Wanna Chill Out to Music and Lights? Buztronics Covers All the Bases
Written: Oct 13 '09
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: chills wine or bubbly (or beer), plays music, and flashes multicolored LEDs
Cons: the music part is pretty darned lame; the jury's out on the lights
The Bottom Line: Last year's weird gift was a Buztronics Ice Bucket and Music Player that also gives users a little light show. It chills wine OK...
|
|
|
| scmrak's Full Review: Buztronics Combination Ice Bucket and Music Player |
My sister-in-law, Lord love her, long ago decided that I like unusual gadgets, so holiday gifts the past couple of decades have often been... err... been kinda weird. There was a battery-powered motorized tie rack (I hate wearing ties), a battery-powered motorized spice rack (a little more useful, but...), a Hummer "shake flashlight" (more hype than light), and a bunch of other items that ultimately ended up on the garage-sale shelf. I'm not all that certain about last year's entry in the weird-gift-from-Barb sweepstakes: it might just take first prize. It's a Buztronics Combination Ice Bucket and Music Player - which, at first glance, looks like a flimsy stainless steel ice bucket like you might get with your bottle of champagne at a mid-priced restaurant - but it's much, much MORE!
The Buztronics ice bucket is a wine chiller: It looks like an ordinary, cone-shaped ice bucket; stainless steel with a bulky white plastic liner and two loose, ring-shaped handles. It is a chiller, though: a central cup with three metal spring strips holds a 750-ml bottle of wine or champagne (or a bomber of beer) securely, all the while rotating it through ice-cold water. The chiller - powered by a 6-volt adapter or by four AA batteries - is on a timer that can be set for five to thirty minutes in five-minute intervals. Toss in some ice between the bottle and the bucket, add water, and let ‘er rip: ice-cold Chablis in fifteen minutes or so! The bottle is tilted in its cradle, so the wine is gently swirled in the bottle for even chilling. The verdict: once you've deciphered the Mandarish instructions ("Add real ice to fill the unit"? I was going to use fake ice? dry ice?), and determined optimum ice:water ratio and run time, the chiller works just fine. Score one for "Buz."
The Buztronics ice bucket is a music player: that's right, you can plug an MP3 player into the unit with the included auxiliary cable, which connects Buz to the headphone jack. Other than an on-off switch, Buz has no music controls - the MP3 player handles the volume. The single small speaker is mounted on the bottom of the bucket pointing downward, so if your expectations are quite low they will be met - but not exceeded. Sound is quite tinny and distorts at moderate volumes: true audiophiles will probably run screaming from the room... The verdict: ummm, barely functional and perhaps worse than nothing instead of better than nothing. With luck, the noise of the motor and the sloshing of the water will drown out the sound...
The Buztronics ics bucket is a light show: turn Buz on, and four LEDs light up. More than light up; they change colors from red to blue to green, cycling among the colors and flashing irregularly. The lights are below the water level, so they light up the water-ice mixture. It's not as dramatic as the all-plastic ice buckets that seem to change colors, but then they aren't "musical." The color-change pattern looks random but actually isn't - if you stare at it for a while you can figure out the repeating pattern... that or the wine is taking effect. You can probably convince yourself that it's keeping time to the music if you're on the second (or third) bottle of wine. The verdict: decidedly cheesy, and not as flashy as this year's model.
Overall: handy to have around if you forgot to chill a bottle of white or bubbly; the lights and music are decidedly low-rent.
Sold under several different brand names, including Buztronics, Rohs, and Gold Sight. Buztronics (based just north of Lafayette Square Mall in west Indianapolis) claims to import "high-quality' electronic items from China. Can't tell it by this, though - still, it fulfills its most important function: wine chiller. Definitely not worth the supposed 69-dollar price tag.
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.