SteepletoneBOSTON Black 5 in 1 Music Centre, Bluetooth Vinyl Record Player, Turntable with CD, Cassette, FM Radio and Aux in, USB MP3 playback & Encoding, Remote Control, Standalone Stereo Speakers

When my late ‘80s stereo totally packed up this month, there weren’t many reasonably priced replacements on offer. Then I found this on Amazon for around £200. It is easy to set up and does a brilliant job on all features - so nice to have a working turntable again as that part gave up the ghost a long time ago.Okay, the sound isn’t superior top notch but it does the job for me and I love music - it’ll be on all the time! The bass and treble knobs help arranging it to the way you like your sound.Love the fact it’s British manufactured so that calmed my fears about returns too, as well as supporting small British businessses.It’s neat and the speakers don’t have to be too far apart.I’m really happy with it and would encourage ditherers to go for it at this price!

This music centre is just the job for us. Can play our old vinyl records, tapes, CDs, MP3s and has a good FM radio, and a remote control. It looks good and all functions work well. We were surprised at the reasonable price - and not at the expense of quality. The controls are easy to understand and large enough to read easily. We are delighted with our purchase. We might even get around to the blue tooth facility - with a little help from our younger generations!

The media could not be loaded. We've been after something like this for a while and reading the reviews this one seemed the right choice, right? Yeah, really. Read on...We wanted a record deck, double tape with record, CD and the added bonus of USB to record MP3 from the various media. In that sense it's a winner I guess as it has all that, plus you can bluetooth to it so you can play music from your mobile through it. All seems great.Ok, so here's what we found:Package was damaged on arrival. Not the manufacturer's fault of course, but given that the items inside are very close to the impact hole it was lucky there was no damage.Once set up I tested everything and found it had a background hum all the time. I notice it has no earth being double insulated, which probably contributes toward it. You can hear the power supply inside it humming in the back, and thus you get a noticeable hum from the speakers. It reduces when you touch the metal tone arm or an external metal part like a RCA socket on the rear. It's not located near any other electrical device so the noise is coming from its own power unit. Not a great start regarding the electronic engineering in it.The volume and mode knobs scratch as they rotate. It makes you cringe as you get that metal against hard plastic grinding as you turn the knob, and also you can see that the knobs don't rotate smoothly, they're actually wonky as they go round, as though they're not lined up the recess behind them.Play a record? First thing you'll notice is that a 12 inch record won't go past the tone arm, it catches on the way down! The tone arm is too close to the turntable! You have to tilt the record to get it on, then you catch it on the tone arm and nearly drop it in the process. Seriously not impressed with that.Also you get that loud hum when the deck rotates, which reduces as long as you're in contact with the tone arm.Tried the tape decks: Left one for recording. It failed to spool the tape and chewed it up by winding it round the capstan and pinch roller! It was making squeaking and clunking noises and I realised that the spooler spindle that should roll the tape into the cassette wasn't turning. After several minutes deciding whether or not to send it back, the spooler started working. I then tested using a non-chewed blank tape.Sound isn't great on recording, and there's a god-awful hum in the left channel! Seriously you couldn't make it up. Seriously disappointed by now. Also sometimes when you press rewind or fast forward on either deck it sometimes does nothing other than make a noise, it doesn't always wind the tape.So recording from CD, vinyl or MP3 onto tape is awful with that left channel hum. Recording onto USB to create MP3 does the same, there's obviously an internal issue with this set, in my experience sub standard engineering and quality control.Sound quality otherwise? Jolly awful too. It lacks power and overall sound quality. Everything sounds like you're listening to a distant radio channel on Long Wave in the 1970's... through the telephone... It's not great to be honest. It'll certainly fill a room but ironically the speakers have bass ports in the back! That's worse than fitting a spoiler to a moped.I've also just noticed that when you open the lid you can make the turntable go! I've included that in my video.So what do I like about it? Not a lot to be frank, if I had my way I'd be sending it back for a refund and get something else but my teenage son is happy to keep it. Apparently you "can hardly hear that hum" when you play music from a tape you've recorded onto, and the quirky hum you get in general again "you can hardly hear that" when you turn up the grindy snagging volume knob, according to my son anyway. For me I just feel like we've been duped out of over two hundred quid. This much money for something of such a substandard quality is just awful.

Very fast delivery! The system arrived in excellent order, is compact, looks good, does not take up much space and has a remote control which is useful to have. It was very easy to set up and the instructions for the functions are clear and easy to follow but they don't cover every detail. I guess one just has to use a bit of common sense. There is nothing complicated anyway. Generally, the functions are basic and the buttons feel a bit cheap. The system has two units that sit on top of each other. The wood effect looks good too.The cables of the speakers are too short for my liking. I prefer to position the speakers at a bit of a distance from each other. The sound is not as full bodied as I expected or hoped but it’s not tinny either, it’s just not made for high volume in a large room. Fortunately, the room I keep it in is not that big and the sound is acceptable for the space. This is one of the few systems I came across that allow you to adjust the sound a little via bass and treble buttons and it does help a little. There is no other function for sound improvement.The CD player works well and so does the record player with its 3-speed function. It plays singles, maxis and full records. I really just want to play my old records again, add to my collection, and play the CDs I was forced to buy when records were phased out. But I do like a good full sound. However, this system delivers a fairly decent sound if the volume is moderate.I’m mainly focused on the vinyl player and CD player functions so I’m not bothered about encoding, Bluetooth and USB/MP3 so haven’t tested these yet.The radio stations were easy to find and save but will disappear again once the music centre is removed from the net.When I was searching for a compact system, I was bewildered that cassettes seem to be huge again these days (and for some reason it’s always double). Records are back again, yes, that was to be expected, but tapes?!? It makes me smile to think that anybody would want to bring back tape salad. However, I took an empty tape and recorded some music for my elderly relative. This function works ok. The replay was not very clear though. I recorded from vinyl and cd and neither were damaged or had scratches.All in all I wish I had spent a couple of £100 more, but that would have also given me a double CD player (I have no need for these double functions). For the time being this system will do just fine. This is a nice little compact system with an acceptable sound for small rooms.Until records were phased out back then, these systems came as good as they can get with all functions for good sound performance, great speakers, etc. I’m not quite sure why the new systems miss out on all that. I’m not talking about high end priced systems, but systems roughly in this price range. It feels like a new generation of designers who have never known good systems, are now scrambling to bring back something that can play records, but they are not quite there yet. Or perhaps they are more focused these days on their USP sticks and MP3 players, etc. There are also an awful lot of record players with inbuilt speakers on the market which even back then were sooo outdated simply because they sound too tinny. My parents had one in the 60s. Well, here is to hoping that the new designers/technicians will soon catch up and bring us better value for our money.

It was a Christmas gift and we set it up in advance to test it. One of the speakers didn’t work so we called Steepletone who sent a replacement immediately. The great customer service ensured a perfect gift for my mum.

I forgot on my review to add that it even has a strobe to ensure the record speed is spot on and that the remote works even from an angle, you don’t have to be square on to the unit.

as described, prompt delivery, well packaged.