Regen Reverb Solar Powered iPod speaker
Regen are the innovative company based in San Francisco who earlier this month announced the launch of the ReNu, a solar powered personal device recharger that is powered by solar energy.
The ReNu + iPod charger is not only a great Green product that allows you to enjoy your iPod or iPhone and be environmentally conscious, it looks great as well.
This is exactly what Regen do; green products that work well and look great. So it comes as no surprise that their new iPod speaker, the Reverb is a stunning looking device.
The Reverb is 3 feet tall, which is big for an iPod speaker and in this respect is in the same territory as Philipe Starck and Parrot’s Zikmu speakers.
There’s an obvious reason for the size of the Reverb; around 80% of the height of the speaker dock is taken up by a photovoltaic panel which the unit uses to gather sunlight which it transforms in to power that it stores in its Lithium Iron Phosphate battery.
When fully charged the battery life on the Regen’s Reverb is 12 hours if you’re listening to your music at ‘normal’ levels. If you’re really turning up the volume, then just as a car drinks more fuel the quicker it travels, the Reverb uses more power and therefore battery life is shorter. Estimates are that at high volume levels, the Reverb should give you around 4.5 hours of play on a full battery charge.
Regen’s iPod speaker dock doesn’t just rely on its battery; it can also be plugged in to mains power, so you can use the Reverb in battery mode, mains power mode or solar/electric hybrid mode.
It sounds like the designers of this environmentally conscious iPod speaker believe that most people will use it in its hybrid mode. The hybrid mode enables listeners to be green and enjoy the conveniences of listening to a device powered by a mains supply; lets face it most people will probably not want to wait the 40 hours it would take the Reverb to charge its battery fully if it was inside and away from direct sunlight.
Regen are pretty confident that the sound quality is going to match the speaker’s high standards of innovation and design, telling us that the Reverb will produce the equivalent of 60 watts of power and that “The ReVerb has been designed to provide brilliant acoustic output that sounds flawless regardless of where it is placed in a room”. To support these not shy or retiring claims, the Reverb is equipped with a 35cmx50cm flat panel speaker with stereo drivers and a sub-woofer measuring 15cmx22cm.
The Reverb has a 30 pin connector so is compatible with all docking iPods as well as the iPhone and you can also connect other devices via the 3.5mm audio input.
There’s also a USB input which you can also use to charge the speaker is you wished.
There’s also a smart looking backlit LCD screen at the top of the speaker that tells you about the usual kind of stuff like EQ levels and volume, how much battery life is left, how much energy has been gathered over time and amazingly how satisfied the Reverb is with the users energy consumption habits!
The Reverb should be out in the US in April 2010 and in the UK sometime after that.
I love the look of the Reverb and like Starck’s Zikmu speakers, its design takes iPod speakers of the bookshelf and makes them a glamorous feature of your room in their own right. I’m not sure I want my gadgets telling me how environmentally good or bad I am, but if it sounds as good as it looks and can help me save the planet a bit, I’ll excuse it this little imperfection.
Pricing should be somewhere around £1,100, but I’ll get a precise figure as soon as I can. As always, as soon as I find out where you can get your hands on this new speaker, I’ll update the post and let you know.
Let me know what you think of the Reverb, just leave me a comment.
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