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By Philip Wong
Apr 21, 2006

There are many obvious advantages in investing in a beefy audio amplifier for a home theater system. The ability to play loud while maintaining the dexterity of music and aggressive movie soundtracks is one example. The tendency of overdriving and damaging the onboard electronics is also vastly minimized thanks to the generous reserved power.

While common logic will dictate a premium for such capable boom boxes, Sony surprises the value-conscious crowd with its latest DAV-DZ120K home-theater-in-a-box which carries a hefty 850W power for an affordable S$499 (US$328.29) price tag.

Design
It’s a Sony and we are glad the DZ120K lived up to our expectation in the aesthetics department. To break the boxy outline of the seek DVD receiver unit, its designers employed a myriad of curves around the front panel which is divided right in the middle with a strip of gun-metal finishing. A recessed white LCD display is given centerstage while a shiny volume knob takes up sizeable panel estate on the right, flanked by a pair of microphone jacks.

The silver-colored speaker package consists of five compact satellite speakers and a floor-standing subwoofer. Each of these speakers houses a 65mm full-range driver with provisions for table and wall-mounting options. A front-ported woofer loaded with a forward-firing 160mm driver rounds up the ensemble. Installation was a straight-forward process of routing the generous run of speaker cables and mating the color-coded sockets at both DVD receiver and speaker ends.

	This ergonomic remote comes with a set of tactile buttons. (Click for larger image)

A grayish-white remote control used throughout its entire DZ series is bundled with the HTIB. Most of the buttons are a bit on the small side but are, nonetheless, well-spaced apart with positive tactile feedback. The rounded underbelly of the remote also creates an ergonomic grip which feels comfortable in the palm, while a set of feet keeps the plastiky casing upright on coffee tables and TV consoles.

The feel and layout of Sony's graphical menu have not change much since the FX999W days. Here, you will find a set of handy audio configurations to fine-tune surround sound performance presented in helpful layman terms. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for its video counterpart. The available settings are sparse and do not cover standard parameters such as sharpness and brightness. Users will have to work around this bottleneck by customizing the picture quality via the attached display.

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