review: Altec Lansing MIX iMT810 portable boombox for iPhone and iPod

by Bill Palmer

It often doesn’t take much alteration to keep a great product on top as time goes on, and Altec Lansing has proven that by revving its iMT800 “MIX” boombox for iPhone and iPod of a year and a half ago into the new iMT810 version which is reviewed here. The MIX concept is loosely based on Altec’s old original iM7 boombox from nearly a decade ago, which was the pre-eminent iPod boombox of its era. But the MIX eschews the old tubular motif in favor of a black trapezoidal design with silver carrying handles on the top and sides. And despite weighing ten pounds or more, it can run on batteries and is meant to be carried.

The most immediate evolution you’ll notice from the 800 to the 810 is that the dark gold is gone from the front of the unit entirely, with the gold highlights and the gold-hued screen having been replaced with a more understated silver, and the top EQ buttons now glow blue. It’s a nice change, as the unit is large enough that it doesn’t need big-color highlights to make it stand out even more; the 800 looked fine but the 810 looks sleeker based on those minor cosmetic changes alone. But much of what worked with the previous iteration is still in place: the slide-down roll bar on the iPhone-iPod dock to make sure it stays put when the stereo system is being carried, the slide-out FM antenna which gets strong reception, and the remote control which can clip onto your belt loop are still there.

The touted “mix” feature is still intact as well, with a pair of aux-in ports on top allowing you to hook up two other users’ devices (in this case it doesn’t have to be an iPhone or iPod) so that the “source” button will allow you to toggle between inputs, introducing multiple music libraries to the equation if you’re hosting a party for instance. Many or perhaps even most users will never put the mix feature to use, but either way it doesn’t get in the way or add any bulk to the unit, so it’s a net-plus.

Oh and by the way, the iMT810 is a stereo system first and foremost, which means its audio output is the primary decider of its worthiness as a product. What made the iMT800 a winner thankfully stays intact here: the massively impressive sounding for being a single-unit portable stereo. You can crank it loud, and I mean LOUD, before you’ll distort the music coming out of your iPhone or iPod. And the EQ controller allows for a broad range of bass to treble ratio. The MIX is the ideal portable big-boombox product for iPhone an iPod users.

That said, for those looking for a strictly stationary system, my money is still on the competing iHome iP1 which is about the same size (a bit smaller) and same price but offers an even more pristine-sounding audio experience. But the iP1 must be plugged into a wall to operate, which means the MIX is a whole different beast in that you can load it up with D batteries, grab it by the handles, and take your music with you. So if you want amazing loud audio and portability for your iPhone or iPod, the Altec Lansing MIX iMT810 is your new best friend – it outright owns the big-box portable category.

Rating: five stars out of five • Price: $299 • Learn more: AltecLansing.com • Amazon.com

Altec Lansing Expressionist Bass Computer Speakers FX3022: review

by Bill Palmer

Who would have thought that the answer to cranking up the bass would be to omit the standalone subwoofer entirely? And yet that’s exactly the approach Altec Lansing takes with its Expressionist Bass computer speakers, a pair of oversized tweeters which each have a min-subwoofer built into the bottom.

This design has an immediate effect on the audio experience. For one thing, the removal of the floor-based subwoofer serves to centralize the audio, with the treble and bass emanating from the same pair of locations as opposed to the treble being at desk level and the bass at floor level. And the pair of subwoofers means that the bass to treble ratio is high. Really high. There’s a reason why this product has the word “bass” in its name, and it’s because you really have to like heavy bass for these speakers to be suitable for you. But if you do, the Expressionist Bass is a dream come true.

