If you travel light, with, say, just an iPad, you may need some good quality sound for presentations and I have some solutions for you.
Making portable speakers is easy but, unless you can move enough air when generating bass frequencies — something that requires a large speaker surface area — most music will be dominated by high frequencies and sound anemic. Even for just speech, a lack of bass fidelity creates a weak sound without presence, so arguably the most important aspect by which portable speakers should be judged is the quality of bass rendition.
Click to see: Photo of Wowee Classic
The first offering is the Wowee One Classic from Wowee One (not to be confused with WowWee which produces cool robot toys). This small device (2.36-inches by 4.72-inches by 1.01-inch and just over 7 ounces) relies on a gel layer that provide a high degree of “coupling” to whatever surface it rests on thereby making that surface its speaker.
This is a cunning design and, while the results aren’t bad, they also aren’t great. On some tables the device gave pretty good results, but unless the surface has a high degree of stiffness and resonance (metal and glass are good; wood, less so) and has little in the way of damping (ideally only supported on the edges and nothing else resting on the surface), the Wowee One’s bass performance is just OK and the high frequencies a little tinny.
The Wowee One Classic has a 3.5mm jack input, a 2 watt output, a rechargeable battery good for 20 hours, and costs $79.99. It gets a rating of 2 out of 5.
Click to see: Photo of Supertooth Disco
My next pick is the Supertooth Disco, a somewhat larger speaker system (3.5-inches by 2.75-inches by 12.4-inches and 2.5 pounds) that has a 3.5mm jack for input as well as Bluetooth A2DP support for wireless connection to all sorts of devices, including iPods, smartphones and laptops.
The Disco is rechargeable with a 1,500 hour standby, and gives 3ish hours at full volume with 28 watts sound output (or can be run from a wall adapter). It has a control dial that provides volume and bass boost that also controls the remote device for forward, fast-forward, backward, rewind, play, and pause.
The Disco sound quality is very good with decent, full bass and midrange response, and clear trebles. At around $100 this is a much better buy than the Wowee unless size is a big issue. The Supertooth Disco gets a rating of 4 out of 5.
Click to see: Photo of Foxl
My final choice is the foxL v2 Bluetooth produced by Soundmatters International. The foxL, another Bluetooth device, is small (5.6-inches by 2.2-inches by 1.4-inches and 9.5 ounces), with a 3.5mm input jack, a 3.5mm subwoofer output, and a rechargeable battery with an 8 hour life. Its power output is 4 watts when a wall adapter is used and 2 watts on battery power.
Of all three products, the foxL has, by far, the best sound reproduction; in fact, when you show it to people who have any knowledge about audio they are shocked! My only complaint is when you use the foxL on a smooth surface and crank up the volume, the device “walks” forward due to the vibration. No matter, the foxL is terrific and at $199, considerably more expensive than the other devices, but it still gets a rating of 4.5 out of 5.
So, the foxL would be my travel choice while the Disco would be my picnic choice and the Wowee One, my “I don’t want too spend much” choice. That, my friends, is sound advice.
Send Gibbs your advice to gearhead@gibbs.com.
