Rokono BASS+ Mini Speaker for iPhone / iPad / iPod / MP3 Player / Laptop - Black

I recently had to travel over 200 miles for a specialist scan. The journey required us to have a 2 night stay in a Premier Travel Inn, so I packed up my portable DVD player, some DVDs and my new Rokono mini speaker (pronounced "Ro-kono").

It was my first time trying this little speaker, though not the first mini speaker I've had. My previous speakers had all been AA battery powered, and all of them had poor sound clarity and poor volume.

My little Rokono speaker came in its own case which means that it could travel safely with me.

I opened the box, took it out and looked at the tactile black ball, which is smaller than a tennis ball.

I discovered that you twist the two halves slightly in order to open them up, you then plug in and turn on the speakers and hit play on your machine.

The sound that emanates from that little speaker ball is amazing. It was incredibly loud and the clarity is incredible. Of course I was in a room in a Travel Inn at the time and not expecting anything like the volume had a moment of panic ... I didn't want to wake the entire place.

There is an added volume control on the side of the little Rokono, which also helps tweak the sound.

It says on the box "for use with: mobile and personal devices like mobile phones, personal audio players (eg, i-pod, mp3, etc), computers and game devices (eg, DS). So when I returned home I decided to try it out on several more devices.

My desk top computer did not come with speakers so good portable speakers are important to me, and these are good speakers. I had to build a little platform at the side of my computer tower because the 3.5 jack connector is on the Rokono is very short (about 2.5/3 inches in length).

I enquired and a gentleman called James at Gadget Hunter told me that 3.5 jack extension cables are available but not, as yet, from them. I did a search and there are a number available on Amazon and they are quite cheap. I'm not necessarily technology minded, so sometimes it's better to ask than to assume not.

The sound that emanated from my little Rokono speaker was stunning.

I tried it on my DS but the cable is too short to play comfortably, hence the need for an extension cable. However, I must say that the sound from the DS is remarkable the tinny little tune from my Plants vs Zombies theme sing is now clear and full of sound tones and pitch rather than the plinky sound that I had grown used to. I was truly astounded by this sudden increase in quality.

If you want even more sound you can link several little Rokonos together in a chain - something which I hope to be trying in the next month or so.

My old portables speakers were quite expensive and extremely tinny in sound, but this little sensation has none of the tin tone just crystal clear sounds. For the first time I could clearly hear the voices and the background in the DVDs rather than having them as a merged mass of sound. Using the little Rokono I didn't need to have the subtitles on in order to know what was being said.

Audio books' narrations were given a depth of voice that I had not previously experienced.

The old tinny speakers used to last an hour or so on 4 AA batteries, where as the Rokono has a 10 hour replay time from a single charge, saving me a significant amount. I simply plug them in to the USB port and let them charge while I am working on my computer, so that when I need to use them they are ready to go.

I can't express how impressed I am with the little Rokono, I never expected anything like that kind of sound from something so tiny. I can't recommend them highly enough.

*** UPDATE ***

Fortunately, the manufacturers have listened to us consumers (if only they all did!) and they now include an 80 cm extension cable so using my DS, etc is much easier.

The 'Rokono BASS+ Mini Speaker' (formally the 'Monster Bass Mini Speaker') from Gadget Hunter is a compact (and good lord do I mean compact) portable speaker that can be plugged into almost any audio device such as an iPod, iPhone, Laptop, PC etc. Once plugged in and turned on, the speaker quite literally pumps out the sound, really embracing the depth of bass and giving out a surprising amount of volume considering its wee size.

Don't get me wrong, this little beauty can't reproduce crystal clear sound with all the warmth and depth of a set of well-chosen Polk Audio speakers. But that's not the idea here is it? What we have instead is a quick and simple little plug-in that allows the user to suddenly fill the room with music using a speaker that's not much bigger than the average clementine. A party in your pocket if you like (ahem...).

For bass, as you'd expect from the name (BASS+), this miniature beast really works overtime. The deep deep bass is noticeably magnified...and then some, with plenty of extra oompth put behind the lower notes to really magnify its position in the music. Yeah, not exactly for everyone's day-to-day requirements, but when you've got a party vibe going on, or just want to crank it up a little, then this little devil is very possibly the answer.

It's easier to use than a bar of soap - simply twist to open up the speaker system, turn it on, plug it in, and away you go. There's a volume dial located on the base of the device, as well as a funky little blue light that lights-up when it's on and/or fully charged. Furthermore, whilst charging, the light goes red to let you know that it's drinking its electrical juices - so just leave it to it for a bit!

There's a small little lead actually secured to the underside of the device which can be used for linking multiple Rokono BASS+ Mini Speakers together to quite literally multiply the sound if so needed. On the included video you can see that I've linked up both a black one and a red one. The resulting magnified sound is pretty darn impressive - the video footage obviously not capturing the sound reproduction at all.

So what do I think? Well, quite frankly I love it! It's super small and lightweight, but still manages to blast out one hell of a sound, it looks funkier than Lenny Kravitz on a night out, and once fully charged it can deliver up to ten hours of music. It can also run off its USB lead if you don't want it to run down its (rechargeable) battery life.

Now in its third reincarnation, all the small niggles that came out in the wash with the speaker have now been ironed out. There's an additional 80cm 3.5mm audio extension cable included with the product to allow for extra distance between your device and the speaker, as well as a pull-tie splash-proof travel bag. Nice!

One final point (for all the metallers out there) - by way of an oh-so-scientific 'bass' test, I tried the 'Rokono BASS+ Mini Speaker' out on Heaven Shall Burn's track 'Combat' from their album Invictus (2010) to see how it handled the brain haemorrhaging bass explosions. Oh yes it delivered! In fact it managed a good two seconds down the sliding depths of each bass-mushroom-cloud before even it lost its way to the plummeting explosion of bass. But I have to say that the little speaker has been one of the best (portable) performers that I've tried out on 'The Test' so far.

PLEASE NOTE - This product was supplied to me for free for a 100% unbiased review.

Sometimes you come across something that you thought you would never need or want and find that it is something that you would not be without. This is such an item, I received it free to review but as I don't download music and have the CDs etc to put in my HiFi I did not think I would have much use for a speaker to attach to ipods etc I was mistaken.

Straight out of the box my first thoughts were "cute" it was well made (ABS) and felt solid (95g). I charged it up, once charged the battery does give at least the claimed 10 hrs playing time. I then connected it to laptop to try it, I would have liked a longer lead between the speaker and the audio socket on whatever device it is connected to, it is about 60cm or 2ft plug to plug. The sound quality was surprisingly good for such a small speaker 40mm delivering 3w (The included info does not state if this is "music power" or "rms"). The stated frequency response 280Hz - 16KHz is probably an error as
280Hz is low-midrange and the response is far better than this I ran a series of test frequencies and 50Hz was noticeable and by 90Hz it was a well defined sound although not surprisingly not much power. General listening gave a well rounded sound with adequate volume for background music in fact the sound reminded me of the 60s when all I had was single (mono) speaker in a corner cabinet. If you want high power HiFi sound forget it but to run off an MP3 player is excellent. I tried it with a number of devices including electronic book reading from a Kindle and the warmer sound made this almost bearable.

I have not tried this but there is a short attached lead which allows it to be connected to more of these speakers. As this is a mono speaker the designed could be improved by a L & R output that could feed the other speakers to provide stereo. As plugging into most audio devices disconnects any internal speaker it is not an additional speaker but the only one.

So after all this testing what am I going to do with it, well it is going to sit in on a coffee table in the conservatory dwarfing an iPod shuffle. It is something well worth buying even if you did not know you needed it.