Because even bass lovers will admit that not every genre (and not every kind of audio emanating from your computer) is meant to be bass heavy, it would have been nice if these speakers came with some kind on-board way of returning the bass to more traditional levels for those times when called for. But that aside, those users who’ve never quite figured out where to put their subwoofer, or never saw value in having their computer’s audio so physically spread out when they’re sitting right in front of it all anyway, the Expressionist Bass is a nice option. At its original $129 price tag, it might have felt overpriced. But the newly revised price tag of $79 sound about right.

rating: four stars out of five • buy now: $79 at AltecLansing.com or $79 at Amazon.com.

review: Altec Lansing Octiv Stage iPad dockable speaker system

by Bill Palmer

A rising crop of iPad-specific dockable stereo systems was an eventuality, and Altec Lansing has done its part with the new Octiv Stage (MP450), which is as much an adjustable iPad stand with speakers on the bottom as it is the converse. This is good news for iPad users who’ve thus far spent the year trying to figure out how to wedge their iPad into an existing iPhone/iPod dockable system or settling for a line-in connection. The Octiv Stage is vaguely reminiscent of Apple’s old iMac 4G, in which the screen sat perched above the base and pivoted accordingly, except this is a significantly smaller overall unit.

The iPad slides into the side guards of an adjustable arm atop the Octiv Stage which allows the iPad to be angled anywhere from perfectly flat to almost fully vertical. The arm also rotates 180 degrees from left to right, allowing the iPad to be used in portrait or landscape mode. Despite just barely grabbing about an inch and a half each of the iPad’s sides and bottom, I found the arm to be plenty stable in terms of hanging on to the iPad. The only disappointment here is that pulling up and forward on the top of my iPad, in the hopes of raising the viewing angle, instead merely results in the entire unit tipping forward. Impressively, however, even in this situation, the iPad was in no danger of popping loose from the arm. As it turns out, the proper way to tilt the iPad is to do so by reaching around behind it. However, rotating the iPad left or right is easily accomplished by grabbing just about anywhere. I had no trouble tapping away on the iPad’s screen, or for that matter typing on it, while it was in the various positions allowed.

But lest we forget that the Octiv Stage is in fact a stereo system, let’s get to audio quality. The entire speaker base is only a smidge wider than the shorter side of the iPad itself, and even smaller from front to back. The overall sound is pretty respectable, not lacking in either the highs or lows. The catch, though, is that the $149 Octiv Stage sounds only about as good as the best $99 iPhone/iPod-dockable systems, meaning that you’re essentially paying $50 extra for the iPad-specific arm. On the one hand you’ll pay as much as fifty bucks for the better iPad stands on the market. But on the other hand, it’s just a plastic arm. And for $149 you can get a significantly better sounding iPhone/iPod system. That tells me that the Octiv Stage is at least fractionally overpriced. But then again, with this being one of the first products of its kind for iPad, I suppose that’s to be expected. Our star ratings for audio products are on a sliding scale relative to price, so despite liking the Octiv Stage a lot and not having any real complaints about the product, it rates out at four stars out of five. If you have no issue with the price tag, bump that rating up to four and a half for yourself.

A few side notes:

- In the box is a full featured remote control which includes navigation of the iPad’s menus.

- There’s a promotional sticker on the iPad arm. Even if you’re the type who likes to leave stickers on, be sure to remove this one as leaving it in place will interfere with the stability of your iPad.

- Around back is a line-in port for connecting devices that aren’t iPads.

- Although Altec Lansing makes no mention of it, I was able to dock my iPhone 4 right the iPad docking arm with no problem. The company might do well to play this up, and to build more formal iPhone/iPod docking integration into the next version of the Octiv Stage, as many or most iPad users are also iPhone or iPod users as well.

rating: four stars out of five • price: $149 • AltecLansing.com

review: Altec Lansing Octiv Duo app-enhanced stereo alarm

Altec Lansing’s new Octiv Duo is an interesting little stereo system, and not just because, as its name implies, it features twin docks for two iPhones and/or iPods. What makes the product unique is that it’s an app enhanced product – by not one but two free App Store apps – which turns it into a much more comprehensive product than it first appears to be when you pull it out of the box. The first app is an alarm app, which converts the Octiv Duo from mere iPhone stereo into an iPhone alarm stereo. The second app attempts to take advantage of the dual docking capacity by allowing you to fire up a conjoined playlist from both docked devices.

But before we get to all that fun stuff, the basics first: the Octiv Duo is designed as a wedge-shaped system which fits into a corner nicely, but whose angles are slight enough that it doesn’t look odd sitting out in the open. As the unit’s small-ish size might suggest, the audio output is just a little better than okay; without the app enhancement, this might only be passable as a perhaps $69 product.

