LG CM4360 LOUDR Home Audio System with Bluetooth, CD, Radio Boom Box, Black, 230 W

Great sound looks great too,small and powerful, ideal for small or large rooms in the house

Very nice product at affordable price. Would greatly recommend

only just got this but so far very happy with it, has excellent sound quality once you play with the pre set sound modes you can easily find one you like, the bass on this is nice & strong & the speakers handle the sound & the bass very well unlike other systems I've seen with poor quality speakers, even the radio on this seems to be picking up good reception in same location other systems have been found to struggle, very loud powerful system, so far have only had this up to half volume & even at that it's very loud & if have the bass on it will shake the room, you can even feel it through the floor. One thing I will point out that does not bother me at all hence does not affect my rating of this but just like to say things can differ from picture shown & this does not have the red around the volume dial & does not have the red xboom written under the volume dial either, don't know if some systems have come with this in the past & this might bother some people that it looks slightly different but I'm fine with this & all in all it's a very nice looking system with a mix of gloss & satin black with a couple of red buttons & red in the speaker cones, there are also some parts on the main unit & the speakers that have a carbon fibre look & are nicely textured as well, clearly it isn't carbon fibre & is just plastic but the look & the feel is very nice, all in all a vey nice looking & great sounding system, highly recommended, my only hopes are that it will last for a decent few years without acting up as sadly a lot of things these days tend not to have a long life

Great stereo easy to set up good sound easy to use and theres even an app so I can control it via my mobile or remote controllThe remote controll has a good rangeStereo has bluetooth and I can even connect my phone via a wire and play tracks from my phone on the stereoIts quick to read CDsI bought this as wanted a new stereo but the selling point has to be the fact that I can hook this up to the TV so I dont need a soundbar which is great as was looking at buying a second soundbar and its saved me some moneyThe speakers have a fairly decent length of wire so they do not have to sit right next to the main unitOverall very happy especially for the money I paid it does not have dab but I do not need that as I listen to the radio via Alexa on my echoSystem also looks nice and smart

