Nice Features...but only in theory!
343329
Bought the SL-6008 wireless RF dimmer switch to activate a light located in a bedroom with the unit plugged in to an outlet out of sight in the bedroom closet. Like other reviewers of this product, features are nice but I need to be standing within 5 feet of the plugged in receiver for the remote to communicate with it.  Tried fresh 12 volt battery with no improvement. Will be contacting Heath-Zenith for replacement or refund soon.
1771218
This was a product I was wanting to like, really.  My first non-PC-based mp3 player was something I really looked forward to.  Unfortunately, despite some truly attractive and useful features and generally good performance, I have now shelved the unit for good and will likely return it to Amazon.
First, the Good:
* The SmarTrax navigation system worked tolerably well, a must when playing disks with 200 or more tracks on them.  Enough of the track info was displayed to know what I was playing and moving through the list was easy, though sometimes a bit slow.
* Playback was of generally good sonic quality, though it became a little ragged at upper volumes on particularly "hot" tracks.
* The bass boost mode was very helpful when using earphones that are lacking at the lower end of the audible spectrum.
The Bad:
* Setup menu navigation is at times frustrating as the software constantly insists on taking you back to the play screen, forcing you to invoke the menu system over and over to complete your setup.
* The track list doesn't show track titles for CDs, only mp3s.  I'm sure such data are available, but the RCA just calls them track 1,2,3...
* The unit turns itself off after only a couple of minutes paused.  I don't know if this is a technical requirement to avoid damaging the disc, but I do know getting to track #127 again is a hassle after you pause it to go get a Coke down the hall.  RCA might tweak the next generation to allow the unit to remain powered and in stand-by if it's on the AC adapter (as mine was).
The ugly:
* The headphones.  Ugh.  Non-adjustable, flimsy, poor phone-to-ear connection (indeed if you can even get a connection...I was only able to get the earpads to my ears when I put the 'phones on from the back of my head).  If you simply have to have this player, do yourself a favor and get a decent set of 'buds or 'phones.
* Here's the thing that disqualifies this unit, IMHO: it skips.  Yes, I know it has a 3/6/13 minute anti-skip, but I'm not talking about physical shock-related skipping, but software glitch skipping.  I used this player at my desk at work and it never experienced a shock greater than a dropped pen or telephone handset hang-up. Yet every few minutes a 0.5 second dropout or omission occurred in the music. At times there was a short silence, but most of the time it was as if an entire quarter note was missing from the song.  The drop-outs happened on both CD and mp3-encoded discs, home-burned and factory-burned media alike.  CD players have been around for 20 years or more...I don't think anyone need tolerate this sort of defect anymore in a player.
Normally, I would have said that for the relatively low price I could live with the quirky menus, irritating automatic shut-off and mystery track names on CDs...I was even willing to pop for a set of good earbuds.  But when I found my teeth grinding at yet another sonic hiccup in the middle of Warren Zevon's artful piano riffs in "Frank and Jesse James," I knew this player's days were numbered.
258250
This is a nice frame, really.  The remote sticks to the back with a magnet, which is really clever, and the interface is quite polished.  But, there is NO SHUFFLE feature!  It is simply not possible for this frame to display your images in a ramdom or even pseudo-randomish order.  They will be displayed in chronological order based on the time stamps in the image files, and as far I can tell, that's that.  How on earth does such a basic digital frame feature get left off of a name-brand product like this?  No idea, I returned mine and will buy a different one.
2906702
I like it a lot, *but*, I can't for the life of me understand why...
1. the waist strap isn't built in, as it's necessary for it to work correctly.
2. the cable for the control unit is too short, so I can't see nor barely reach it to make adjustments or plug in my headphones once the pack is on.
3. (Important) the bluetooth doesn't support multipoint connections(!), so even when connected via bluetooth, non-bluetooth headphones must be connected to the Subpac.  (A companion app for setup would make this possible)
4. the bluetooth range is incredibly poor, cutting out in the next room, whereas other bluetooth headphones work fine.
5. with the 'intensity' knob in the middle locked position, it isn't 'calibrated' to where it should be.
6. there's no companion app to control settings like bluetooth connection, and intensity which you can't reach anymore as the control unit is behind you.

