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IA100 IHome
The IA100 from IHome is the flagship product from the company. It can be intergrated with Ipods, Iphones and even Ipads. This makes it the most flexible solution from IHome.
The feature that distinguishes the IA100 Ihome from all the other products in the alarm clock category is the bluetooth funcionality, that allows it to play music wirelessly from any device equipped with bluetooth as well. This way there’s no need to have always the Apple device plugged into it to enjoy music. Actually, any other device can be used to play music wirelessly as long as it’s got bluetooth functionality.
Furthermore, the IA100 can be used as microphone and speaker for phone calls. All the data is transmitted again via Bluetooth.
As with many other products from IHome, with the IA100 is possible to wake up to our favourite songs in Ipods or Iphones, as well as with one of the AM/FM radios of the App made by IHome. More on that later.
One of the things that makes this product the benchmark is the quality of sound. The speakers are the same as its little brother, the IP90. However in this model they are 4, not 2, and they are positioned 2 at the front and 2 on the sides, to enhance the spatiality of the sound.
Moreover, in the IA100 Ihome the DSP, or digital signal processing, has been studied and developed by Bongiovi Acoustics. The quality of the sound is enhanced thanks to the increased bandwidth and additional harmonics that make the sound at the same time deeper and clearer. In digital processing product the quality of the sound not always is top notch compared to analog processor. However, with quality circuitry such as the one found in the IA100 the experience and enjoyement is dramatically improved.
If this is not enough, an equalization section is present. If you don’t know what equalization means, it’s simply the process of adjusting frequencies of a piece of music. Any modern music player allows to change the equalization of the music, usually with a three band equalizer. Basses, trebles and medium frequencies can be increased or decrased.
Therefore the sound can be adjusted to our preferences. What is even more beautiful is that with the included remote control is possible to change the eq even at distance. So if we are at distance and we don’t like the sound because it’s a little bit too ‘bassy’, we can decrease the amount of bass frequencies without having to do it on the IA100 itself, but with the remote at a distance.
The alarm section is the one that can be found also in other products from IHome. The snooze time can be programmed from 1 to 29 minutes, according to user preferences. Also, the wake up time is gradual thanks to the increasing alarm volume. No more brutal wake ups due to buzzers at high volume!
When going to bed, it’s possible to listen to music and at the same time fall asleep while the volume decreases gently and after a while turns off.
As in other models, the 7.5.2 feature is present. That allows to set different times for each day of the week so that the user doesn’t have to change them every week end, or even worse he doesn’t have to wake up earlier on Saturday mornings if he forgets to reset the alarm time. Also, it’s possible to set different combinations of alarm sounds from the buzzer, the Ipod/Iphone/Ipad playlists and AM/FM Radio stations.
Talking about Radio stations, the IHome company has made some apps that are very useful for any IA100 owner. The IHome+Radios allows to listen to more than ten thousand internet radios.
The other app that has to be mentioned is the IHome+sleep. It allows to customize the alarm thanks to the manager, to see sleep statistics and to do many other things. More importantly, it allows to integrate with the internet radios present in the other app. Also, it’s got full integration with Facebook and Twitter.
To conclude, the IA100 is the perfect integration for any Iphone/Ipod/Ipad lover looking for an alarm clock that would allow to wake up without the usual boring buzzer, and at the same time the ability to enjoy music with a great sounding system in the bedroom or any other room of the house.