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Provides: Portable speakers for iPod
Developer: Altec Lansing
Requirements: Any kind of iPod, CD player, MP3 player
Retail Price: $149.95

My first reaction to holding Altec Lansing's inMotion in my hand was "Gosh, it's small." The unit comes out of the box in a "self-folded-up" state and lies flat, easily fitting into the provided small black bag. Closed, inMotion is 8" x 5.4" x 1.2". You can also think of it as 3 times as wide as an iPod, a bit taller, and a bit thicker.

Unfolding the unit, sort of reminiscent of the Transformer toys of the early '90s, you quickly have the speakers up and leaning back with the hole for your iPod ready to go. The InMotion can take any kind of iPod to date except the Shuffle. From the early 10 MB units to the 2nd and 3rd Generation to the new iPod photo. Altec Lansing supplies little plastic "fillers" to better shape the hole. I'll get back to these fillers later.

You can either use 4 AA batteries or the small brick power supply and plug the inMotion unit into your house's wall plug. There are three controls: an On-Off switch (which is more important when using batteries) and volume-up and volume-down buttons. If you want tone control, this is not the unit for you.

When plugged into a wall outlet, your iPod can charge its batteries besides play through the inMotion. You can also unplug your main iPod cable from behind your iPod Dock, plug the cable into your inMotion and the inMotion stand can take over as your iPod Dock. Normally if you leave your iPod in the Dock attached (via FireWire cable) to your sleeping computer, your iPod will discharge. Because the inMotion is self-powered (via the supplied power supply), you can safely leave your FireWire cable in all the time.

What the inMotion is for, and excels in, is to provide personal sound. This is not a unit to fill a room—although the inMotion can get quite loud, but loud is different from filling a room. Physics simply states that something this small cannot move enough air to fill a room. The four neodymium speakers provide excellent crisp tone with a pleasant amount of bass. The fullness of the sound is comparable to a medium sized, good quality boom-box. The sound is much better than the size would lead you to expect. However, lacking tone control means you cannot fine-tune the aesthetics of that sound—even a boom-box has some type of tone control.

The users of inMotion are likely those in dormitory rooms, offices or bedrooms. It's also for the person puttering in a garage or kitchen not wanting to wear earphone or buds. Despite that, there is an earphone jack in the back of inMotion so you can plug in your headphone or earbuds if your roommate is objecting to your Mitch Miller collection.

While the design is ingenious, the little plastic fillers mentioned earlier deserve some special comment. There are three: one for the iPod mini, one for thinner body iPods (less than 40GB units), and one to cover the docking hole when the InMotion is being used for some other kind of MP3 player and/or CD player. (Altec Lansing provides a two-headed 1/8" phone jack for plugging into any kind of sound player.)

The plastic filler for covering the Dock hole (seen above on the left) is remarkable in its silliness. The filler is of soft plastic that sort of lies over the hole. It doesn't snap into place and can easily be jarred off. This item seems like an afterthought.

The plastic filler for the iPod mini (seen above on the right) is a bit wiser in design and is a better choice to cover the Dock hole. This item has a small flip-up lid for the mini to slip into, and I'm going to assume that it provides reasonable support for the mini. I have to guess on this because I do not have a mini to formally test this with.

Last is a small slip of plastic (seen above in the middle) to provide limited support for the standard sized iPods. As seen below, this small slip of plastic fits into the region for the iPod decreasing the depth of the hole.

While good in intent, I found this potentially more troublesome than beneficial. Yes, it does create a smaller hole for the iPod to slip into on the bottom, but it also pulls the iPod further out from where it probably should be resting against the InMotion. When this slip of plastic is in place (as seen below on the right), the iPod is held further from the rear. Thus, as you tap against the iPods' controls, you are constantly providing pressure against this slip of plastic and thereby providing leveraged action against the Dock's plugs. Ironically, by removing this slip of plastic, as seen in the image below left, the iPod can more easily fall against the back support, ironically providing better support for controlling your iPod. I suppose an easy solution for using this filler would be to also use a small package of Post-It® notes attached to the InMotion to provide support between it and the iPod. Alas, Post-it notes are not supplied.

All that notwithstanding, my biggest complaint about the inMotion is the lack of any speaker grill. The four speakers are exposed to any kind of accidental or inadvertent object and/or finger flying at the speakers. When closed, the InMotion's speakers are protected. But once unfolded to the playing position, the user must conscientiously selectively pick up the InMotion in a manner to avoid touching the speakers. For something that is meant to be moved around, this is an oversight that should have been caught.

In the grand scheme of things, I'd give the inMotion a 4 for performance and a 3 for design. But overall I'm going to give the InMotion a 4—this is not a strong 4. If something like this is a good thing for you, by all means go get it and enjoy it. Just watch out how you pick it up.

[For another take on the inMotion speaker system, see Kirk Hiner's review.

___________ Gary Coyne has been a scientific glassblower for over 30 years. He's been using Macs since 1985 (his first was a fat Mac) and has been writing reviews of Mac software and hardware since 1995.