I'm on the fence about it.  It does wonders for bringing out the sub bass in music, great for finding and playing DJ tracks.  But, despite being a recent refresh, it still doesn't seem entirely finished in it's design/development process.
2625726
Plenty of features in a small package - maybe a bit too small as it's crowded multi-functions buttons are nearly impossible to operate while driving. The initial rating would have been 4 stars.
However the story doesn't end there: the deck worked fine for a nearly a year then went into "Protect" mode. The manual suggests a reset as first solution. The reset solved the issue for a few months more, when the "protect" mode returned, again solved by a reset.
Now, just under two years from purchase,  the "protect" mode returned the third time and this time reset failed to solve the issue. Checking the speaker connections for possible shorts - as suggested by the manual - found no errors. The protect mode won't resolve even with all speakers disconnected. The manual suggest to take the deck for a test at an authorized dealer - good luck finding a shop that would look at it and do you really want to spend $100 for a test to tell you it's cheaper to buy a new deck that to repair this one.
In my book this qualifies as useless junk.
1471670
At first I was delighted with this unit's easy set-up, smart appearance, intelligent design and functionality, and high-quality sound. However, I soon discovered that it won't perform the main function for which I bought it: converting old personal analog cassette recordings into digital format(s).

To be fair, the unit does in fact "rip" (convert) a cassette recording and saves it as a digital file on the SD memory card.  But the resulting recording is formatted as a proprietary ".SA1" type file, which apparently is .AAC plus a layer of Panasonic's DRM security.  The main problem is that .SA1 files are NOT recognized by typical audio software (iTunes, MediaPlayer, etc.), and a web search for conversion utilities turned up nothing.  Panasonic includes their own "Jukebox" software, which doesn't help.  This set-up works well if all one wants is to transfer audio files to and from the included tiny, stylish and cool Panasonic SD-SV90 player (noting the lack of ID3 tagging).  But the inability to move audio files from the SD card to one's PC, and convert them to .aac or .mp3 formats for easy playback on other media (i.e. CDs, iPods or MP3 players), etc.) is a fatal flaw for my needs.

For the extra cost of this unit, I expected a lot more flexibility with the SD recording function, but it seems like DRM (Digital Rights Management) limitations won out over user functionality.  For the record, all my cassettes are personal recordings, not commercial music -- so there's no reason for DRM to limit my digital conversion.  The other functions all seem very good, but sadly this system is going back for a refund, to be replaced by a less-costly stero without the crippled SD-recording function.

Great idea, poor execution.
1990750
We bought this because we needed a new clock/radio/alarm and decided to go a little overboard.  We really needed CD and iPod integration with a dual alarm clock.  This isn't the only unit with those features, but it was one of the few.  This thing has HD Radio, XM, streaming internet radio, stream MP3s from your computer... all wow!  So feature set is definitely this unit's strength.

However, right when I turned it on I was a little disappointed.  The noise floor on this thing (the amount of hiss you hear when you turn it almost all the way down) is pretty poor.  Our old $30 cd/clock/radio had a better noise floor.  The hiss is constant, so you can't hear it at higher volumes, but when this is meant to be on your nightstand while going to sleep, it can be distracting.

But, now, on to the *big problem* with these units.  You can upgrade the firmware over the internet.  Out of the box, my unit (manufactured in March 2008) did not have the latest firmware.  So I downloaded the firmware over the internet and upgraded the unit.  After this upgrade, the unit began to randomly lock up.  When it locks up, an annoying buzzing tone comes out of the speakers and you have to unplug the unit to reset it.  Needless to say, I was a little miffed when it locked up after I had set it to sleep mode and had just fell asleep.  There is no way to downgrade back to the old firmware - heck, there isn't even a version number to know which firmware you have!  The timing on this lockup was random - anywhere from 5 minutes after I turned it on, all the way up to 5 hours.  I never saw it last longer than 5 hours over the two weeks I had it.

To make sure I hadn't just gotten a lemon, I ordered a second unit.  I let it play *before* I did the firmware upgrade.  It appeared to have no lock ups, although you really do need the firmware upgrade because it fixes some issues with Rhapsody (can't access some tracks) and the wireless internet connectivity (much more flaky with older firmware).  So, I then upgraded the firmware on the second unit, and lo and behold, it started locking up again.  Denon really needs to fix the firmware, or ask the manufacturers of the innards (BridgeCo) to fix their software.  Hard to say where the blame is.  I believe the original firmware doesn't lock up, but Denon didn't apply the same quality controls on the firmware upgrades.  Shameful.

