Geneva Labs XL

The basics

The Geneva Labs XL is an all-in-one iPod dock and mini system, comprising all-format iPod dock, slot-loading CD player, FM radio, RCA and 3.5mm inputs. It has twin tweeters, drivers and woofers harness a total of 600W of amplification.

The good

You can spend years of your life choosing oxygen-free speaker cables, buying shielded power cords and adjusting your loudspeaker orientation by degrees to get the perfect levels of ear-caressing sound. Or you can just buy the Geneva Labs XL dock and have the same experience within minutes. The matched six-speaker array rolls out a pseudo-surround soundstage that’s as convincing as anything we’ve heard, and the integrated CD, radio and iPod dock puts everything at your fingertips. Build quality is simply stupendous, and it’s even available in the only three colours that men care about: piano black, alpine white and mid-life crisis red.

The bad

The Geneva XL poses such design conundrums as: does the minimalist aesthetic compromise sonic reproduction? Or: will the aluminium pedestal benefit from ballast loading to deaden reverberations? Unfortunately, the one you’ll hear most often is: is it a stereo or a washing machine? Guests will discover the answer when they try to feed their dirty skids into the CD slot but by that time it’ll be too late. The XL isn’t well-suited to be part of a home cinema set-up, either.

The bottom line

Room-filling sound competes with a wallet-emptying price to produce mind-numbing sonics and one of the most eye-catching pieces of electronic art ever made. You might love it, you might hate it, but you won’t be able to deny it sounds great.