The better news is that it does come with a full featured remote control including on-screen menu navigation. But in an apparent attempt to stick with the space-conserving theme, the remote is circular in shape, small enough to easily fit in the palm of your hand. In my tests I found that even though the buttons are quite close together out of necessity, that didn’t cause any problems for me. However, I did keep picking up the remote and pointing it in the wrong direction, thanks to its perfectly circular shape. The product’s designers apparently foresaw this, as they included both an arrow telling you which way to point the remote, and a bottom cut-out for where to place your index finger while holding it. Although it’s not a major issue, they might have done better to stick with the rectangular shape of most other remotes.

Getting to the Alarm Rock and Music Mix apps, and this is where the fun begins, either or both (or neither) could be selling points for you, depending on the particulars of your usage. Alarm Rock is a nicely done, multi-skinned app which allows you to have plenty of control in waking to the music on your iPhone or iPod touch. Is this app as comprehensive as the iHome+Sleep app which comes with iHome’s vaguely similar competing iA5 product? No. But Altec’s app is still fairly comprehensive in its own right.

The other app, Music Mix, is where the Octiv Duo’s designers give us a peek of the kind of innovation which might be in store for us in our app-enhanced future. The idea is simple, and so is the app: let’s say you’ve got his-and-hers iPhones docked into the two docks, and you want to keep everyone happy by having the songplay alternate between the libraries of the two iPhones. The idea is as innovative as it is niche-y. First, you’d almost have to be a couple living together for such a concept to be of use, and you’d have to both be picky enough about what you want to hear that it would be worth the trouble.

I just don’t know what percentage of potential would actually put Music Mix to good use, but it’s there nonetheless. Of likely broader use is the fact that the Octiv Duo is the first app-enhanced dual dock alarm to come to market (iHome’s own dual-dock iP88 is not an app enhanced product).

All the app fun aside, there’s no escaping the fact that the Octiv Duo is not a great sounding product, or the fact that there are $99 dockable stereos out there that aren’t app enhanced which sound notably better than this one (although to be fair, iHome’s app enhanced iA5 doesn’t sound any better).

Altec Lansing’s other dockable stereo products show that the company knows how to produce great sound, so perhaps it’s best to view the Octiv Duo as more of a proof of concept, and look forward to what the company can do in 2011 when it presumably brings app integration to its more capable sounding product lines. But in the mean time, the Octiv Duo is a fun little innovative product, worth its price tag if you fit the specific criteria to be able to take advantage of its app integration.

review by Bill Palmer

rating: four stars out of five • AltecLansing.com

review: Altec Expressionist Ultra

Depending on the brand and hardware design of your computer, its audio output can range from respectable to pathetic. And while this can be remedied by any decent off the shelf sub-$100 computer speaker system, Altec Lansing is asking you to think bigger – in terms of price and size – with its $199 MX6021, more memorably known as the Expressionist Ultra. To say that this system is large is an understatement, as the subwoofer is literally as large as a small minitower, and the two satellites each stand about as tall as an iPad.

Having spent quality time with the company’s own $99 Expressionist Plus last year, I can tell you that the $199 Ultra is larger and more expensive for good reason: the Ultra sounds stunning and puts the Plus to shame. I was particularly impressed with just how loud I could crank the Ultra without a hint of degradation, and once I positioned the three units sufficiently far enough from each other, how easily the audio managed to consume the entire room even at a moderate volume. Cranked way up, this system could likely serve as the audio source for an entire house party.

Interestingly enough, however, the defining aspect of the Ultra may not be its audio quality as the inclusion of a controller knob (pictured above) which takes on the shape of a small truncated cone and provides volume and power control.

Placing these controls on a knob instead of on any of the three speaker units makes sense, as speakers this powerful are likely to spread far enough apart that none of them might be within each reach of your computer chair. As it is, the wired controller can stretch up to about six feet from the sub, making it easy to set it on your desk next to your computer.

The entire visible surface of the knob is a notched ratchet for cranking the volume up or down which snaps back to its default position when you let go. Unfortunately, the implementation isn’t quite as intuitive as I might have hoped. Turning the knob and holding it will cause the volume to continue increasing (or decreasing) until you let go, which sounds good in theory. But if you just want to adjust the volume a smidge, you have to turn the knob by the amount you think you want, immediately let go, and if you didn’t get guess right, crank the knob again (by this time it’s snapped back to default). It has the effect of feeling like you’re using a rotary telephone; simply going with a free-spinning knob would have been more intuitive.

