With so many MP3 players on the market, listening to your personal music when you are out and about isn’t an issue any more, but what if you want to share the music either at a picnic or even when you are at home. Creative hopes they have the answer with TravelSound, a portable speaker set that will allow you to plug in your MP3, CD, MD player or even your notebook or portable DVD player, in fact anything with a headphones jack.
Our quick take
Overall the sound is good even if the speakers are so close together. We cranked up the volume and failed to get crackle out of the speakers - something which is normally prone to small portables.
Our only concern was a lack of covering of the drivers themselves, meaning that a wrongly placed item in you bag may damage them. To answer this problem Creative does include a handy padded travel case, although it is not big enough to carry the power supply as well. Still, if you looking for sound on the move for under £50 this should service your needs nicely.
Creative TravelSound portable speakers - 4.0 / 5
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The unit comes in two versions - silver or iPod white (to fit in with your iPod strangely enough) and is about the size of half a sandwich. Rather than have two separate speakers the unit is combined in one and is powered by 4 AAA batteries. The joining of the speakers may annoy some audiophiles hoping to get the greatest distance between the two and in answer to this, Creative has added a wide stereo effect button. Admittedly the button doesn’t seem to do much, other than just make the volume slightly louder with more echo.
Rather than having to rely on battery power all the time the unit ships with a power pack in the box with an extremely long cable. Frustratingly no batteries come in the box. Connection is made to your device of choice via a double-ended 3.5mm headphone jack and that connects into the headphone socket of said device.
The unit itself has a volume control so you don’t have to worry about the volume setting on the player, although you can change this as well.
To recap
Though it’s a risk for becoming a battery vampire according to volume, it’s acceptable for there-and-back work journey listening.