What hi fi will £100.00 buy you these days? More than likely it’ll be a low powered unit, with tinny sound quality to match. You’d be forgiven for thinks it CD players have disappeared with the arrival of MP3, mobiles and Bluetooth Phones. Yet amazingly both CD and vinyl have made somewhat of a comeback. You’ll probably get a CD player, a DAB/FM tuner, an auxiliary input, a USB port and Bluetooth connectivity. Audiophiles would most likely shirk at first listen, and decry cheap hi fi systems as not really being hi-fi at all. Sony, Panasonic, Philips, JVC, and sharp are amongst the companies offering hi-fi systems around the £100.00 or cheaper price point, with amplifiers behind rated from 8 watts RMS to 25 watts per channel. Sharp and Panasonic have £80.00 systems, and Sony units start at just over £100.00. So it’s a surprise to find Korean manufacturer LG offering a system for just under £70.00 with a whopping 115 watts RMS per channel. At that price, surely compromises have been made, haven’t they? Read on to find out if this is the case, and what corners, if any, have been cut to bring it it in at under £80.00At the price point it sits in, there’s plenty of big name competition from the likes of Pioneer, Panasonic, Philips, Sharp and Sony, amongst others. In fact you’d have to spend another £100.00 or so to move up to the next price point, and then established names like Denon and Yamaha enter the fray. With competition being stiff is the LG 4360 worth the money, or only fit for a teen-agers bedroom?The LG 4360 is a funky looking unit, that boasts a 115 watt RMS per channel amplifier, CD player, FM stereo tuner with RDS data, a USB input with the ability to record from the unit, auxiliary input that will accept Turntables possessing a built in Phono stage, and the ability to sync Bluetooth connected devices through the unit. There’s also 22 EQ pre-sets and a bass boost feature called Bass Blast. The only thing missing is DAB radio capability, most of it’s contemporaries feature this. But what it lacks in DAB, that huge amplifier more than makes up for, right? We’ll look at sound quality in a short while, but first we’ll look at aesthetics and build quality.Unboxing is pretty easy, the contents come in a narrow oblong box, with the speakers and main unit is protected by polystyrene. The remote and manual are in a polythene bag. The remote feels a little lightweight and plasticky, but that seems to be the norm nowadays with remotes. Adding the supplied batteries does make it feel sturdier. It’s a little on the tiny side, but not too cramped. The black two way speakers are constructed from chipboard and chunky black plastic with a carbon fibre finish that looks modern, aimed more at the younger end of the market, and on trend with a lot of more expensive units aimed at the home DJ or house party market. The main drivers are of a polythene construction and are orange and black. Two large bass ports at the bottom of the speakers pad out design. The speakers don’t have much depth to then, only about three inches, but the plastic protrudes out by another inch which will help the sound but not much. For a good sound depth of the cabinet should be at least equal and preferably deeper than the width of the speakers. We’ll find out later if that’s the case.Moving on to the main unit, It’s a shame it’s not got a classy metal front, in a timeless style like budget offerings from Sharp, Sony and Panasonic, as only Philips and LG opt for the modern chunky look for their entry level models, a look that leaves me wondering if it’ll look dated in a few years. My main system is a Technics system from the late 80’s and that hasn’t dated unlike some systems over the years have. The 4360 main unit does feature the same carbon fibre finish as the speakers, but the rest of the casing is metal. It’s thin, but not overly thin, though a little thicker metal would make it seem of a higher quality. Size wise, it’s too large to be called a micro system, and too small to be a midi system. I’d class it as a mini system.The unit is dominated by the overly large volume knob, which is becoming the norm for these home DJ/house party systems. All the main controls are around the volume control. Set up is a breeze. All you have to do is connect the speakers to the clamps on the back. The cables and clamps are colour coded so you can’t go wrong. The aerial is attached to the unit, and there’s no DAB radio to set up, so it’s just a case of plugging in, putting the batteries in the remote and powering up. The display is bright, but not overly so, and can be dimmed by 50%.. There’s a function button that you use to select the mode, and a Sound Effect button to change the main EQ presets, but this doesn’t let you select the Region EQ's, there’s a separate button for that, which is confusing until you read the manual. In total, you get a whopping 22 pre-sets, which is a good deal more than most manufacturers provide. There’s no manual EQ options, such as bass and treble controls or even a graphic equaliser built in, which is a shame, but not a deal-breaker.Let’s now check out the features of this Unit. I’ll start with the main feature of the unit, the amplifier. It’s rated at 115w RMS X 2 which means it should be loud, and it is. The volume control goes from 0 (no sound) to 40 maximum power. Note that 40 does not necessarily mean a full 230 watts, as that depends on how loud the music being played is. The output level that the CD was mixed at, the radio station output volume, or the volume and bit rate the MP3 files were ripped at can have an effect. In simple terms, a loud piece of music with a lot of bass, and treble can cause it to peak at a lower number on the scale, or peak at more than the stated 230 w at full volume. A continuous 230 w output could damage the unit, and in a normal home environment seriously annoy your neighbours, especially if you live in an apartment or semi detached house. Frequency response is between 100 – 20,000 HZ, with both a signal to noise ratio a dynamic range of 75db. The Total Harmonic distortion is a little on the high side at 20%. However, these figures will be different if you put a different (i.e. better) pair of speakers than the ones supplied with the unit. The supplied speakers don’t generally distort at up to 30 out of 40 on the volume scale, but the highs can sound harsh once you get over seven or eight depending on what you’re listening to, and I’ll go into that in more detail in the sound quality section.Moving onto the component most likely to be used, we find the Bluetooth feature is arguably the units strongest feature. Most music these days is streamed from services or playing back music downloaded to a tablet or phone and streamed to either a Bluetooth speaker, or sound system like this, and all the major manufacturers have