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Product: Portable speakers for iPods with Dock Connector (including iPod mini with adapter)

Developer: Altec Lansing

Minimum Requirements: iPod (Dock Connector models) or iPod mini

Retail Price: $149.95

Availability: Out now

The unfortunate thing about portable music devices is that they make it very difficult to share the music. Sure, you can try a Y-adapter with another set of headphones, but that limits conversation. You can plug the portable device into a stereo or car speaker system if you have the right accessories, but having to lug around a stereo or a car tends to defeat the purpose of portability.

How about this scenario? You're on vacation or a business trip, and you want to settle down for the evening with some Robert Palmer. Can't find any stations on the alarm clock/radio that'll play his music. Can't wear your iPod headphones to bed. And what if your travelling companion wants to listen as well?

One more. You're cleaning house, and you want some music. You don't have a stereo system up in the attic or in your bedroom, but you know that Robert Palmer's "Housework" will help you get through your chores faster.

These are all dilemmas Altec Lansing has attempted to solve with their inMotion portable audio system for the iPod. At its most basic, it's two speakers on each side of a dock connector for your 3G iPod or iPod mini (with placement adapter) that allows you to play the music on your iPod out loud. Could a small pair of speakers accomplish the same thing? Yes. But there are benefits here. Most obviously, there's the dock connector. This allows you to connect the inMotion to your computer just as you would with the standard dock. The power adapter also recharges your iPod while its in the inMotion.

Then, there's the portability. I'll let you decide which is more important, but I'm leaning towards this. When closed up, the inMotion is just a bit larger than a trade paperback book (8"W x 5.4"D x 1.2"H). It comes with a canvas carrying pack, too, making travel quite simple (although you'll need to find someplace to store that power adapter). With the press of a button, the inMotion flips open to rest on a padded base, the speakers tilted back slightly.

Beneath each speaker and a bit forward are the controls: volume on the left, power button on the right. When the iPod is plugged into the inMotion, the inMotion's volume buttons take control; the volume on your iPod becomes irrelevant. In the back of the unit are the power adapter port, a headphone jack (you know, in case you're playing Robert Palmer's Pride album and no one else wants to hear it), a dock port to connect to your computer (cable not provided, but you should have received the proper cable with your iPod with dock) and an auxillary input in case you want to connect another audio source, a GameBoy Advance, and so on.

Two more things to cover before we get to performance. First, you can run the inMotion on four AA batteries if a power source isn't handy. Altec Lansing says you can get about 24 hours of play on the batteries. That may not seem like much, but it's a lot more than what you can get on the iPod alone without a recharge.

Second, we can't discuss an iPod accessory without also discussing its aesthetics. Altec Lansing made the same mistake here that I feel many other iPod accessory developers make in that the inMotion looks too much like the iPod itself. Because the system is the same polished white, including the speaker casings, the iPod itself gets lost in it. My coworker claimed the device looks too much like something from the movie Tron, which indicates to me she's never actually seen Tron. That would actually be friggin' sweet if it looked like something from Tron. What she meant to say is that it looks like something from a 70s sci-fi movie in that it's starkly plain and sanitized. No color. No curves. No real personality. Many people will be happy about this, but I would've preferred the design accent the iPod instead of swallow it up.

Now, the sound. There are two ways to look at this. One, people expect big things from Altec Lansing, and they should. They've earned a reputation for having some of the best speakers out there, especially for the computer. Two, you can't look at the tiny speakers included here and expect too much. The speaker housings are no bigger than the iPod itself, and each features two 1", full range neodymium Micro Drivers providing a total of 4 Watts RMS. Doesn't seem like much? Two things to consider. First, the inMotion wasn't built to replace the sound system in the local night club. Second, Altec Lansing is pretty good at squeezing as much sound as possible out of small speakers.

Here, they do a pretty good job. The speakers aren't loud, but they're loud enough when sitting next to your bed or on a hotel room table. Without a subwoofer, the bass is handled by what Altec Lansing calls MaxxBass™. I found the results here to be somewhat mixed. When listening to Robert Palmer's ballads or jazzier material, the speakers were surprisingly clean with little loss of the subtle highs and lows that accompany such music (symphonyic music sounded great, as well). When listen to Palmer's rock or R&B material, however, the audio became distorted when turned up high, and both the highs and lows seemed to disappear behind the mids. This surprised me a bit, even pleasantly, as I was expecting there to be nothing but highs (usually the case with small speaker systems). Here, the highs seemed to have been toned down so that we could get a more even response. So, the sound is better than I expected, but audio purists may be underwhelmed. Of course, if you're an audio purist, what are you doing with an iPod in the first place?

inMotion retails for around $150, which is too much to pay for sound that's, admittedly, better than expected from such tiny speakers, but not on par with what we want from Altec Lansing. The docking capability helps to justify the cost as it provides another dock connector for your iPod, but I still would like to see a bit more from the system. If Altec Lansing really wanted to make it useful, they would've included some kind of alarm clock. How cool would it be to able to set this up at a hotel to awaken you each morning to selections from your iPod?

If you do a lot of travelling or want easy access to your iPod in every room of your house, inMotion is currently the best solution out there. The sound isn't enough to justify the cost, but the portability and dock compensate. Just make sure that if you're in the hotel room next to me, you keep your inMotion turned down...unless you're playing Robert Palmer. Then everything's okay by me.

[For another take on Altec Lansing's inMotion Speaker System for iPod, read Gary Coyne's review.