On a brighter note, the knob includes bass and treble controls, which are too often overlooked on a system like this. They work in the same manner as volume control (press the “Treble” or “Bass” button and then crank the knob), but oddly enough have to be turned in the opposite direction of the volume control; turning up the treble or bass requires turning the knob toward a clearly visible “minus” sign, while turning them down requires turning the knob toward the “plus” sign.

The inclusion of a headphone port on the knob is nice, as it allows you to temporarily switch over to headphones without having to disconnect the speakers from your computer in order to free up its audio port. However, in my tests, some (but not all) of the earbuds and headphones that I tried with the knob’s headphone port produced a bit of static on the line, leaving me to end up using my computer’s headphone port after all. Your mileage may vary; I couldn’t find any rhyme or reason on this.

Finally, and not to pile on, but this speaker system can’t even be turned on unless the knob is connected (unplug it and the entire unit shuts off), meaning that if you like the speakers but not the concept of the knob, you’ll be stuck finding a place to stash the knob out of the way. And then there’s the series of orange lights on the front of the knob, which strobe back and forth like the front of the Knight Rider car whether music is playing or not.

So I’m conflicted as to how to sum up the Expressionist Ultra: its audio is more than worth its price tag, but only if you’re going to spread out the three units and crank it up enough for the audio quality to matter. I like the inclusion of the knob, but I’m less than thrilled with its too-clever execution.

As with all products, you’ll have to decide for yourself as to whether this product is right for you – but perhaps even more so with this particular product than usual.

Review: Altec inMotion Classic

New in iProng Labs: a hands-on review of the inMotion Classic portable stereo system for iPhone and iPod, available for $149 from Altec Lansing…

review by Bill Palmer

When Apple appends the word “classic” to the name of one of its products, it’s typically an intentional death knell: the gradual phase-out begins immediately, and there will be no significant upgrades to the product in the mean time. But apparently Altec Lansing has a different definition of the word, as the new “inMotion Classic” (also known as the iMT620) includes a number of revisions and enhancements despite having largely the same feature set on paper as its predecessor, the iM600.



Not that the two look anything like each other. Gone is the all-black, rounded corner design of the iM600 in favor of Altec Lansing’s current favored trapezoidal styling of black and silver with gold trim, with the clearly defined line giving the illusion that the Classic is smaller when it’s really about the same size as its predecessor (actually about an inch wider left to right). The biggest functional change is that the old flip-out dock has been replaced a recessed one, and the unit now stands upright thanks to a swing-out arm that acts as a stand (and can also be folded straight up and used as a carrying handle). Perhaps it’s this simplification that allowed room in the budget for other new features. The bundled remote control now includes the ability to navigate up and down your iPhone’s or iPod’s menus. And the LCD screen, which was kind of a waste on the iM600 because it only displayed the track info from FM radio and not from songs playing on your iPod, now rectifies that. It still misidentifies your iPhone as an “iPod” but that’s being picky.



Audio quality is marginally improved on the Classic. It wasn’t immediately noticeable when I put the Classic and iM600 side by side, but it became more apparent when I got to songs that were more bass-heavy. I wouldn’t suggest ditching your iM600 in favor of the Classic based on the slightly improved audio quality alone; it’s the other features that make this a significant upgrade.



In fact, perhaps surprisingly, the Classic pretty much wipes the floor with Logitech’s new competing S315i, which is twenty dollars cheaper but doesn’t come all that close on audio quality and doesn’t come with a remote, or offer a built-in radio or an LCD screen or a built-in handle. However, the Classic falls down significantly in comparison to the S315i in one area: battery life. Both products include a built-in rechargeable lithium battery. But while the S315i offers ten hours of battery life (twenty in “reduced audio quality” mode), the Classic offers a comparatively meager five hours – and that’s with the Classic being about twenty percent thicker front to back than the S315i. It’s not quite as head-scratching as Altec’s slightly larger MAX, which only offers 3.5 hours of battery life, but it’s still unfortunate that the Classic offers only half the battery life of its primary competitor, when it otherwise outpaces it in just about every way.



