Gear4 Explorer iPod speaker

The Gear 4 Explorer is the latest in that group of iPod speakers like the Gear4 Duo and equally popular Klipsch iGroove that are all around the £100 mark or thereabouts.

This range of iPod speakers are billed as portable speakers, but I think are better described as kitchen/bedroom speakers that you can easily take on holiday if you want to.

Gear4 are experienced in this price range and haven’t got it wrong with the new Explorer.

The Gear4 Explorer is compatible with the iPod classic, iPhone, Touch G2/G3, iPhone 3G/S,  nano G3/G4/G5 and iPod and will charge all these devices when they’re connected to the Explorer’s dock.

You can connect other audio devices to the Explorer as well if you wanted but it’s a bit clumsy; it’s via a 3.5mm audio cable which isn’t included in the original set-up.

But enough of the negatives. Gear4 have boosted the Explorer’s sound performance with a 3D sound feature that is designed to add increased depth and width to you favourite tunes and it does just that. You’ll probably not want this feature turned off really as it makes the sound through the Gear4 Explorer pleasantly warmer and more energetic.

You can power the Explorer through a mains connection, or if you want to take it somewhere else in the house with you, or down to the beach there’s a re-chargeable battery that will give you 8 hours of battery life. Most impressively the battery has a fast charge feature that only takes hours to fill the Explorer’s tanks. Very good.

To protect Gear4’s latest iPod speaker on its travels, near or far, the Explorer comes with a convenient carry as well as a handy remote control that lets you change tracks, volume and playlists.

Verdict – The Gear4 Explorer is an easy to use and good looking speaker dock that will work great in your kitchen, in your bedroom or on the move. The sound is good for a speaker of this size and the 2-hour fast battery charge is a nice feature.

Price: £99.95 at John Lewis

Related posts:

1. Gear4 Houseparty 4 iPod speaker review
2. Gear4 CDB-50 Portable CD Player and iPod Speakers
3. GEAR4 SoundOrb Aurora iPod/iPhone speaker system

I think it’s the time of year. Just as Channel 4 are always going to review the best 100 Musicals Ever Written in a 3 hour homage to cheese, then the tech publications are bound to bring out their favourites lists and review the year just gone.

It’s also because the CES 2010, the world’s largest Consumer Electronics Fair is going to open its doors in at the start of January, so there will be lots of new goodies to review. So the techies just need to clear their desks ready for the event.

So the latest reviewers are The Times and they’ve taken a nice fresh take. Instead of going for the countdown, they’ve looked at the best iPod speakers in various categories.Best iPod speaker for All Round appeal – B&W Zeppelin Mini

B&W Zeppelin Mini iPod Speaker

Described by the Times as a ‘proper hi-fi’ and ‘easy on the eye, the Zeppelin Mini is the latest must-have of iPod speakers. It has been voted into most people’s favourites lists and its easy to see why. Compact but with plenty of sound on offer, with elegant good looks and enough onboard goodies to produce a beautifully warm and rich sound, the B&W Zeppelin Mini is tough to beat this year.

Price: £299 at John Lewis

Best for Net Addicts – Yamaha PDX-50

Now this is a nice speaker, but I’m not sure would make it to my Top 5, but I guess it’s not me we’re talking about. The Times love it beacuse you can surf the internet on your phone while playing your music and I can see the appeal of that. The joy of this speaker is also that you transmit your music wirelessly to the speaker, so no need to get up to change the track. Downsides are with 30 watts of output, it’s not quite enough to get the party started, but a nice speaker dock none-the-less.

Price: £142.95 at Play.com

Best for Sound per Pound – Klipsch iGroove HG

Klipsch i-Groove iPod Speakers

I totally agree with The Times on this one. They say that Klipsch make “well-priced iPod docks that deliver the sonic good” and I couldn’t agree more. Great sound, and amazing value the iGroove is a tough one to beat and also comes with a remote control so you don’t need to keep getting up and down to change your playlist.

