The Griffin Travel speaker takes away the hassle of having to remember additional batteries with an iPod travel dock. That's because the speaker is powered directly from your iPod using the 30-pin connector dock.
Our quick take
Let's not beat around the bush, the Griffin Travel Speaker isn't going to win any awards for sound quality, although it is no-dud either - we've come across genuine living room docks that don't sound as good as it.
But if you're looking for a cheap, reliable and loud(ish) speaker system to have with you on the fly then it's absolutely brilliant.
It's tough, it's hassle-free and for what you're expected to fork out, it's very cheap.
It's a must-have festival accessory and we're sure it will give you hours of fun (well, about 18 hours at least).
Griffin Travel Speaker - 4.0 / 5
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The obvious concern with this is that it would severely drain your iPod's battery. But we didn't find this to be the case at all. We tested the speaker for around 12 hours, with a fully charged 120GB iPod classic and the iPod's battery indicator still signalled around a quarter of the battery's life was left.
Now Apple advertise the classic as having 36 hours playback on a full charge, so there is obviously some draw - but it's minimal and over a few nights away from home you're hardly going to notice it as being an issue.
It's all well and good having a good USP like the battery power but the speaker still needs to sound good. And thankfully, it does. Well, it sounds as good as you'd expect a sub £30 travel-speaker to sound at least. It's fairly tinny but that's no surprise with such a small setup, but the volume level is pretty impressive. It is much louder than we expected without getting overly distorted and the sound has a nice rich feel, which was quite surprising.
It's very plasticy, but it's also very compact. You could slip this dock into your rucksack and it would hardly take up any space. Plus, the hard-plastic its made up of makes it quite robust - so it can take a bit of a bashing on-route, which it is bound to get if you're lugging it around with you on your travels.
To recap
But if you're looking for a cheap, reliable and loud(ish) speaker system to have with you on the fly then it's absolutely brilliant