Pioneer brings four iPhone docks to US

Pioneer attached itself to iPhone and iPod audio in a large fashion today in launching four iPhone-capable speaker docks. The XW-NAS3 is a direct port of the system first seen in Europe and is rare in offering a comparatively strong 2.1-channel, 60W system for audio. It will take Bluetooth audio through an optional adapter ($99) and will cost $449 when it ships before the end of the month.

The XW-NAC1 and XW-NAC3 are fresher and bring an unusual approach to dual docks. Nicknamed Dual Mix, it can shuffle the music between two connected players and provide both more variety as well as a way of merging the music from two different libraries. Both already have Bluetooth audio and video outputs built-in, and the XW-NAC3 adds an Ethernet jack and support for pulling audio from DLNA-supporting computers. They ship in June at prices of $349 and $449.

Finishing up the introductions, the XW-NAV1K is intended as an all-in-one and has a DVD player in addition to a single Apple device dock. It can play movies and music CDs on its own, and it can also serve as a self-contained music encoding device: the optical drive can be used to rip CDs to MP3s on an attached USB drive. With removable storage attached, it likewise plays DivX video, JPEG photos and WMA audio, and it will upscale to 1080p when attached using HDMI. Pioneer also plans for this to be ready in June but will price it at a lower $299.

by MacNN Staff