Hands-on with the Gear4 Bass Station iPod boombox

For those of you who haven't spent the rest of your spare cash on discounted Easter eggs from Woolworths, take a glance at Gear4's new iPod speaker system -- the Bass Station. It's £99-worth of speaker, and we've just been sent one to play with. Aren't we the lucky ones?

Well, yes, we are. Sort of. It's rather a pleasant-looking system, not far in design from Apple's old iPod Hi-Fi. It's not too heavy, though it's also not terribly solid. But it wouldn't look out of place in a bedroom or at a party.

Stick your iPod in the dock -- or jack in another audio source with the stereo inputs around the back -- and you'll get 35W of power, delivered by two woofers and a dedicated sub. The only problem is that there isn't a bass reflex port, so all that air being pushed around by the three drivers has nowhere to go. Not great.

But it's loud, and although there's nothing overly impressive about the sound quality, you won't find much to complain about for the price. We plugged some pop, metal and folk music through it and thought, "Yeah, it's alright for £99, if you're more concerned with volume than sonic accuracy."

Our full review, however -- which you can expect very soon -- will give you all the juicy details on whether this system is the mutt's nuts, or only good as a tool for incapacitating roadkill that hasn't quite been flattened enough to kill it. All this and more to come faster than you can say, "Hey, I wonder what's on Encoded this week!" -Nate Lanxon

Update: Read our full Gear4 BassStation review. 

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• Gear4,
• Gear4 BassStation,
• inputs,
• sound quality,
• accessories