So I've been reading on the deck, during these warm summer nights, and my options for music are to play the radio really loud in the house -- commercials and all -- or play commercial-free Pandora from my iPhone or iPad neither of which is really designed to fill a room with sound. I have a CD/cassette/radio Sony boom box but it hasn't got an aux-in or Bluetooth. And I don't feel like wearing headphones in the sun.
So I decided today to look into wireless Bluetooth speakers that would allow me to keep my phone or iPad in the kitchen, while playing to a table on the deck.
There were of course a gazillion options, from Sony, TDK, Bose, JBL and a lot of Chinese knockoffs. Some of them were pretty bulky (boom box size), some of them were tiny (the size of a deck of cards). Some sounded pretty decent, some were frankly awful. I have an iPad clock radio on my nightstand from iHome, so I knew those were well made and sounded surprisingly good.
I found a unit called the iHome Go+ Arc ($40), which is a curved sound bar about 4" high and 6" long, or about the size of a box of Mac & Cheese. It is not "hi-fi" by any stretch of the imagination, but it has no objectionable colorations through the range of frequencies it does cover and in fact gives a pretty recognizable accounting of a bass guitar. In short it's remarkably pleasant to listen to.
They had bigger iHomes (in the $60, $80 and $100 ranges) but I really wanted extreme portability and only needed fidelity suitable for background to reading. It's portable enough that I could throw it in a pocket and take it anywhere. And it's waterproof or water resistant.
It pairs wirelessly to my phone or iPad from up to 30 feet away. It has built in lithium ion batteries chargeable via a USB cable (same power block I use to run the phone).
And, when paired to the phone, I can use the built-in speaker and microphone to answer phone calls. Amazing!
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