And that alone keeps the Classic from being a five star product, despite the fact that overall it’s the best portable iPod/iPhone system at the sub-$150 price point to ever hit the market.



There’s one other issue with the Classic which initially threw me off and eventually grew to feel like a very minor thing, but worth mentioning if for no other reason than future reference: the on-board control buttons, which were semi-randomly split between the top surface and the docking well of the old iM600, have been smartly all placed on the top of the Classic. However, they’ve been centered in such a way that the two buttons you’re likely to use most often during playback, volume up and volume down, are directly behind the docking well. With a shorter device like an iPod nano they’re still visible, but my iPhone stood tall enough to hide them, at least when I had the Classic sitting at eye level. And so the first few times I reached for the volume I absent-mindedly rammed my fingers into my iPhone. Within my first day with the unit I’d gotten very used to accessing them easily, and I’m a klutz to begin with. But the six topside buttons really should be split left and right of the dock on the next iteration of this product. Ultimately, however, I felt that this wasn’t something that should affect the product’s rating, particularly since the new button layout does make more sense than the previous iterations’ scattershot placement.



Consider the Logitech S315i if you place battery life above all else. But otherwise, Altec Lansing’s Classic is your winner for portable systems at this price point – by a long shot.

*****

Learn more about the inMotion Classic at AltecLansing.com.

*****

Review: Altec Lansing MIX

New in iProng Labs: a hands-on review of the brand new MIX portable stereo system for iPhone and iPod (also known as the iMT800), from Altec Lansing, which runs on batteries, has an FM radio, and is available for $299…

by Bill Palmer

Back in the early days of the iPod, there were portable dockable stereo systems and then there was Altec Lansing’s iM7, a giant all-white $249 cylindrical tube shaped system that ran on batteries and could be hoisted on your shoulder like a ghetto blaster and was bigger and badder (and better sounding) than any other portable dockable system on the market.



But like so many iPod accessories from the early days, the iM7 eventually went by the wayside and was never really replaced by anything comparable, either from Altec Lansing or from anyone else – until now. The MIX, also known as the iMT800, may not look much like the old iM7, as the MIX has a black body with silver handles (two on the front, one on the top) and the same gold trim currently featured on the company’s earbud line, but it embodies the iM7’s original spirit. Shaped trapezoidally from the top, rectangularly from the front, and feeling a bit lighter when you pick up than you might have expected, the MIX is an intimidating monster of a system. And that’s before you turn it on.



Any product like the MIX is going to require a necessary amount of potential skepticism right out of the box, not only because it costs three hundred dollars (at a time when most vendors are scrambling to produce less expensive versions of their most popular products), but also because the company is asking you to carry around something this large: is it easily carried? Does it offer enough battery life for the portability to be put to good use? Is the included remote decent? And, of course, the most important question of all: is the audio quality strong enough to make any of the above even matter, or is this one of those products that throws in the kitchen sink in an attempt to hide the fact that there’s no kitchen?



Eyeballing the MIX, I expected it to weigh fifteen to twenty pounds, so I was relieved when I picked it up and found that it weighed closer to ten. The handle on top allows you to carry it in one hand at your side (or if you really want to, on your shoulder), while the pair of handles on the front allows you to carry it front of you with both hands. But perhaps more important than than flexibility is that you can carry it around with your iPhone or iPod docked in the unit, thanks to a metal roll bar (padded on the inside) that slides down onto the top of your device and holds it securely in place, within what is otherwise a standard Universal dock. This feature drew immediate skepticism as I recalled how the proprietary secure enclosure on the old iM7, which worked flawlessly with the iPod models that were on the market at the time, ended up being increasingly unusable with later iPod models that just plain didn’t fit into the enclosure, and ultimately likely led to the iM7’s early demise. But the roll bar here on the MIX is a different beast. Instead of trying to contain your device within the unit as the iM7 did, the MIX allows your device to be on the outside of the unit but still securely in place. After having tested it with everything from the iPhone to iPod nano, I’m left to conclude that the roll bar is designed such that any future iPhone and iPod models will also be fully compatible with the MIX, provided they’re not physically larger than the largest current models. For those of us who never could quite get the iPod nano to work satisfactorily with the iM7, the importance of the MIX’s apparent forward compatibility cannot be overstated.



