it works fine. My guess is that the original faulty remote was not tested in the factory (I hope Neon do that in future). Neon was courteous and replied quickly to my initial message, and did the right thing. Fortunately, the remote is not required to operate the unit and I had no urgent need for it, so no harm done.I won't say the sound quality is as stellar as e.g. a Denon or an even more-expensive Hi-Fi, but, for the price, it is very acceptable and there are plenty of decibels to be had. You can really crank it up if you have a party, for example, and the sound quality remains good. Given that I am pleased with the Hi-Fi and that Neon replied quickly and replaced the faulty remote satisfactorily, I am still going to award five stars to the Hi-Fi as it does exactly what I want, works well, sounds great and looks good.

Firstly, delivered within 2 days, cant say fairer than that.Surprised by the quality feel on the hifi. I replaced a Sony micro hifi that was essentially a plastic box with buttons, but this has a surprising solid feel being brushed aluminium front and controls and a metal case on all the other sides.I was worried about the speakers as they looked like black plastic online, but they also have a quality feel and appearance to them, plus you have the option of removing the speaker grill's (if that's your thing), they look really good either way.Impressed with the number of inputs and playback options on the amp, USB, CD, Bluetooth, Optical, DAB+, FM, NFC, AUX1 and AUX2, not many hifi's have so many options, and none in this price range.Some people may have noticed that Curry's/PC World in the UK have the same hifi in black and badged as JVC for twice the price, and that one doesn't have optical in too. Although it does look like it has different speakers so to be fair, that may affect the price.On to the sound. OK it's no Denon or Bose, but when you pump up the bass control and up the volume a bit I think you would be surprised of how good this little system sounds. I'm pretty picky with my audio, I'm no hifi nerd, but I like my music to be clear with a good bit of bass and a powerful sound and I'm happy with how this sounds.On the down sides:Firstly, I had a fault with the source selector on the amp (it didnt work basically), but NeonUK resolved the issue immediately. Faults can happen on anything, its how the company respond thats important, and the responded promptly and effectively.Next fault. The DAB reception is pretty poor. Despite the fact I have several DAB radios that have never had any issues, the reception on this is not good.There does seem to be a firmware issue when saving radio stations, it seems completely random, sometimes it saves, sometimes it doesn't, sometimes it saves in the wrong location.DAB issues are not a problem for me. In the UK a lot of DAB radio stations are low bit rate and even mono, so its not something I care that much about.The remote is a bit of a strange design, but it works OK and does what its supposed to.Update:OK, trying to play MP3's from USB (not tried CD yet) was driving me crazy. There are 2 problems.Firstly, trying to get ID3 tags to work correctly is really difficult. Track names, Album titles and Album artist mostly did not display properly if at all.Secondly, many tracks refused to play in the correct order, regardless of the filename, Track name or Track order number in the ID3 tag.Firstly, the only way I could get the ID3 tags to work correctly was to use a program called AudioRanger (probably others work too, but this was free and the first app I tried).Using the app I deleted all the existing tags on the file and saved new tags. You can convert the filename to the track name in the app, so you dont usually have to type them all in.Secondly, getting tracks to play in the correct order took a lot of research and trial and error to find out what is going on. Bizarrely, the play order of files in a folder is based on the order the files were written into the table of contents on the USB drive. So essentially it is the order windows copied the files onto the USB, So you have to prefix each track name with a number and also if you have more than 9 tracks tracks 10 , 11 , 12 will come in numeric order before track 2 so the order would be 1,11,12,13,2,3,4,5,6 etc.In order to fix this name the tracks with a leading zero 01,02,03,04,05,06,07,08,09,10,11,12 etc this will give you up to 99 tracks in a single folder. Note you have to rename the files BEFORE you copy them to the USB, so if you have the files already on the USB and rename them it wont change the play order. Move the folder to the PC, Rename the files as shown above, and copy them back to the USB, and they should play in the correct order.You may have to do the same if you burn MP3's to CD too.I hope this help, took me a while to find out.

I bought this to replace an old Sony unit that had developed a faulty speaker output. In terms of sound it works fine for the room it is in, and has a choice of pre-programmed equaliser settings for taste (pop, rock, jazz, etc). The main problem is the DAB radio. The memories for the radio keep randomly changing the saved station to something else, which completely defeats the purpose of the memories! Also the display is a somewhat retro 8 character 14-segment LED display, meaning it only displays the initial 8 letters of the station name until it starts scrolling, which makes it difficult to find the right channel for some of the bigger broadcasting organisations that have multiple channels starting with the same 8 letters (Absolute, BBC, etc). The radio (both on FM and DAB) only receives the stronger signals here, even with an indoor DAB aerial replacing the supplied wire.The remote control only seems to work if it is directly in front of the unit. This is with the supplied batteries. Maybe this will improve with fresh batteries, I haven't tired yet. It is also quite easy to pick up the remote the wrong way around and not realise, due to the shape, and try pressing the wrong buttons!Positives: Bluetooth, 2 pairs of phono sockets for older auxiliaries like a turntable, overall soundNegatives: DAB memories, display, remote control

Delivery good. Did not work ie. No sound from speakers had to be returned