The Pocket Boom – Review

7 Replies Christopher Roberts

A week or so ago, a company approached Technology Bloggers and asked if I would be willing to review some of their products. I thought that this could be some fun, so I emailed them back saying: why not! They then send me a Pocket Boom to test and then review – this article is that review.

Please note, the opinions in this article are mine, and are completely honest – I am not being paid to write a review for them.

What is the Pocket Boom?

The Pocket Boom is a device that can turn pretty much any surface into a speaker. You just plug in your music – be it from your iPod, computer, tablet, stereo or whatever (anything that has a 3.5mm headphone jack) and place the vibrating speaker onto a surface, and it will vibrate the surface to turn it into a speaker.

The Pocket Boom

The Pocket Boom with its vibrator head and headphone jack out

What Surfaces Does the Pocket Boom Work on?

The clever technology in the vibrating head on the device is able to vibrate any surface and turn it into a speaker. However, on some surfaces, it vibrates it so little that the vibrating head is louder than the surface. Surfaces that I have found to be bad speakers include:

  • Brick walls
  • Solid wood – some thin wood works well
  • Clothing – some clothing does work, but not very well
  • Other solid objects with little capacity to vibrate

Surfaces that I have found to work really well include:

  • Cardboard – and other paper products
  • Thin wood – notice boards, some tables and chairs all work well
  • Metal – due to its ability to vibrate, metal is one of the best materials I have tried, filing cabinets, kitchen hood extractor fans, hole punches, beds, and much more!
  • Thin plastic – tubs, especially DVD (and Blu-Ray, Wii, PS3, Xbox etc.) cases and even washing baskets!

Does it Actually Work?

You may be wondering if it actually works, it seems too good to be true. Can the Pocket Boom really: turn anything into a speaker, turn anything into an amplifier; and turn anything into an equaliser?

My answer is simple. Yes.

You can be sceptical, but I have one and it does. As I mentioned above, some surfaces it really surprises you by how well it actually transforms that object into a speaker, whilst with others you can be left somewhat disappoint with the sound level – but never the less it does turn it into a speaker.

The Pocket Boom with all leads stowed away

The Pocket Boom with all leads stowed away (Compact)

From my personal use of the speaker, I would say that I think it works amazingly well on around 15% of objects, well on 70% of objects, and rather disappointingly on the other 15% of objects. So around 85% of objects to hand should be able to be converted into a good speaker pretty easily!

Check out this video to see it in action 🙂

Is it Easy to Use?

Clearly a lot of work has gone into designing the Pocket Boom, it has some great ideas behind it. The ergonomics need some tweaking before the product is 100% perfect.

The 3.5mm headphone jack lead that comes out to plug into your device is way too short to be practically used with most devices. That is a major flaw, but this has been fixed, as included in the box is an extender lead, so you can get an extra 40cm (ish) of reach.

The Pocket Boom and accompanying items

The items that come with the Pocket Boom

Inserting the batteries is really easy, literally slide back a cover, put them in and slide the cover back on. Dead simple.

The enclosed instructions do tell you how to pull out the speaker wire, so that you can place the vibrating speaker head on a surface, however I found them very hard to follow. I found a video on YouTube about how to do it though, and that cleared things right up, just pull the wire out whilst rotating it round at the same time – effectively pulling and unwinding.

The Pocket Boom's Instructions

The instructions that come with the Pocket Boom

One thing that I am still a bit puzzled about is the suction pad system. The speaker head has an adhesive suction pad on it so that you can stick it to surfaces easily. It does get dirty, and I have found that covering it with sellotape and then slowly removing the tape cleans it up and it becomes sticky again. In the pack some extra adhesive are provided, however I can’t seem to find any instructions as to how to change the pad. Hopefully when I need to it will be pretty easy.

What is the Battery Life Like?

I have so far been very pleasantly surprised by the life of the battery. Considering this is a device that is designed to effectively replace most speakers, it uses very little power. Normal speakers can be power hungry, however the Pocket Boom takes just two AAA batteries.

I have had my Pocket Boom vibrating and turning objects into speakers for around three hours now, and despite it being powered by just two AAA batteries, it is still working just as well now as it was when I started using it. The Pocket Boom would appear to be a great saver of energy, considering that two speakers would be unlikely to last that long, producing the kind of sound levels that the Pocket Boom can.

 How Good is the Sound Quality?

Okay, so it is portable, can turn almost anything into a good speaker, uses less power, therefore its weakness must be in its sound quality right? Wrong.

Personally I am very impressed with the quality of the sound the Pocket Boom can produce. I have used it on many surfaces, and found that everyone produces a slightly different quality, pitch and intensity of sound. Some produce music with much deeper bass levels, whilst others just produce really loud music! Some substances I would like it to go louder, but the volume level is always reasonable.

Depending on the song you are playing, the sound produced will vary. Sometimes you need to turn the volume down slightly, as the speaker head vibrates too much and doesn’t sound that great, but turning down the volume easily fixes this.

