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Overall Rating

You do get what you pay for - Altec Lansing iMT800 “MIX”
If you check some of my other reviews you can see that I already had a small Memorex nightstand size dock for my Ipod. It is kind of anemic and the remote works only up to about 5 ft away. It certainly does not have what I would call a room filling sound.

Hence this “Mix” boom box. I guess at some point the boom box was left out of the name, but some of that name still applies. When I first set up the unit with my Touch and played a couple of tracks, my jaw dropped. It was amazing how so much sound could come out of this little (ok, no so little) box. It definitively has that WOW factor. The spatial imaging is nothing short of incredible, and the speakers, mids and tweeters are only 11″ apart.

After a couple of minutes though I was scrambling to find out where the tone control and the equalizer is (the equalizer is hidden behind a couple of keystrokes). I turned the bass down a notch, then another notch, and another, and another, and another, and another. I am not being redundant here. To get some semblance of balanced tone, I am now at a -6 bass setting. And still if I place the box in a room corner the bass get to bee too much. Of course the beauty is that it is much easier to turn it down than to bring it up with other units.

The MIX has received some editors choices out there already and for most part deservedly so. Comparisons were Boston Acoustics, Bose, Ihome and Klipsh. I will offer some more comments and try hard not to repeat what you can read in the product description above:

The custom sign on message requires 3 keys to be pressed simultaneously, and you have to do this while the unit is starting up (NOT mentioned in the manual, I though mine was an earlier version).

The remote body is plastic, but the clip is metal. It feels very solid. The range is at least 12 ft. The box construction feels very solid. The machine allen bolts around the speakers are real metal!, however the metal looking handles are only plastic.

The small protective wrap around piece that is supposed to protect your Ipod once inserted is way too loose.

Any cover that you have on your Ipod will interfere with the mounting inserts (which I suppose would hold it more securely). However not using the inserts and keeping the cover on works just fine.

Why oh why no HD radio? The FM tuner is extremely sensitive. The scan function is somewhat slow. The information display decodes all of the station, artist and song infor that is transmitted by most stations.

Do not place the box inside a bookshelf. It blocks the side firing woofers and makes the resulting sound really boomy. The speakers are angled upwards slightly as well, so a low placement works best. With just a tiny amount of thought the power supply could have been stored in the battery compartment. As is, the power plug keeps it from fitting.

A thrifty tip, if you have a spare computer speaker set with a subwoofer, you can hook it up to your Ipod with the earphone patch cable. My Creative Labs (Cambridge Audio) has now a secondary home.

The power supply is 17 volts 2.3 amp with a coax style plug, center post positive. Very much like the type used on many auto accessories. Yes I tried it and it works very well.

In summary, an amazing sounding audio device, sounding much bigger than what it is. For best tonal balance you will need to turn the bass way down.