Jamo i300 review

The i300 was crafted by the cultured hands of Danish manufacturer Jamo, whose stylish speaker systems are the visual equivalent of Danish bacon -- tasty. With a powerful 150W sub and two weighty 75W satellite speakers, this iPod-ready £250 sound system looks the business, but will it remain standing throughout our rigorous testing?

Design
The well-built, seamless and satisfyingly heavy sub unit handles the i300's power supply and all ins and outputs. Two satellite speakers connect to the sub with heavy-gauge speaker wire -- not often seen in a consumer level hi-fi at this price -- and are weighty in themselves. They each separately boast their own single 76mm (3-inch) bass woofer and a 19mm (3/4-inch) tweeter.

Stylish and well-built: Jamo's i300 feels like a sturdy piece of equipment

The iPod docking unit is connected to the main sub swith a thin cable and also houses volume and performance controls. It also charges the iPod as it plays. Docking has been separated from the main system in this way to allow you to connect, for example, both a PC and an iPod at the same time, to provide an all-in-one audio solution for a bedroom or office.

The ability to position the satellite speakers around the room allowed us to get a more studio-like feel when listening to certain tracks -- something not generally possible with docks or mini hi-fi systems.

Performance
We pumped a variety of lossless-format audio into the system from the docked iPod. The sound quality from the i300 was generally very good. We noticed a slight muddiness in the mid range, however, and despite its wide response range, the sub didn't reproduce more melodic bass tones as well as we'd hoped. Aside from this, the results were excellent. Bass is deep and loud; high frequencies are accurate and clear.

First up for testing was Slam by Pendulum. This is a bass-driven club favourite with various simultaneous bass frequencies. The powerful bass lines boomed from the i300's sub, but they came with some slight muffling of melody. The kick drum pounded confidently though, without interfering with the array of low-range sounds present in this track. Higher frequency cymbals and snares were concurrently well defined and undisturbed by the presence of so much bass output.