Price £89.99 at Amazon

Best for Party Animals – Bose Sounddock 10

Music fans and audiophiles love Bose and its easy to see why. With the Sounddock 10, Bose have carried on their tradition of sonic excellence. The sound profile is realistic, warm and expansive and really brings your music to life. The only downside is that you pay for excellence and the Bose Sounddock 10 is not the cheapest of iPod speakers.

Price: £699 at John Lewis

Best for Teenagers – Gear4 Sound Orb Aurora

Gear 4 SoundOrd Aurora iPod Speakers

The Times say ” An enticing package for less sophisticated ears” and I can see what they mean. The Sound Orb Aurora comes with a separate sub woofer unit that doubles as a mood light and changes in time with the music. The sound is not bad, although the bass is a bit muddy sometimes. A nice package, but for the price I might choose the Zeppelin Mini over the Aurora just for sound.

Price: £299.95 at John Lewis

Related posts:

1. John Lewis predicts Christmas success for Zeppelin Mini
2. The B&W Zeppelin Mini has arrived
3. B&W Zeppelin Mini arrives in time for Christmas

OK, well maybe that’s stretching the truth slightly, but it is true that the modest iPod speaker has made it in to the international press this week.

On Reuters today it was revealed that sales at John Lewis (the UK department store) were up 20% compared to the same week last year. In a retail world still dogged by a national recession and constant doom mongering this is a very promising result.  Especially considering that John Lewis is considered a premium brand, these figures would appear to buck the recent trend for consumer down-trading.

A John Lewis spokesman said that some of the main drivers to promising sales over the past week had been electricals and home interior items.

Among all this high-brow analysis on the state of the UK economy and retails giants was news that from Sunday to Wednesday this week one of the biggest sellers in the whole John Lewis range has been the Gear4 iPod Speakers.

Brilliant, huh. Just another example of how iPod speakers are changing the world

If you’ve seen a national news story with a humble iPod speaker mentioned, we’d all love to know about it; just leave a comment and let us know.

Related posts:

1. Gear4 CDB-50 Portable CD Player and iPod Speakers
2. The Times name the best iPod Speakers
3. Best iPod speaker 2009?

Gear4 CDB-50 CD iPod speakers

The 1980’s is big in fashion right now, or so they tell me because I don’t really know. This latest fashion trend seems to have also filtered its way through to the world of iPod speakers.

There have been a few examples in recent times of iPod speaker designers harping back to the days when the tape deck ruled and the Coke generation was teaching the world to sing. The most striking example of this has been the Altec Lansing Mix IMT800.

Gear4’s styling of their speakers has always been smart and reflective of what’s going on in the market but has never been really out there. So it does come as a suprise that they’ve brought out the CDB-50 following the latest trend of Boom-box styling.Let’s face it, the Gear4 CDB-50 does not blow you away with with it’s radical good looks. Unlike a super cool boom-box that any fashion conscious 1980’s dude would be proud to show off on, the CDB-50 reminds me a bit more of a Laura Ashley magazine rack or my aunty’s handbag. Saying that I can absolutely see this is someone’s kitchen or bedroom and it would fit in nicely.

So if it doesn’t offer radical good looks, what does Gear4’s CDB-50 have to offer? Quite simply…value.

Depending on the retailer, the this latest iPod speaker from Gear 4 costs between £60-£90 and I’ve listed a number of the key retailers at the bottom of the page.

If you get the CDB-50 for the lower end of its price range it offers a lot for the money. You get an audio system, that has a built in AM/FM tuner and a CD player for all those funny looking round things that you may have still hanging around your house, as well as a universal iPod dock that lets you play all your new fangled MP3 tracks.

As I’ve moaned about before on this site, I don’t know why Gear4 have put an AM/FM tuner in here instead of a DAB tuner. If the person buying this iPod speaker is forward thinking enough to be listening to MP3 tracks, then surely they want DAB and not fuzzy, crackly AM and FM.

Obviously the reason is price and its a bit harsh of me to stress this point on a speaker that costs less than £100 that already offers quite a lot, but I have; so there.

The CDB-50 also offers the listener a Bassboost function to big up those bass sounds and a handy remote control.

Although I think most people are going to use this Gear4 speaker in their home, you do also have the option of powering the CDB-50 with 8 x  C batteries if you want to take it on holiday or out and about with you.

