she flows like a river of bass vibration

When I started this blog, mainly because I didn't want to talk about any personal stuff, I wrote about consumer goods purchased and used by my good self. Once I started to concentrate more on the ills of the world and my humble opinions there on, the gadget stuff sort of went by the wayside. It is with some good cheer that I return this most ungreen of topics and give my two-thumbs-good seal of approval to the X-Mini Max usb travel speakers.

At BangFace earlier this year I discovered the musical genre known as "Drum and...". This genre is best experienced when listening to almost any type of music over a set of battery powered travel speakers for your PMP, as it is transformed into a steady stream of tinny __tsh__tsh__tsh sounds with the baseline mercilessly discarded. The problem is that most travel speakers can't replicate the rich base-sounds that the kids love so much today, and substitute volume over clarity.

The X-Mini Max overcomes this by (allegedly) creating an expandable vacuum in both of the speakers, replicating the effect of a subwoofer. The speakers themselves clip together magnetically when not in use to form a small ball that fits in your fist, have usb-rechargeable lithium batteries, and when in use the tops of each speaker pop up like an accordion-sun roof on a VW Camper Van to create the aforementioned vacuum. The sound is great, easily the richest sound from a set of travel speakers that I've ever heard, and they seem pretty rugged and durable.

The Very Understanding Girlfriend's brother described them to me a few months ago, but I haven't been able to track down a pair online (though Play.com is advertising them for STG£24.99). Then as if by magic I was walking past Laptoplab (formerly 'Back from the Future') on Ainger Street this morning and they had a set inside, just arrived in today.

Wahoo.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled political angst and ecological ire.

Links
X-Mini Max
LaptopLab/Back from the Future - for a gadget shop they are pretty weak and actually don't have a functioning website. Seriously.

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