iPod gets a new best bud
Sunday, November 18, 2007 5:16 AM PST
By Kevin Hunt, The Hartford Courant
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The Yamaha NX-A01 Natural Sound Speaker is so irresistibly cute that it's hard to decide whether to listen to it or pet it.
This single speaker ($100 in black or white), not quite a 3.5-inch cube and weighing 11 ounces, is one of two diminutive sound systems from Yamaha I've been auditioning lately. The other, the NX-U10 USB Power Stereo Speaker ($179 in black or silver), is more conventional, more versatile and, ultimately, more useful.
But who cares about any of that when you have the adorable Natural Sound Speaker in your palm, ready to introduce it to its latest plaything, an iPod?
The speaker's sturdy plastic build makes it kidproof, and its simple set-up -- a power cord and a minijack connection for your music player -- makes it virtually adultproof. All controls, for on-off, volume and mute, reside in a single, big-dimple button atop the cube.
The interior is almost as basic: a 1 1/8-inch titanium cone driver that fires out through a plastic grille on the left side of the cube, an unpowered driver facing out of the opposite side and a minuscule amplifier that puts out, maybe, four watts. The unpowered driver, which uses technology Yamaha calls Swing Radiator Bass, absorbs pressure created by the powered cone driver and adds a little more bottom end to the sound.
And it is little: There's no way the Natural Sound Speaker could survive a night of pulsating, high-volume techno music. Naturally, this speaker sounds bigger than its size, but it doesn't hit the low notes. And, as a monophonic speaker, it can't duplicate the imaging, spaciousness and depth of stereo speakers.
Curiously, this mighty mite that looks like it could go anywhere operates only when plugged into a wall outlet. It has no rechargeable-battery option. What, not enough room?
That's where Yamaha's USB speaker trumps the cute cube. The NX-U10 was designed for laptops (Windows or Mac), running off the USB port's power, but it also runs on four AAA batteries and comes with a USB-to-AC power adapter that plugs into a wall outlet. That's three ways to pump life into the speakers, making it a go-anywhere and do-anything system that also can be used with an iPod, cell phone or portable DVD player. It weighs only about a pound, without the flimsy battery pack, and comes with a travel pouch.
The USB speaker, about 10 inches long and less than 1 1/2 inches thick, has a 1 1/2-inch speaker driver on either side of a set of Yamaha's passive swing radiators. With two drivers, the NX-U10 almost sounds like actual stereo speakers. The volume control and minijack are on one side of the NX-U10, an on-off button on the other.
Yamaha says the NX-U10 produces 20 watts of power, or about 20 times more than other speakers designed for the minimal power typically supplied by speakers running off a USB port. I don't believe it. Yamaha takes an extremely loose measurement, then doubles it because the NX-U10 has two speakers. Whatever the measurement, the NX-U10 still sounds more potent than the typical USB speakers.
The USB speaker might play slightly louder than the cube, but they are extremely hard to tell apart sonically. Both are substantial improvements over a laptop's built-in speakers.
Though I've seen the cube for less than $60 and the USB speaker for under $100, neither is a particularly good value. Where compactness is less critical, you'll get bigger sound per dollar elsewhere.
In tight spaces, though, neither Yamaha speaker will disappoint. As for that Natural Sound speaker cube: I would adopt one in a second.
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