Home > Consumer Reviews > Sony CMTHX5BT Bluetooth Hifi System

When I first took out of the box I began to worry about how small and light it was, it just about fits on the window sill in my tiny bedroom looking very sleek and minimalistic with its metallic surrounds and shiny black fascia, but once I powered it up and spun a few discs I realised how wrong I was when my floorboards shook. Simply put, the sound this thing produces is awesome, bass is full and rounded, the midrange is detailed and the treble sweet, but not as present in the mix as I'd like. I then got really greedy, I swapped the budget speakers supplied with the Hi-Fi for my 5 year old Eltax Monitor III's bought for £69.99 from Richer Sounds, slipped Talvin Singh's "Ok" album into the tray and then the real party began - all aspects of the sound tightened up and became more focused, especially the treble response - the system really comes alive when playing audio cds, so much better than my old CD / clock radio setup.

The connectivity of this system is simply amazing, I tried a few mp3 cd's, then I hooked up my Nokia N96 via bluetooth to try the inbuilt music player and internet radio, it worked perfectly every time. I even managed to hook up a couple of bluetooth stereo headphone setups, a Sony Ericsson MBR-100 dongle, with a set of Sennheiser earphones and a Sony Ericsson HBH-DS970 headset, both worked flawlessly, so did the USB port - I played Q-tip's "Renaissance" album coded in mp4 format from a 16GB Memory Stick Micro M2 card and I even managed to fire up my Nokia N96 in "mass storage" mode - in both cases browsing through the media folders and selecting the files to be played using the controls on the Hi-Fi itself. The conventional options were great as well, I listened to a couple of sources with a set of wired headphones connected to the 3.5" stereo jack input and watched the famous Headhunters rhythm section Paul Jackson and Mike Clark rip through some funk examples on youtube with my 1st generation Ipod Touch connected to the "audio in" socket.

Radio fans won't be disappointed either with the hifi's RDS FM / AM tuner - once the extra long antenna was connected it was a joy to use. The tuner locked on to all the major radio stations easily and sounded great, the best tuner I've owned by a long shot.

Now, I've realised that I haven't mentioned anything about the EQ on the system simply because there's a single button labelled "DSGX" Dynamic Sound Generator Xtra on the unit and you can switch it on or off. If you want to get fancy you can adjust the bass or treble on the remote control and that's it folks, no presets, no 10 band graphic, no virtual surround just an excellent EQ with the only two controls I'll ever need to tweak and I haven't even been able to do that because the supplier didn't ship the remote with the Hi-Fi, but I'll be collecting the day after I write this review!

To summarise, if someone told me a few years ago that I could buy a CD tuner micro system that sounded great, and was fully compatible with a wide range of wireless bluetooth stereo transmitter devices such as mobile phones, mp3 players and laptops, and could transmit to bluetooth stereo headphones and other receiving devices. A system that was fully USB compliant and could read MP3, AAC, WMA and ATRAC encoded music files from USB enabled memory sticks, hard drives, MP3 players and mobile phones. A system that played MP3 CD's, looked great, was light, compact and came with a remote control I would have laughed at them but I would fall silent when I looked at the price ranging from £139 to £100, surely the sky has fallen on our heads.

Does exactly what is. Works perfectly streaming from lap top or mobile. Much easier that Wi-Fi streaming or using a squeezebox.

I wanted a hi-fi that was compact, had bluetooth and a USB, decent sound and a decent price. This Sony system ticked all of those boxes.

Before purchasing I visited the Sony shop in Solihull, purely to check sound quality. There were a few similar Sony's on offer - and all more expensive than Amazon. There was a considerable difference in sound quality between the S-Master Digital Amp and those without.

The speakers are not that fantastic, but value for money - you can't knock it.