Decent cheap small portable speaker?

[Nazo]

From time to time I have to use a small portable speaker for listening to various things, watching stuff, and etc. I don't expect much from such a speaker beyond reasonable portability. Still, I do listen to music from time to time and in general prefer a bit of quality. I can't afford something truly good, so obviously my options are going to be fairly limited.

Right now I'm using the old Altec Lansing Orbit iM207. It has a surprisingly good sound for its size and price with a good frequency response considering. It even has a surprisingly decent bass. My biggest complaint is that it really does seem to go through its batteries relatively quickly.

My first thought when considering an upgrade was the newer Altec Lansing Orbit MP3 (iM237) or the Orbit M (iMT237) -- I'm not really sure what the difference is between the two exactly as both are the same price and seem to be the same in every aspect I could tell. However, upon further reading I see that they officially say the 237 lasts 24 hours just like they say about the 207. Of course, the official rating hasn't meant much for me at least since I guess they assume you listen to quieter music than I do or something and I get a lot less time than that, but, it's probably safe to assume that even if the new one is more efficient, for it to have the same number it's probably not much more so. Still, I do read from multiple sources that it has a notably better sound, so this one is definitely under consideration at least. I do consider the sound quality more important than the battery lifetime within reason, so while it would be nice to get a better battery lifetime, I can live without it.

Unfortunately, I'm not having much luck in searching around so far. The only other thing that even sounded promising in reviews was the Yamaha NX-A01, but to make it portable I'd have to build a battery pack or something. I found the product info on their website and apparently it uses 12V power, so this could be troublesome to say the least. Besides, I doubt it's very efficient given that it expects to run from an external plug all of the time. Still, I do have a small rechargeable power inverter I could use in a pinch as I doubt it uses a lot of power. I wonder how it sounds though? Better than the Altec Lansing?

Should I just give up and get the iM237? I'm pretty happy with my 207, so the 237 doesn't sound like a bad thing by any means, but I still should get the best I can for the money I have and I'm kind of leaning towards the Yamaha, but really can't tell much about it from the reviews I've read so far. Any thoughts?

 

[visia]

There are couple of different Fiio speakers. ABI reviewed them quite positively. Head-direct sells them.

 

[a_tumiwa]

i have Fiio S1, Fiio S3, and Simbadda. And what the review said about Fiio is true, cheap and the sound is not bad

 

[Nazo]

From looking around, it looks like people who directly compare it like only the price better than speakers like the Altec Lansing. Within the pricerange that I can afford, I'm preferring sound quality first and foremost and the Altec Lansing at least does have quite decent bass. Really, I wish they made more like it and the Yamaha I was looking at with just the one speaker in a casing designed to allow a little bass. I would point out that, for the way I'll be using it, a mono speaker is just fine (in fact, preferable.) Stereo just means the value of the money spent on it is spread in half essentially unless there's a small portable speaker that uses a tweeter + mid or something.

Of the Fiio things, I see they have some stuff like the S5 with an input as well. I wonder if it's any better. No one seems to have reviewed it at all really other than to say that as a MP3 player it has a screen and all. Of course, I won't be using whatever I get as a MP3 player, so that means money value wasted. A built in rechargeable would be kind of nice I admit though. Still, by the look of it, even with their "high end" I'm inclined to think the sound would be weak compared to the Altec Lansing at the least. EDIT: I see also they make a "S9" which is just a speaker. I can't seem to find reviews though. It looks a lot more promising than the other two I did find info on and probably better than the S5 I think. Right now I don't think it makes a lot of sense to buy them just because they are a good bang for the buck alone.

EDIT: I went ahead and got the Yamaha. I definitely don't regret it. It's smaller than I was picturing in my head -- about the size of two of the Altec Lansings set on top of each other and the cube shape is weird (lol, like some kind of futuristic thing or something.) Most importantly, the sound quality is definitely incredible for a $55 portable speaker. The highs and mids are quite decent for such a speaker and the bass is shocking. The speaker sounds overall much "bigger" than it really is I guess you might say. Despite the implications in the product descriptions and all though, I'd say the bass is relatively even rather than being overwhelming. Of course, it's not immune to distortion (I may have to try something like the MarkL trick, lol) and too much bass only would have emphasized this fact. I'd say it was well worth every penny at the Amazon price. (Though I'm not as sure about $100 at the MSRP.) It definitely can't be made to run off of a battery though. I tested a worst case scenario (maximum volume on a loud song) and I caught it for a split second using as much as 43 watts! Ok, normal volume on normal songs won't be nearly so much, but, this is clearly beyond anything I'm going to get out of a reasonable battery pack (it would require something on the order of a laptop battery pack... That would cost more than the speaker -- especially if I wanted to be able to charge it...)