TDK TAC7221BK Portable Speaker System review

The TDK TAC7221 is a cheap-and-cheerful portable iPod dock with an FM radio tuner. It can be powered by either the mains or four AA batteries, and is small and light enough to stick into a backpack and take around with you, whether you’re going on a picnic or travelling halfway across Europe to a festival. The fact that it takes AA batteries is also a bonus for travellers, as you don’t need mains power to recharge the dock. The dock is matte black, with most of its front panel occupied by the speakers, which have bass ports at the rear. A sturdy handle moulded into the back makes it easier to carry around.

Sound quality isn’t brilliant, but it’s worth bearing in mind that this is a very compact and power-efficient speaker. You’ll get the best results from pop and dance music with a wide dynamic range – don’t expect the fine details of jazz, classical or technical death metal to shine through to their best effect. Rock music is also reproduced at a satisfactory level of quality, although the mid-range of guitar-based tunes can be rather muddy – we noticed some improvement to the sound quality in general when we used an auxiliary source with a strong bass rather than a docked iPod, which helps to compensate for the dock’s slightly tinny treble.

Unfortunately, TDK’s controller app is very poor. There’s an initial irritation when you start it, as any music you’re playing on your iPod stops as soon as you open the app. It’s poorly laid out and the majority of features are hidden in a sub-menu. The main screen is the alarm clock control, which is clear and simple to use and allows you to start your day with music. It’s obvious that the alarm is the main function of the app. If you want to use it to control your inputs, tune in the radio or play your music collection, you have to go into the settings menu, where you’ll be able to switch sound sources and browse music – but only based on the sorting criteria or playlist that you were last browsing using the iPod’s own music player.

Fortunately, you don’t actually need to use the app to control the dock – you can play music from your iPod as normal, while the dock has a handy selection of buttons on the top including track skipping, play/pause, volume control, shuffle, repeat and a source selection button. This allows you to switch from the iPod dock to an FM radio input or 3.5mm auxiliary input. Even the FM radio works without the app – you can just use the back and forward buttons to search between stations – but you can only see what frequency you’re on through the app.

This is a decent dock, although its audio quality is certainly nothing to write home about.
At £61, the TAC722 is a similar price to the Philips Fidelio DS3020 dock, which can also be powered by either batteries or the mains but has higher sound quality, a better controller app and can be connected to a PC to act as a pass-through to dock with iTunes, so is a better buy all round.