But there are sexier features to talk about than a roll bar, and plenty of them. The orange LCD screen displays track information for your iPhone or iPod, as well as any track info provided by the FM radio station you’re listening to, along with an old school pull-out metal antenna for said radio purposes. And the feature that Altec Lansing is promoting the heaviest is the pair of line-in ports on the top of the unit that allow two additional audio devices to be attached. Such ports have traditionally been posited merely as a method of connecting a non-dockable device such as an iPod shuffle or a non-iPod, and are usually buried quietly on the back. But Altec is taking an entirely different tack here, instead promoting the idea of using the MIX at a party and allowing a couple of friends to connect their own iPods or iPhones while yours is in the dock, and using the on-board controls or the included remote to toggle between them at will. As such, the top well for the handle can be used as a makeshift quasi-dock, or the devices can simply be laid on top of the unit.



Speaking of the remote, the portability motif is extended here with a spring-loaded belt clip at the end of the remote itself which will allow you to carry it around at a party without losing track of it. And borrowing a good idea from the old iM7, the MIX‘s remote can be tucked away into a slot on the unit itself when not in use. Also on the remote are four preset buttons for the radio, along with an EQ adjustment button (the latter of which is also built into the on board controls).



But in the end, what matters above all else is audio quality. Judging the MIX’s audible output is best done by comparing it to other similar products on the market, and frankly speaking, there are none. It’s tempting to try to draw parallels between the MIX and iHome’s new iP1 because they share the same price tag and roughly similar size, but the two products really have nothing to do with each other, as the iP1 is a stationary system based purely on impeccable audio quality, whereas the MIX is a portable system that takes the kitchen sink approach. That the iP1 sounds better than the MIX is as expected as it is irrelevant for review purposes, other than to emphasize the self-evident fact that features like portability and built-in radio do cost money, and as such products with those features should only be purchased if you plan to put those features to use.
The more relevant comparison is whether the MIX is really worth a hundred dollars more than Altec’s own $199 MAX, and the answer there is a resounding yes. While the MAX sounds great for its size, the MIX blows it away with four front-facing speakers and a side-firing subwoofers. The short of it is that the MIX is by far the best-sounding portable stereo system for iPhone and iPod currently on the market at any price.



And I suspect that’s what will ultimately make MIX users the happiest. The “party” angle, with the extra aux ports, while it makes a great marketing push, isn’t going to make or break the product; even those who buy the MIX with partying in mind will still likely log most of their hours with the MIX back in their office or dorm room. But regardless of whether you plan to put the party aspect to use or not, the bottom line is that would be a category-killing five star product even without the partying angle.



So what puts the MIX over the top? In an era where more and more portable stereo systems are coming with built-in lithium batteries, something I generally favor, a unit of this size wouldn’t last very long on a lithium battery (as evidenced by the MAX’s paltry three hour battery life, and it’s not nearly as big). But the MIX, which runs on eight D batteries? Thirty hours of real-world use, which makes me pleased that, in this instance, they didn’t go the lithium route after all.

*****

Learn more about the Altec Lansing MIX (iMT800) at AltecLansing.com

*****

Review: Altec Backbeat 903

With the arrival of iPhone 3.0 comes stereo bluetooth, which means that you can now listen to music wirelessly through both ears without having to attach a snap-on bluetooth component to the bottom of your iPhone. With regards to Altec Lansing’s Backbeat line, it means that iPhone users can now skip the Backbeat 906 and its $129 price tag in favor of the Backbeat 903, which is just the 906 minus the snap-on piece and minus thirty dollars in price, plus the same wall charger.



At the risk of oversimplifying things, the 903 almost like having a pair of Voyager PRO bluetooth earpieces for phone calls (made by Altec Lansing’s parent company Plantronics), minus the boom mic, with a soft rubber cable connecting the two behind your head. And that’s mostly a good thing, as the Voyager PRO is our highest-rated bluetooth earpiece on the market: good audio, stylish (at least compared to a lot of other bluetooth headphone products on the market), and comfortable all at the same time.