The Environment…

One thing I have noticed about the Pocket Boom is that it works better in quieter environments. Also, the size of the room seems to affect how well it produces sound, as it can really affect the acoustics. I have personally found that it works far better in small rooms than it does in bigger ones. If there is also a lot of noise, it doesn’t work as well, but for most environments it works really well.

I currently have it plugged into my PC, using the machine (metal) as the speaker, and it works really well. The environment is relatively quiet, and the volume of my PC is only on 20%, yet the sound is much louder than if it were through headphones!

Is the Pocket Boom Value for Money?

When I reviewed the Kymera Magic Wand I bought, I concluded that it was a great novelty product, but not really value for money at £50.

I think the Pocket Boom also has some novelty element to it, which you get when you first use it. I ran around testing it on everything I could! That has slightly worn off now, but the product is very practical and does work. As I said, I am using it as a speaker for my PC, and it is working very well.

The Pocket Boom retails at £20 (£19.99) which I think is a very reasonable price. I think that the novelty factor of the boom is probably worth £5 to £10, but after that you have an extremely practical product, which you find uses for in your every day life.

If you prefer to listen to high quality music, amplifiers and professional loudspeakers are probably for you, the Pocket Boom is not the best of speakers, but it is a bit of fun.

If however you are someone who just likes to casually listen to music, and the occasional bit of fun (as you find a new surface to try out!) then the Pocket Boom is a must have gadget!

The Pocket Boom and its packaging

The Pocket Boom in its packaging

As I said at the beginning of the article, this product has been sent to us to review. This company is called GearZap. Our thanks to GapZear for providing us with the pocket boom 🙂

IT Security Column Competition

2 Replies Christopher Roberts

Alan Tay is one of Technology Bloggers writers, and to date has published 6 articles, and loads of comments. Alan runs his own blog on IT Security, and has recently launched a great competition, (to celebrate the 1 year anniversary of his blog) that he has asked me to write about.

Alan is hoping to get some sponsors to provide him with some great prizes, but has also offered $100 of his own cash to the winner. Alan stresses in his article about the competition, that it is not a free giveaway, but a competition, whereby the author who is able to write the best article for his site will be rewarded.

IT Security Column's Logo

Alan's blogs logo

To enter Alan’s competition, you need to write an article for his site – which is based around IT Security. After his approval, your article will go live on his site.

The winner of the competition will be the person who’s article drives the most traffic to Alan’s blog. Alan says that the article he will choose as the winner is the one which his readers love the most, the one which gets shared the most via the social web, the one Google ranks highest and the one the content sponsors like the most.

The competition officially opens on the 6th of March, and the last entry date is the 15th of March. The winner of the competition will be announced on the 22nd of April 2012.

I hope to hold a competition to celebrate Technology Bloggers 1st birthday soon, so stay tuned for that competition too 🙂

Will you be entering Alan’s contents to try to win his $100 and any other prizes he may get from sponsors? I will be 🙂

UPDATE: I came second in Alan’s competition, winning $30 and a copy of Auslogic Disk Defrag Pro! My thanks go to Alan, as well as to everyone who read my article, commented and voted 🙂

Scientists grow artificial meat

14 Replies Jonny Hankins

In my work at the Bassetti Foundation I have written extensively about food, its production and how technology has entered and continues to encroach on everyday provisioning.

I wrote an article about how milk from cloned cows entered the food chain last year, and then how some cloned cows went missing in Scotland, probably ending up at the butcher’s shop and on to somebody’s table, but this week I let you in to a story that goes much further.

A very fat cow

A fat cow

Scientists in Holland have managed to grow meat from stem cells and later this year aim to have enough to make a hamburger. I don’t know if they plan to eat it though, it will cost about $300 000 to produce. Although this sounds abhorrent as well as quite expensive, they have good reason to try it. Many experts believe that current food provisioning techniques are non sustainable. As the population grows more people require more food, but leave less land to use in its production, and this presents one problem. The second issue is that large scale meat production is one of the biggest carbon producing industries on the planet.

Meat production is also physically very damaging for the environment, there have been many articles written about beef production in Argentina and Brazil causing problems for the rainforests. Meat production is also inefficient. In order to produce meat (for example beef again) you need to feed up a cow, and cows eat a lot. The protein gained from the cow is equal to 15% of the protein it eats, so you have to feed a herd of cows 100 tons of protein for every 15 tons produced.

So could this new type of production help feed the planet? It will certainly have to overcome a few hurdles, production price will have to come down obviously and I imagine protests and general dislike of the idea, but OGM is everywhere nowadays (unmarked in the US I believe) and you can get used to anything if you try. The point is that it can be done, the technology exists and once done on mass it will be done cheaply.

If you are interested in learning more take a look at the article on the BBC website, my interview with Prof Andrew McMeekin of the University of Manchester Business School on the subject of food provisioning and my other meanderings on the Bassetti Foundation website.