Pump up the Volume with Philips' Fidelio DS8500 Speaker Dock
The Philips Fidelio DS8500 Speaker Dock with remote for the iPod and iPhone delivers exceptional sound and style at a reasonable price. Our eyes lit up as soon as we started to remove the speaker dock from its box—the Fidelio is one sexy music player. It’s hard to deny its modern, sleek design, which is easy on the eyes and vaguely reminiscent of the famous 60’s egg chairs. Designed not only for looks, the curved design provides an ideal acoustic environment for the music being played by reducing distortion and resonance. Philips bills the Fidelio as a sound system designed for audiophiles, and we must say that it delivers on that claim.
We appreciated the fact that we could play music in one room and could clearly hear the music in another. While many less expensive speaker docks are guilty of producing a hollow sound, the Fidelio sound is rich, precise, and the bass is thumping. We were pleasantly surprised at the sound quality coming from a relatively small system. Measuring 6 inches tall, 5.5 inches deep, and 16.5 inches wide, the Fidelio is not the smallest speaker dock on the market, but it fits comfortably on our bookshelf and should fit on most nightstands.
The full-featured remote included is also useful. Large enough to not get easily lost—such an easy thing to do with the standard tiny speaker dock remotes—the remote features an array of options for menu navigation, volume, mute, and playback controls. A downside is the remote’s range, which is limited to around 15 to 20 feet, and line-of-sight.
One potential drawback of the Fidelio is the prompt to download the Fidelio app. When we first docked our iPod and iPhone, we were prompted with a message appearing on the screen to download the free app. This prompt does not go away until the app is downloaded. However, we were pleased with the app once we did download it. Its purpose is to provide the listener with a richer music experience. By hitting the info button in the lower left corner, we unearthed a number of sound enhancement controls, such as a custom five-band EQ and an adjustable dynamic bass boost control. Playing around with these features made for a richer, more satisfying listening experience that you simply cannot find with most speaker docks on the market. Another nifty surprise is the lighting up of its volume icons when it detects your hands nearby. We were rather entertained with that feature for a while.
While some of us felt that $199 was a little steep for a speaker dock that does not feature common elements like an FM radio or alarm, others strongly felt that the Philips Fidelio is pretty much the best sound performance one can find in this price range. We were all in agreement that the Fidelio is a step up from the JBL portable speaker dock we reviewed a while back, and looks and performs better than the identically priced Altec Lansing T612 speaker dock we reviewed.
Savings can be found from Amazon.com. Bottom line: this item’s definitely a keeper.
