Pioneer Mini Stereo Shelf System w/Bluetooth

Barely acceptable for the money. That's how I would describe this unit. It was purchased for my mother, who mostly listens to her CDs in her bedroom in the mornings while getting ready. She had a 20+ year old Philips CD clock/radio/alarm that was left over from my days in college. Great unit that has served daily duty now for 20+ years. It finally gave up the ghost this past week, and I was immediately searching for something a little nicer in sound quality as an option or just settle for a regular CD/radio unit as the old one was. Surprisingly, hardly anyone makes CD/radio/alarm systems any more. Today MP3/iPod style players with clock/radio/alarm functionality are the norm. This is beyond my mother's technical ability. Thus I was forced to move "upmarket," or more precisely, upwards in price to look for mini-systems with CD players. There's not many. There's a GPX unit on Amazon that sells pretty cheap but it gets middling reviews and looks too complicated to use. Most of the others are far more expensive than this Pioneer unit. Thus knowing Pioneer as a solid brand, I took a stab. Pros: The unit looks nice and sleek. The speakers are actually separates and use traditional speaker wire (included). It offers CD, AM/FM, Bluetooth, Aux, and other input sources. It has proper, separate FM and AM antennae hookups. It has a simple interface and a clear screen. And it is relatively compact. Plus the sound quality is actually pretty good for such a small system. Cons: The wires are short, especially the power cord. The included FM antenna does not have the right connector/adapter for the FM antenna input on the back. Worst of all, the volume/output is pitiful. At maximum volume it was barely loud enough to fill a 12' x 12' bedroom with sound and it was very easy to hold a quiet conversation over the music while it was playing. Not only did we not need to raise our voices to be heard, we could actually whisper and be heard clearly. As mentioned, the quality of the sound is actually good, but considering the size of the speakers, I was expecting much more than this. Your average bluetooth rechargeable speaker would put out far more volume than this does maxed out. If I had it to do again, I wouldn't purchase this model. I'd either go more expensive or go with the cheap GPX and see. This will service for now, but it's certainly underwhelming for the price. It ought to be under $50 for this level of performance.