Sound wise the GEAR 4 CDB-50 is not going to change your life or get audiophiles rubbing their well-worn corduroys but is respectable, although without the Bassboost the performance is a bit thin.

VERDICT – A good value kitchen worktop of bedroom speaker that does what you’d like it to do and is priced pretty well.

Price: £69.99-£99.99

£69.99 at Play

£89.99 at Amazon.com

£99.99 at John Lewis

Related posts:

1. The Gear4 Explorer iPod speaker
2. Gear4 Houseparty 4 iPod speaker review
3. Best iPod speaker 2009?

Gear4 HouseParty 4 iPod/iPhone speaker system

Many iPod speaker retailers and review sites  put iPod speakers in to 3 main categories; Travel Speakers; Home/Portable Speakers and High-End speakers. Often happy to conform, it’s also the format that we’ve taken on this site so people can easily find and compare iPod speakers.

So what does each category mean. What can you expect from an iPod speaker in each of these categories?

Well, I can’t speak for the other sites using this system, but the way that I sort this out is as follows:

Travel speakers = Small enough and light enough to fit in to a beach bag or small back pack, easily transportable with the ability to run off battery power for a reasonable period of time.

High-end speakers = Speakers that cost over £150, have enough volume to fill your living room with your favourite tune, have a decent level of sound quality and look good enough to show off a bit in front of friends.

Home/Portable speakers = This category is the easiest. A speaker that’s too big to be portable and a bit too small or low on volume/sound quality to be a high-end speaker, usually costs less than £150 and would make a great kitchen or bedroom speaker system.

It the Home/Portable speakers category that the Gear4 Houseparty 4 fits in to.

The Houseparty4 has a compact design with a brush metal finish and a fabric grill. The backlit buttons and hidden LED display, that reveals itself from behind the fabric grill, are nice touches that break up the predominantly black/grey exterior.

The 2 x 3″ speakers are able to generate to generate 30w of power which is plenty to enjoy a podcast or tune in the comfort of your bedroom or kitchen.

The Gear4 Houseparty 4 is compatible with the classic, iPhone, iPhone 3G/S, iPod Nano 1G, iPod nano 2G, nano G3, nano G4, touch, touch G2/G3 and is “works with iPhone certified”.

The unit comes with a remote control and on the device itself you have the option of choosing from 7 preset EQ setting.

Just in case you get bored of your iTunes library there’s also an FM radio to keep you amused.

Gear4 have a good track record of making great value iPod speakers and this is no exception. For less than £100 the Houseparty4 gives you some great features, decent sound and an FM radio and it compares very well to other speakers in its price range.

What’s wrong with it? Not much, it’s good. The only negative comment I think you could make is that it’s just a bit bland; there’s nothing you can really love or  really hate about it, it’s just a good all-round performer.

I think the Houseparty 4 is a decent buy and a good bedroom/kitchen speaker system, but come on Gear4, next time give us something with a bit more grrrrrrrr!

We’ve searched through some of the UK’s leading stores to bring you the best prices for the Gear4 Houseparty. To compare these prices for yourself, just click here.

Related posts:

1. The Gear4 Explorer iPod speaker
2. Gear4 CDB-50 Portable CD Player and iPod Speakers
3. Altec Lansing IM9 InMotion iPod Speaker

Gear4 Duo iPod and iPhone Speaker System

Gear4’s Duo speaker was nominated in the Best iPod Accessory category at this year’s Macworld awards, was listed by in their Buyers Guide 2009 as a ‘Gift to Hunt For’ and is one of the best selling iPod speaker docks on the market.

It’s essentially a Home Speaker with a secret. The secret is that in its ‘main’ configuration, as you can see in the image, the Duo is essentially a sub-woofer speaker system, but the face plate that houses the drivers and tweeters, is removable.

Price £89.95 £63.00 at John Lewis

Gear4 call this face plate the Satellite Speaker and this can be powered by a built-in Lithium-ion battery which should give up to 5 hours of play, when separated from the sub-woofer base unit.

