Logitech mm50 Portable Speakers for iPod (white)

Pros: Tote and blast your tunes anywhere for hours.

Cons: Mediocre sound for the price, 1st-generation design flaws.

Summary: Until the Logitech mm50 came to market, you had the choice between cheap and very portable folding speakers that made your iPod sound like a transistor radio and $300 devices from Bose and Klipsch the produced wonderful sound but didn't travel well. The Logitech mm50 is in the middle of this spectrum, with a fair degree of portability, and good clock-radio-quality sound that doesn't distort at higher volumes.

One of the unit's strengths is in it lithium-ion battery that, when fully charged through the AC adapter (which charges the iPod as well), last about 6 hours. You'll more battery life if you play your music softly, less if you blast your tunes. It's tempting to crank up the volume, because I experienced no distortion on either the high or low ends of the sound spectrum at volumes that I needed to shout over to talk to someone next to me.

At 13x4x1.5, you can't put the mm50 in your pocket, but it's been portable enough for me to listen to my favorite music of the moment in any room of my apt., including the bathroom while I shower (no shorts so far). The semi-soft carrying case made taking it to work and a party a relatively safe proposition.

I chose the mm50 over comparable products because of the reviews praising its sound as well as its portability. On this score, I've been disappointed, given the price of the unit (even with Costco's discount). Mid-to-upper range sounds are good, but bass and percussion sounds have very little resonance, sounding flat. The result is like a good clock radio, but not a rich sonic experience.

There are also some first-generation design quirks in the mm50. When you dock the iPod, you control the speaker volume with the iPod, even when you use the mm50's volume control. When the iPod is out of the dock, you control the speaker volume through the mm50 itself, but you can't tell what the effects are, because there's no built-in display to show you how loud the speakers are set. So, if mm50 is set to be soft, turning the volume on an iPod all the way up has little effect. Conversely, if you increase the volume setting on the mm50 before you dock the iPod, you could blast your eardrums, even if you had set the iPod volume on low. A small volume-setting display in the mm50 would fix this.

The mm50's infrared remote is poor, having a very limited range and requiring exact line of sight to the IR sensor on the speaker. Would it have killed Logitech to increase the range and put in a multi-IR-beam transmitter to let you control it from anywhere within a 45-degree angle to the unit?

The case also needs some design re-work. There's no handle or shoulder strap on it, and there are no compartments for your iPod itself or for the AC adapter. I'm not an industrial designer, but I think these features should have been obvious to include.

Using the Ipod's sleep timer and alarm clock, I'm thrilled to be able to go to sleep with my RelaxTracks playlist and wake up to one of a few custom music sequences instead of the crap on the radio or a jarring alarm. I love having my tunes with me in the kitchen, the bathroom, and the yard. I will, however, be on the lookout for the next-generation speaker from Logitech.