KEF KIT200 Review

KEF KIT200 Home Cinema System The KEF KIT200 may not be quite as expensive as the Bose Lifestyle 48 but its certainly not cheap either. Retailing at around £1,500 we're hoping from good things from this beauty.

And a beauty it certainly is. Its sleek, smooth and stylish black die-cast zinc coating oozes panache - this device would look gorgeous anywhere. No one part of the units design lets you down - it is beautifully designed down to the tiniest details. But as with all systems this nice looking, there's a worry your paying for the way it looks, not how well it works.

In terms of specification, there's nothing here to disappoint. The KEF KIT200 supports DVD, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, CD, CD-R, CD-RW and MP3 CD, and can decode Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound and DTS. It comes with a built in RDS-enabled AM/FM radio, has SCART, component, S-Video and composite video ouputs, S-Video and compositive video inputs, co-ax and digital audio inputs and a digital audio output. It also sports progressive scan technology to provide blistering image quality.

So how to does it perform in the systems test? Well, getting it out of the box and set up is no problem. There's no faffy configurations or self-assembly to sort out - we literally had it in place and looking stunning in minutes. Once set up, performance was exactly as we had hoped - breathtaking. The subwoofer is not a weak little thing - it produces room shaking bass without even trying, and thankfully the satellite speakers are able to live up to their bigger brother, adding beautiful crispness and clarity.

Thanks to the excellent assortments of video outputs and the extra bonus of progressive scan, video quality was excellent too, and the entire effect was emersive and powerful cinema.

Pros

Superb, makes-you-weak-at-the-knees design
Great specifications
Progressive scan support
Superb audio and great video

Cons

Quite a bit more expensive than other systems
Not much else...

Conclusion

The KEF KIT200 blew us away. It looks superb, it produces breathtaking audio and great video, the specifications and media support are brilliant, and there are enough inputs and outputs to keep even the most geeky home-cinema obsessive satisfied. Yes, its not cheap - its almost 4 times as much as many very decent home cinema systems, but if you're willing to pay the extra you will absolutely not be disappointed.

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