For some time now I’ve been looking for portable mini speaker(s) that’ll do the iriver u10 justice … the dock is great and all, but it’s not very portable, and it’s really a pain to connect/unconnect it every time you travel.

I was searching all over the place for quite a while trying to find a quality speaker that would plugin and not ruin the fooprint of the u10 … nothing seemed to exist that was smaller than a AA battery (since that’s what you need to efficiently power a speaker) … the ipod external speakers (ichant’s for example) were the closest thing I found … but weren’t going to do the trick because they have a stereo plug built in. The u10′s jack is on the far corner, so the speaker would “stick out”.

Recently, I came across these speakers from … yes, you guessed it … Korea : Airpie Pump personal speaker system

Looks like the stereo jack is swappable with a cable, and the device has a clip, so it’ll probably work well with the u10.

Says “18 hour” battery life, but it’s probably more like 8 hours for a single AA battery. The speakers are under 1 watt each, so don’t expect to go shaking any cars with these little puppies. The good thing, is that they are only around $25. This is pretty reasonable given that the ipod speakers can run you $40-50 and are pretty much the same thing (ipod assessories are a rip-off)!

Anyways, you can check them out here: Airpie Pump personal speaker system or even buy them state-side at misticaudio.

For “basic” sound usage they might work well … like the alarm clock, a TV show clip, perhaps listening to some foreign language mp3′s … but music … well … if you have a pair of shure phones, you’re probably going to be disappointed.

Just a word to the wise … these speakers are probably going to sound a lot like the internal dock speakers, and hence a bit “tinny” for what they are … but they are portable and only $25.

I’m not sure if iriver plans to put out anything of their own, but I think it’s safe to say, if they did, they wouldn’t differ much from these speakers …

However, if they created that iriver u10 hybrid “phone converter” case I proposed about a while back … then it might be worth waiting for.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 29th, 2006 at 10:27 pm and is filed under Flash, iriver u10. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.