added this feature in their entry level systems. The trump card of this hi-fi is that you can connect up to three devices at the same time. Of course, the unit can only playback from one device at a time, and you must bear in mind that there shouldn’t be anything blocking line of sight between the device paired and the unit. That means you can’t have the unit in a different room to the device paired. Connecting is easy, the 4630 shows upon your phone or tablet as LG cm436,mand once paired, the connection doesn’t drop like some manufacturers units do. Sound quality, using the supplied speakers is generally excellent, with no perceivable drop in quality, you’d have to be an audiophile to notice. Full marks to LG for that one. LG doesn’t state a maximum distance to connect, but it’s safe to assume that it’ll be similar to that of most manufacturers. Also remember that removable media such as bluetooth dongles can’t be used in multiple pairings, as they’re not made to work that way. Volume is set using a mixture of your phone or tablet's volume level, and that of the hi fi. Remember that a lower volume on the paired device and increased volume on the unit can produce a cleaner sound with similar DB output. There’s also an LG “Music Flow” app that works in conjunction with the Bluetooth that’s great for creating playlists and other things.The radio on the unit is FM/AM only, there’s no DAB, which can cause problems in areas with poor reception quality like where I live. As the aerial is built in, you can’t connect it to your TV aerial, or an external one. I had trouble tuning into local FM stations less than 20 miles away, but had no problems with the big national ones like Radio 1-4, Smooth, Classic FM etc. When it connects to a strong stereo signal, both reception and sound quality are excellent. The tuner is a little louder than the CD player at comparable levels. It’s not the units fault that it can’t properly tune into some stations, my Sony unit has exactly the same issue with both FM and MW. MW reception in my area is extremely poor, my Sony is the same. This could be due to MW being a dying format and the transmitter strength being cut down to give more power to the FM stations, which are popular in cars. Old Hi-fi systems (pre y2k) and modern car radios don’t seem to suffer from that problem, it’s just a problem with some modern systems from the last 15 years or so. Whilst most tuners give you around 20 pre-sets to save, the LG is overly generous with 50. In fact, I couldn’t find 50 stations I could actually tune in with and get a decent signal.The CD drive in this system seems to work well. The sound is quite detailed. It doesn’t seem to be as bassy as the tuner. It’s reasonably good at picking out fine details, but not as good as a dedicated hi fi seperates model, as the sound stage can get a bit murky sometimes, whilst at other times it can be harsh sounding. Music from the last 30 years seems to sound the best. That’s probably because there aren’t as many frequencies that distort than in older recordings. It doesn’t state the oversampling figure of the CD player, which is how many times it’s sampled before We hear it. Any inconsistencies in the disc and it skips those bits out or stops playing, whilst for perfect discs it smooths out imperfections in the sound reproduction of the disc and makes it seem warmer, and not as harsh. In layman’s terms, if you’re old enough to remember, when they first came out manufacturers boasted even scratched discs would play without any loss of sound quality. That wasn’t strictly true because the more times a disc was previewed or sampled, the more likely a scratched disc was to play. The more times sampling occurred the more likely a badly scratched disc is to skip. A high end machine would have 16 or 32 times oversampling, whilst entry level discs would only have 2 times. Whilst it means scratchy discs will more than likely play on a cheap machine, the tendency to sound harsher is still there. As this is produced to a price point, it’s fair to say that it won’t be the best quality, probably having 8 times oversampling, which is why it’s not as harsh as old separate CD players. Programming playlists is relatively easy to do, and you can programme up to 20 tracks in total. It’s not the most generous, some players can play up to 30 or more tracks, but to be honest, if you‘re compiling a play list, as there’s only a small number of discs with over tracks on, The Beatles at the BBC volume one with 35 tracks on disc one being a good example, it’s unlikely that you’d need more than that. As a compact disc player, it does a really good job, considering how little the system costs. When you turn the system off half way through a disc, it remembers where you were up to and resumes from the next track. Quite a lot of players don’t do that so it’s another plus for this system. And just in case you’re wondering, it does support MP3/WMA playback as well as folders. It can only recognise a maximum of 999 files, and 200 folders per audio CD. Simply use the Preset Folder on the remote control to select the desired folder, then the left and right track search buttons to choose the track you want to listen to. Playback is of a high quality, and you can fit a lot more tracks on a CD in MP3/mode, just remember to rip the tracks at a rate of 128 KBPs or higher for the best sound quality. You can record from CD to USB by pressing the record button on the remote whilst a disc is playing, and press it to stop recording. Holding the record button for 3 seconds will let you select the bit rate, and pressing record again will let you set recording speed, with 2x recording speed being available, but only for Audio CDs.If you’ve got a compatible LG TV you can use the next mode, simply called LG TV, to run the TV sound through wirelessly, and control the volume with the TV remote. As none of our TV sets are LG, this is has not been tested. I would imagine you would get much louder sound than the TV's built-in speakers with more bass, and at a decent volume level similar to a surround sound cinema system without the surround effect. It’s also worth noting that there’s no optical input for sound from a modern TV system, though you can run stereo TV sound through the aux in socket if you have a long enough cable from your TV.The next function is USB mode. For this you need a USB memory stick, or an MP3 player such as an IPod. Playback is the same for a CD, and you can use the Preset/Folders button on the remote to navigate folders using up and down. You can record to an iPod or phone as well if there’s free space on the device. Just plug it in, then select the appropriate function and press record on the unit or remote.The AUX function let’s you connect external devices such as a cassette deck or turntable but this is playback