So, I ended up returning both units.  Nothing I can do, and I can't have it locking up randomly requiring me to unplug it.  Customer service told me to take it in to service, but that was a 2-3 week wait and I think my experiment pretty much proved the problem is with their firmware.

Pro:
- Feature set is unparalleled
- Sounds amazing at higher volumes

Cons:
- Most recent firmware is buggy (as of 8/1/08), random freezes (*show stopper*)
- High noise floor
- Wireless network is finicky (better with latest firmware, but still intermittent)
2893668
I really wanted to like the Piper NV based on the great features.  I purchased it a few weeks ago and set it up as a remote security system for a vacation cabin.  I added some Z-wave accessories to turn on/off various devices and even hooked up a motion sensor.  It has many features that were desireable for a basic security and home automation system, without the costs inherent with a live security monitoring setup.  However, it has one FATAL flaw.  If your network (ISP) has any type of outages (yours probably does and you might not realize it), it's a crapshoot if the Piper stays online.  Based on my experience, more than 50% of the time it won't come back up by itself, which renders the device worthless until you are physically at the location and can reset it.  Since the Piper is installed nearly 300mi from my main residence, this is not an option!!  So, the Piper is basically a toy, just for fun, or for someone who might use it to watch a pet during the day and is not concerned if the device goes offline until its reset.  I contacted Piper support on several occassions to discuss this, and while they were responsive, they were not helpful at all.  They fully acknolwedged you have to be physically present to reset the device if you cannot re-establish communication with it.  When I told them this is not much of a security device, even though it is marketed as one, they didn't seem very concerned.  Not at all what I wanted to hear.  They told me they can't help address the issue until I can physically see the device status lights and be able to physically reset it.  What???!!!  They also could not tell me if this is being addressed or will be addressed with future software updates, so I have no idea if this is even being considered seriously by them.  Overall, I would say this is a good system, but definitely not great and surely not ready to tackle security in a reliable way.  Another issue I was having was the cameras sensitivity to light.  In addition to indoor monitoring I setup the camera for, I was trying to get the camera to 'see' outside a window since it has a wide viewing angle. Unfortunately, even at the lowest setting, the light from the window was too much and created a glowing cloud over the entire window so absolutely no activity outside the window was visible.  There were other pro's and con's that have already been covered, but the first con was fatal.  I think everyone should be aware of this who is considering the Piper as their main security system.  By the way, I've owned a Dropcam (Nest) and was one of the first purchasers of the device when it hit Amazon years ago.  I've had NO issues with this camera maintaining a reliable connection to the network in all these years.  Unfortunately, it doesn't offer any of the advanced security and home automation features that are desireable, although its an awesome camera.
3928228
First, I love the portability and concept. The video is clear and night vision is adequate. Even the battery life is quite good. (I purchased some li-ion nitecore rechargeable batteries which fair pretty good) even the distance connecting to the base station is excellent.

However!

The bad: these are sold as security cameras. I have two in very different locations (one at a gate and one at the front door looking over the driveway) I've tried various positions/angles etc. Played with the motion detection sensitivities. On both cameras it stinks. And this is why the two star. You can really walk right up to these in a straight line and wave right at them and they won't detect you. They will however set off by a large truck about 150ft away on the street! The arlo web site notes detection up to 25ft. Well. It doesn't detect there. It detects much further out with large objects and rarely picks up humans walking on the property. This is a shame. I'll really hope a firmware update will address this. Its silly to have security cameras that maybe 10% of the time pick up what you want.

If an update addresses this, ill come back and update the review. Until then, do look elsewhere if you need a truly robust camera system.
1365560
Let's start with the good things: it plays back practically any type of media. And hooked up (with a LAN cable) to the router I can play-back what's on my PC directly to my TV (even though the PC is networked using wireless, the play back is smooth). All of this, including the recording, the setting of the remote control, needs a little logic and some technical knowledge. The best feature I find is the fact that DivX are read much like DVDs... You will be asked to play from the last position or from the beginning.. so no more forwarding for 10 minutes!

Now, it's not all perfect: the OSD needs reboots on a regular basis because it cannot see the USB drive (or the network folders) I switched off for the night and switched back on (the refresh function doesn't seem very effective). That wouldn't be a problem if it didn't take so long to react and start-up. I find the lag on the remote is long and sometimes irritating. The other slightly disappointing thing, which to be honest is not advertised and therefore should not be expected, is the fact that it cannot record off a TV signal. Only cable apparently... and I have yet to figure out and try this.

