Hasta La Gadget!

Why should the audiophile nerds get all the good-sounding gear? Floor-standing speakers, amps that weight a ton and speaker cables as thick as the tentacles of a giant squid might sound good, but they’re not exactly portable.

Battery powered speakers are never going to compete with proper hi-fi gear, but at least we don’t have to settle for sucky portable speakers anymore. The new foxL v2 joins the Jawbone Jambox in the tiny-speaker-big-sound category, and better, it was invented by a rocket scientist.

There are two internal tricks. One is the “Twoofer”, a combined tweeter and woofer which saves space but apparently gives a big sound from a small (25mm) driver. The other, rather cleverer, trick is the “BassBattery”. This uses the mass of the rechargeable li-ion battery as an “acoustic suspension bass driver.”

The foxL comes in two forms: a straight-up wired version and an A2DP Bluetooth version which also adds a mic for hands-free calling, and a call answer button. They are priced at $200 and $250.

A word on this kind of speaker. Even with clever engineering and high-quality internals, the bass from a little speaker is never going to shake the room. I have been trying out the Jawbone Jambox for the last few days and it sounds truly amazing for its tiny size, but there is no real bass thump. You get a good thud, but it’s not the same. The SuperTooth Disco which I tested a while back has a subwoofer built-in. This gives better bass, but the speaker is as big as three Jamboxes.

That said, things are a helluva lot better than they used to be.

FoxL product page [SoundMatters via Oh Gizmo]

See Also:

• Jambox
• Jawbone Creates a Wireless Speaker With Serious Boom
• Ears-On With the SuperTooth Disco Bluetooth Boombox
• SuperTooth, a Block-Rocking Portable Bluetooth Speaker