only. There is no audio out jack’s to connect the unit to either an external amplifier or the audio in on a cassette deck. The input jack’s are two RCA phono sockets on the rear of the unit and not headphone jacks as on some systems like my Sony. The advantages of this are twofold. Firstly, the cables are out of sight at the rear, and secondly, RCA cables give better sound performance. Remember that if your turntable has a magnetic cartridge fitted, it must have a switchable phono pre-amplifier built in or go through an external phono pre-amplifier (these can easily be bought on Amazon and if you’re prepared to spend a bit of money will give better sound quality than a built-in pre-amp) for it to work. Ceramic cartridge turntables don’t need a preamp, but in most cases don’t give the frequency response needed to give the sound quality the system is capable of. My own turntable isn’t the best quality (I bought it used for £25.00) but it does have a magnetic cartridge fitted and gives perfectly acceptable sound quality with this unit, punching above it’s price point. It uses it’s own built in pre-amp.I’ll move forward to sound quality. I’ll cover two scenarios, first with it’s own supplied speakers, and second with a much better pair of speakers. The unit is rated at 4 ohms, which means that you must use speakers with an impedance of no lower than 4 ohms, otherwise you’ll blow the amplifier. Two eight ohm speakers on the same channel would be the same as one 4 ohm speaker, two 4 ohm speakers on the one channel would be equal to one two ohm speaker, so don’t have more than one four ohm or two eight ohm speakers per channel or you’ll blow the amp.The supplied speakers are a little tinny, and at the very bottom end of the acceptable quality range. The two Bass Ports are very much needed, as the mid range frequencies aren’t as good. There is some mid range audible, but compared to other speakers, they are woefully lacking. Vocals don’t have the presence and clarity that the higher mid frequencies better speakers posses. As well as being tinny and bassy (with the right music) at the same time, there’s an annoying high frequency distortion with older recordings. I’m a big 60’s music fan, and although it doesn’t make the music unbearable to listen to, it is annoying. At lower volume levels of say 5 or under it’s not noticeable, but get close to 10 and it rears it’s ugly head. You may have read other reviews stating that with the supplied speakers the only acceptable pre-sets are Bass and Axe. This is because these pre-sets add both bass and treble to the sound stage, and in all honesty, none of the others are any good, often sounding a little tinny and muffled. The Bass Blast button simply switches the unit to the Bass preset. It doesn’t add bass and treble to whatever pre-sets that you’ve already set. However, it’s not a lost cause.I have added two different sets of speakers (not at the same time though) to the system. The first was a new pair of Wharfedale Diamond 9.0’s rated (like most new speakers) at 6 ohms. The difference in quality is almost amazing. The Diamond 9.0’s aren’t overly bassy, but the higher mid range frequencies really make the vocals and acoustic guitars shine through. The other presets take on a life of their own. In contrast, the 4 ohm speakers from a small Sony system of ten years ago really bring out the bass, and lower mid range frequencies lacking in the supplied speakers. The bass from the Sony's isn’t quite as crisp as i’d’ve liked, but only by a small and only just noticeable amount. If course, if you could combine both sets of speakers in one then you’d have an ideal sound stage. Both the Wharfedale's and Sony speakers give the unit a soundstage that was lacking before. They’re two different soundstages, depending on your personal preferences, but now most of the pre-sets are suddenly useable. For example, the Pop pre-set was just mush with the supplied speakers, but now the vocal levels drop by a noticeable amount, yet have a superb clarity to them, so by putting the volume up slightly lose most of their mushiness. I prefer the Sony Speakers over the Wharfedale’s, but miss the upper mid frequencies the Wharfedale’s bring. I’d recommend a good pair of used speakers. You can pick up a pair of Diamond 9.1’s ifor £50-60.00 if you shop around and are prepared to wait. They’ve a lot more bass than the 9.0’s and come highly recommended by enthusiasts. Facebook market place often had speakers being sold cheaply, and you shouldn’t have to pay more than £40-50.00 at most. Check reviews before offering to buy. You can drop on dusty pairs for as little as £10-20.00 if you’re really lucky (I dropped on a complete Sony mini system for £20.00 last year) so don’t jump at the first pair you see.Before I finish I’ll quickly point out a couple of features on the unit. There is a built-in clock, and you can use the dimmer so it’s not too bright at night when you’re sleeping. And there’s also an alarm function that will turn the unit on at the desired time to wake you up in a morning, but remember this is a powerful system, so don’t set it too loud that you annoy the neighbours at 6.00 AM.In summary, for the price, with such a powerful amplifier this is an amazing system. You can stream music to it from your phone, hook up an MP3 player, add a turntable, or run your TV or PC sound through it. And that’s in addition to the CD player and radio. It has it’s downsides though. You need to live in a good reception area for the radio to work properly as you can’t attach an external aerial, there’s no DAB tuner that most of the rival manufacturers have added at this price point, and the supplied speakers just don’t have the physical depth needed to give a good sound. As it comes it’s perfect for a teenager's bedroom or the kitchen, but if you want a main system, you’ll have to upgrade the speakers. Even after spending £50.00 on a decent pair of speakers, you’ve got a powerful system with great sound quality. Ratings wise, I’d give this four out of five, as you get a lot for your money, but the poor speakers and lack of a DAB radio stop it from getting a full five stars.

Love the fact it hooks to our LG tv via bluetooth i watch a lot of sport and wrestling and it sounds great through the hifi. Has usb which is handy for dance music that i listen to as well CD player is there if you fancy getting your old collection out.

I primarily use this hifi on aux for my pc connection an every couple of hours i have to turn it back on as it will alto turn off/activate sleep mode. Not a bad hifi but don't overload with speakers/wrong speakers as it will overheat an blow the board inside ( found that out the hard way with the last one ) but could do with that little extra kick. Has nice volume and good distance to the remote sensors

Excellent value.