Caution: May cause earthquake
Portable speakers. Let’s face it: they’re usually a bit rubbish. Cheap and nasty with tinny sound and awful build quality, most portable speakers hobble the quality of the sound that your iPhone, iPod or iPad has stored in its vast music library. So when we heard about the the Wowee One and its ability to output incredible bass, we had to try it for ourselves. Check-out our review of the diminutive and deceptive little musical block that pumps the bass louder than you’d ever imagine.
Beauty meets beast
The Wowee One is a compact speaker, about the same size as the iPhone in width and length, but considerably deeper. There are two sockets: a mini USB socket for charging the battery, and a 3.5mm headphone jack for inputting sound. The sides are constructed of matte black plastic, with a glossy black top where the speaker itself is located. The base is rubbery and ever-so-slightly squidgy – more about that later.
Combine your powers!
Connect your iPhone to the Wowee One and a blue LED will indicate that it is ready to rock. If you start playing music with the Wowee in your hand, it will sound tinny but you will feel bass (that you cannot hear) really thumping in your hand. It’s not until you’ve put the Wowee’s squidgy under-side down on a flat surface that the full might of its explosive ‘Gel Audio’ technology grabs you: and boy does it grab you!!
The bass on this thing is incredible and it’s so much fun going around your house finding which surfaces it works best on. Tables, plasterboard, windows, doors – anything flat is basically turned into one giant subwoofer. Surfaces of anything with internal space such as microwave doors, fridges, wheelie bins etc are exceptionally cool as the bass just reverberates around inside the space and exaggerates those low frequencies even further.
The makers of Wowee One claim that the speaker is capable of reproducing sounds right down as low as 20Hz which they say is around 3 octaves lower than most other portable speaker systems, and while I don’t have the technical know-how or equipment to test that claim, I don’t doubt them. If I crank the volume of my iPhone up it literally makes the floor of my house shake.
Check out this hands-on video that I put together. Unfortunately I had hoped that you’d be able to hear the difference in bass far more greatly than you do, but I guess it’s hard to capture on the built-in mic of my Sony still camera. It should still give you some idea of what the device is like in action and how much fun you can have with it:
Sound becomes distorted once the iPhone volume level is cranked up to more than around 90%, but that will be because it is using an analogue headphone jack and is only to be expected and even at 90% it’s damn loud. It goes without saying that this unit can be used for iPhone, iPad, iPod, even your Mac or PC so it’s very versatile. At $150 its not cheap but if you’re looking for explosive sound that you can literally take anywhere and get heads turning, then you can’t go past this.
Wowee One is available from MagnumMac, 100% Electrical and other selected stockists nationwide.
Hey Steve, have you had any other speakers you could compare it with?
(benh has made 52 comments)
I’ve used other portable speakers yes, but nothing that compares with this. I believe the technology is patented so you probably won’t find any others that do this
Looks good, but you’ve overlooked a couple of things.
1. What sort of batteries does this take? AAs?
2. It would probably be crap outside and useless at a park or a beach, unless you take a chilly bin along to sit it on
-Matt
(mattyboy has made 1 comment)
@ mattyboy:
1. It doesn’t take any batteries – the battery is internal and the unit is charged via USB. The product specs claim playback off a single charge is upto 20 hours. I haven’t tested that claim but I’ve only charged it once and it’s still going strong.
2. While it does sound better indoors where the bass is ‘trapped’, there are plenty of surfaces you can use it on outside – your car is a good one for example, on the windows or bonnet.