Klipsch iGroove HG for iPod

Posted by John P on February 21st, 2007 Comments Printer-Friendly

Klipsch iGroove HG

As I mentioned in many previous iPod-related reviews, the iPod has been the standard for digital audio players since its introduction in 2001. Along with this, there has been an iPod ecosystem or economy that is full of thousands upon thousands of accessories. Today, I look at one of the speaker accessories, the iGroove HG from Klipsch.

First off, the iGroove HG isn’t exactly ugly to say the least with a sleek and sexy piano black finish, the iGroove HG will blend in with almost any style furniture. It definitely stands out among the contenders in the speaker market. With its curvature, the iPod fits in almost any area and is controlled via a remote that isn’t very intuitive but gets the job done right. It doesn’t have many controls besides the standard play/pause, volume up/down, and next/previous track buttons, we would’ve liked if it has some way of switching through to the album art on our iPod with video though.

I hate to start off this review of a great-looking product with a con, but the iGroove HG’s bass and treble levels cannot be adjusted and there seemed to be too much bass. We noticed this in all songs no matter what kind of song it was, classical, jazz, rock, hip-hop, it all sounded bad. Not sure if this is okay as I am not an audiophile, but if Klipsch or sound experts could clarify, that would convince me that this is a great product. Another thing that was annoying was a slight hissing noise coming from the speakers while the unit was on, but no sound was coming out; just a minor annoyance.

Besides the bass being way too high, the product produced rich room-filling sound and could possibly have replaced a home stereo system. The iGroove HG can also be used with non-iPod devices through an add-on that plugs in via a standard headphone mini-jack.

Overall, the Klipsch iGroove HG is a solid device, but it’s uncontrollably high bass levels turned us away from the device and we would have been pleased if the levels could have been manually changed through the remote. If you’re looking for a great iPod speaker system, check out one of our very first reviews of the Altec Lansing inMotion iM7. At $250, this device is just not worth it at this point.

Pros