Conclusion: it's a great piece of kit, for the use I intended, it is spot on. I am hoping the open source will mean cool upgrades of this little (and extremely lightweight) "tech-toy".
3373100
This is a really low end, consumer oriented router that boasts some nice features but cannot compare to a full-featured router from Netgear, Linksys, etc.

The good:

Easy to setup, seems to have good signal, looks nice, clean interface.

The bad:

Just too many advanced features missing, no flexibility to adjust the necessary network settings if the defaults don't work for your network. While it is obviously not meant to be a power user router, I was suprised at the lack of some of the advanced features which I have never seen missing from even the most basic router competition. Check the manual/features prior to buying to ensure it has what you want.

The ugly:

For some reason, refused to work with some Android devices, while working fine with others.

Bottomline:

If you need the special features, such as 5 ghz dual band, etc, for video streaming, it might be worth a shot. Otherwise, stay away. I am returning mine.
4618093
Since I'm a child of the microchip, anything with a touchscreen grabs my attention, and I have been coveting this router fence for months. I watched the few videos on YouTube, and was so impressed with the functionality that I knew I had to have one. Also, I don't have a ton of time to spend in the wood shop, so I'll take any advancement in work-flow efficiency I can get. This thing seemed to me that it would really cut down on a lot of math and futzing around trying to dial in the old fence. I do believe that will be true, so at least it has that going for it.

Here's the reason for only two stars. One of the things that interested me about this unit was the idea of "upgrades" to the software that would add new functionality. Imagine my surprise when, after setting up the unit, I went to Next Wave's website to check and see if there were any firmware updates, since some of the features I saw in a YouTube review were not present in my unit. I figured it just needed updating. The website indicated that no updates were available, but I could purchase an App 3-pack for $20. Seriously?!? What's even more insulting is that I'm pretty sure you can do what the app 3-pack offers with just a few extra minutes of setup on the R2R. And really, it's an app 2-pack, because I'm pretty sure the "Repeating Dado" app and the "Fluting App" are identical in their function. There is a high probability I would not have purchased the R2R knowing this was the case.

It's also a bit (okay, HIGHLY) misleading that Rockler points out that "More apps will be available in the future to further enhance the versatility of your Ready2Rout!" but doesn't bother to indicate they are going to cost extra money. I know that the $20 upgrade fee is only about 3% of the total cost of the unit, but I just feel like I got completely bamboozled.

Caveat emptor in its most raw form.
1170899
I was very excited about this item because of the GPS functionality, small size, and FM radio, all of which I wished I had in my ipod touch. Sadly, this is another example of a product where the engineers crammed every possible feature in, but not enough attention was paid to usability and the user interface. It is quite amazing to be able to track your workout on a map, but in general, the UI is just not intuitive enough (and I have used numerous MP3 players and ipods). It was hard just to find answers to my questions, as I bounced back and forth among numerous Motorola and Motoactv support pages, which I felt lacked clear navigation.
Problems I encountered, most of which required numerous visits to the website, searching forums, etc.:
-Hard to set up wifi connection to sync workouts (had to go to tech support)
-Can't create playlists on the player (have to do it on PC)
-Battery life is really poor - drains 10-20% per day WITHOUT use. Using GPS, I wonder if it could even last through an hour-plus run, although I haven't tried it.
-Touch screen is a bit finicky, which is probably just due to the small size, but it's easy to touch the wrong thing and go to a screen you weren't trying for.
-Wrist strap kind of dorky looking in my opinion. Not sure when I would use this, as I would always want to be listening to music when running, and it would be weird to have the headphones running from your head to your wrist. (I tried it with my bluetooth headphones, but I don't really enjoy wearing those as it's one more thing to charge -- that's just a personal preference.)
-Map view on the device as you're running is not really detailed enough to be useful, and you can't zoom in much. (You can look at your route on the website in as much detail as you like.)
3405412
This has tons of potential and some cool features, but one critical flaw I can't figure out. In afternoon sunlight shining directly toward the lens, the sensitivity for the motion detection freaks out at the necessary level for picking up motion about 10 feet away (which I need). It will send me videos every 2 minutes during those hours. So I basically have to shut it off in the afternoon hours until the sun gets much lower.
1834978
Ok, so I was excited about this device.  I love the Android ecosystem and the idea of a mini console that allowed me to play games as well as have an upgraded Chromecast and Entertainment apps was an awesome one.  Until I got it.