The idea of the Satellite speaker is that if you’re listening to your favourite podcast and don’t want to have to stop listening just because you need to go the kitchen to make dinner, you don’t have. You just need to take the Duo’s Satellite Speaker with you. In the same way, if you were going away for the night and still wanted to enjoy your favourite tunes you could take the Satellite with you.

Gear4 do sell a ‘Duo Travel Pack’ which is sold separately and includes a lightweight travel case and spare battery for the speaker that makes it a viable travel speaker as well as being a genuine home speaker system.

The Duo offers a total 38 watt ouput (18W satellite speaker output) and the makers describe the sound quality as “crystal clear..(with).. bass-rich audio”. They’re not too far off the mark, the sound quality for a unit of this size is not bad at all, although if you really start to crank the Duo up you may find that the sound becomes a but ‘thin’ around the upper echelons of its volume limits.

The styling is simple and inoffensive. It doesn’t have the smart piano black finish of some speakers or the radical curves of others, but the dock will not embarrass you in good company as it looks perfectly respectable and would like nice in many a home.

So far, so good. For a reasonable price the Gear4 Duo gives us 2 iPod speakers for the price of one with its clever Satellite speaker design, a reasonable sound quality and its ‘not unpretty’ looks.

The problem that some people may have is that there’s not much more to tell you really. There aren’t any more clever features to tell you about.

The Duo doesn’t have USB connectivity or allow you to synch your iPod while it’s in the dock, it doesn’t have a nice LCD screen to show your photos on or a really special user interface. The Duo stands there with its clever ‘I can be two speakers’ set up and says to you ‘this should be enough’.

Price £89.95 £63.00 at John Lewis

At this price you’ve got to be honest, its clever functionality does set it apart from many other speakers but Gear 4 might want to contemplate adding a couple of extra goodies soon to keep the popularity of the Duo going.

Best iPod speaker of the year? Probably not. I think I’d much prefer to have the sexy B&W Mini Zeppelin anytime! But the Duo, in its class is not a bad bet at all.

We’d love to know what your favourite iPod speaker is. Please do leave me a comment and let me know your thoughts.

Always happy to give credit where credit’s due, those clever chaps at Stuff.tv have got a great video of the Duo where you can see and hear this clever gizmo for yourself. Just click here to take a look.

Related posts:

1. Gear4 Houseparty 4 iPod speaker review
2. GEAR4 SoundOrb Aurora iPod/iPhone speaker system
3. The Gear4 Explorer iPod speaker

Gear 4 SoundOrd Aurora iPod Speakers

The IFA in Berlin is the world’s biggest consumer electronics fair in the world and while Gear 4 had the benefit of such a large audience they announced the imminent arrival of the GEAR4 SoundOrb Aurora iPod/iPhone speaker system.

The GEAR4 SoundOrb Aurora to give it its full, but not necessarily catchy name, is comprised of 2 units. The first is a funky looking docking/speaker unit of a ’soundbar’ design. Not so special yet your thinking, well just hang on a minute.

The second unit is where Gear4 are hoping to wow you, as the second unit is a wireless sub-woofer. Apparently you’ll be able to place this sub-woofer up to 30 metres away from the base unit, but I think most of us will position it a bit nearer.

Although all-in-one ’soundbar’ design iPod speakers generally offer an impressive sound quality, the SoundOrb Aurora is hoping to offer you a deeper, wider sound that will envelope the listener in virtual surround sound.  Not only should this make a real difference to music listening, the unit could also therefore be used as to add an extra dimension to the enjoyment of your favourite TV shows and movies.

The Gear4 SoundOrb Aurora isn’t just trying to impress you with sound. The sub-woofer of this ipod speaker system is white and contains an array of LED’s that you can control to move through an array of 1000s of different colours allowing you to control and change the ambience of the room to suit your mood.

So if you’d like a 2 piece ipod speaker system with good range and some nice twinkly lights take a look at the Gear4 SoundOrb Aurora which is available at John Lewis for £299.95

Related posts:

1. Gear4 CDB-50 Portable CD Player and iPod Speakers
2. The Gear4 Explorer iPod speaker
3. Gear4 Houseparty 4 iPod speaker review