While the 903 is clearly intended primarily for audio playback, you can of course take phone calls on it as well. A button on one ear allows you to answer phone calls or hang up, and the button on the other ear allows you to play or pause your music. The controls for next and previous track don’t work, but that’s Apple’s fault for limiting the stereo bluetooth controls internally (you’d need to buy the 906 and live with the snap-on piece for that). Of more concern is that the volume controls, which increase or lower the volume in single steps, just aren’t that intuitive if you’re turning the volume up or down several increments at a time.



The audio quality won’t be mistaken for wired, in-ear earbuds in the same price range, but it’s strong as far as bluetooth earbuds go. I think I’ll stick with my iMuffs for now, but for those who don’t want the kind of relative bulk that comes with the iMuffs, the Backbeat 903 is a strong option. But as with all wireless audio products, the compromises are such that it’s only worth buying if you plan to take advantage of the wireless functionality on a regular basis and really want to eliminate the cabling.

Learn more at AltecLansing.com or buy now.

Altec Lansing Backbeat Pro

Altec Lansing’s Backbeat Pro earbuds are some mighty fine earbuds in their own right. They sound great, they’re lightweight and comfortable, and they’re pretty stylish looking with gold trim complementing an overall black theme. The audio output is crisp and fairly expansive across all ranges, and in a vacuum in which they were the only such product on the market, they’d be easily worth their $99 price.


So why not a higher rating? When spending this kind of money on earbuds it’s wise to look around at similarly priced options before making your purchase, and as it turns out you can earbuds priced slightly above and below the Backbeat Pro’s $99 price tag that offer a superior overall experience. Shure’s SE115 earbuds sell for twenty dollars more and offer noticeably better sound quality, particularly in the area of expansive audio that sounds a lot larger and more spaced out than you’d reasonably expect from little earbuds. And if your budget doesn’t allow you to go all the way up to $119, you can still do better with Scosche’s $79 IDR600 than you can with the BackBeat Pro.



Maybe the Backbeat Pro is simply priced too high (or perhaps the competing products are priced too low). But in any case, it doesn’t make for a convincing argument when a less expensive product sounds better. So why would you want to go with the Backbeat Pro? The IDR600 has a higher than average bass-to-treble ratio, so if you’re no fan of bass, you might prefer the sound of the Backbeat Pro even though it’s not quite of the same overall quality. Or perhaps you greatly prefer the styling of the Backbeat Pro.



It seems self-contradictory to say that you’ll get your money’s worth with this product but that there are better values out there, yet that’s the best way to sum up the Backbeat Pro. No shame in buying these, but probably only if you’ve already ruled out the best of the vaguely similarly priced competing options.

Learn more at AltecLansing.com

Altec Lansing Expressionist Plus

We don’t often review speaker systems that don’t include a dock for iPhone or iPod. But at the same time we know that most iPhone and iPod users have the same (or more) content in iTunes on their computer, and most stock computer speakers leave something to be desired when it comes to movie or music playback.



Among the more promising sub-$100 computer speaker systems to come along in awhile, at least based on specs, is Altec Lansing’s brand new Expressionist Plus. The subwoofer is about six inches tall and ten inches wide at its base, shaped like a lampshade but featuring reflective black acrylic material (similar to the back surface of an iPhone) that makes it look sleeker than any lampshade you’ve seen. The tweeters each have their own metal frame stand, making them look like something out of a Pixar movie.



Of course styling is a matter personal of taste, and what really counts is what they sound like. Suffice it to say that this is the best sounding sub-$100 three piece system I’ve ever heard. You can turn it loud enough to literally make the walls shake without noticeable distortion in the audio, and then you realize it can be turned even louder. But it sounds plenty good at soft settings as well. Overall they deliver a crisp immersive sound that makes the three pieces sound like they’re a lot further apart than they really are.



Peeves? The knob to adjust the subwoofer volume is on the sub itself, kind of a pain to reach if you’ve placed the sub on the floor beneath your desk. The tweeter stands take up a little more room on the desktop than they probably should. And of course you’ve got to buy into the unconventional styling. But if do, then these speakers are a great option for playing music and especially watching movies on your computer.