The unit itself is very well made, stylish, and fits into the home theater setup rather well.  Very unobtrusive.  BUT, there are some glaring flaws:
1.  NO Netflix, HBO Go, or Amazon Instant Video support....PERIOD.  Seriously, the best I could do was sideload the apps (in the case of Netflix the phone app which defaults to lo res) and then if they stopped working, there's no way to get them going again.  That's IF they worked in  the first place.  With the popularity of these services in the US, from a US based company, there's no excuse for them to not be there.  Wait a little longer on the launch and secure the services your customers are going to want!
2.  The advertised game streaming service isn't yet available.  Not even a little.  This might have been a clencher for me, but it's not there.
3.  The connections are just plain crappy.  There's no good reason I should see chop in a streamed YouTube video when viewed over ethernet at 2 in the morning.  NONE.
4.  No external drive support.  Razer put a USB 3.0 port on this device, but it's only useful for standard peripherals like a keyboard or mouse (not wireless in my experience) or their own controller.  Which costs a minimum of $50 extra by the way.  What's the use of USB 3.0 if you can't connect any USB 3.0 compatible devices?  It's a nitpick, but I'd love to be able to use my wireless USB headset to watch movies (if I could that is) or play games while my girlfriend is in bed, but it doesn't work.  And with 16GB of built in storage, an external drive option would be fantastic.
5.  Wireless App for Android devices will not stay connected.  This isn't a huge problem since I have the Serval controller as part of the bundle, but on the rare occasion I don't have it available, or in reach, my phone or tablet couldn't establish a connection even if my life depended on it.
6.  Crippled Play Store support.  Why can I not see all of the available options for Android TV devices in the Play Store?  This is fundamentally no different than the Nexus Player, but I don't see a large portion of the options for apps and games that I do with that device.  I'd get it if it were an x86 device, but it's not, it's ARM.  The only reason I can think of that this content would be blocked is licensing.  Again, don't rush to market with great hardware if your software and services aren't also ready.

This has the potential to be a great little device.  It just wasn't ready for Prime Time.  Even though I'm a die hard Razer fan (the hardware quality is typically undeniably top notch), I'm considering sending this one back and grabbing the Nvidia Shield micro console.
4189834
This item has some nice features, but has one "glaring" weakness that may be a deal killer for some people.
First of all, I really like the sound it puts out. Some people don't like the "Mega Expand", but I like it. Sounds fuller when it's on. The "Mega Bass" is nice, but not very strong.

The alarms are easy to set and use. Again, some people have complained that the buzzer alarm (or chirping sound) is too soft and they fear that it won't wake them up. I found that it wakes me up every time, right away, and I even sleep with a big box fan roaring away next to my bed (for white noise), so for most people, I don't think this will be a problem.

The unit charges, plays, and controls my ipod (1st generation iopd touch) just fine, and the remote is easy to use also.

Both AM and FM radio functions work very well. I live in the boondocks, far from any big city, and I can pull in many stations.

The manual says there are three brightness levels for the LCD clock face: high, medium, and low. This isn't true, as your actual levels are: high, medium, and OFF (as in completely off). This leads to the one, big glaring weakness that this unit has. The medium clock face setting is WAY to bright to be used as a bedside alarm clock. It lights up the room. While some people can sleep with it, many people can't. If you turn off the display, it defeats the whole purpose of having a bedside alarm clock that you can glance at in the middle of the night to see what time it is. I wish manufacturers would get it through their heads that their LCD displays are way too bright for a lot of people, but so many of them still don't get it. Too bad. If Sony would only fix this problem, this Dream Machine would be a winner.
3213837
I can rave all day long about the quality of Onkyo and the feature list of this receiver, but I'll leave that to the past reviewers.  Let's just say I've always loved Onkyo and their features and quality are generally second to none.

I'd really like to give this 4.5 stars with 1/2 star being lost to a mild disappointment.  I was really hoping that Internet radio listening would be almost as seamless as regular radio station listening.  That is, it would have been very cool to select various Internet stations, from Pandora, Spotify, vTuner, etc. and assign them preset channels and just flip to them via the regular tuner functionality.  Well, that's not there.  So, you're forced to traverse through a layer of menus to get to your favorite stations.  This also makes setting up integrated remotes like the Logitech harmony a bit more of a complicated process.

I've only had the product for a few days now, so my experience is still at a minimum, but otherwise I'm liking what I'm experiencing!