Pocket Boom Portable Vibration Speaker [Review]

Is your iPhone speaker not loud enough for you? Don’t want to lug around a hefty set of portable speakers? Then look no further than the PocketBoom portable surface vibration device which turns almost any surface you can think of into a speaker.

It’s pretty simple, all you do is unwrap the vibration head from the main battery unit and stick it to a large surface. The other end goes into the headphone socket on your iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, or any other generic MP3 player or device with a standard 3.5mm headphone jack.

If you turn the PocketBoom on without it being attached to any surface you will still hear your music being played but it will sound very quiet and tinny. If you touch the white sticky pad on the vibration head you’ll feel it moving up and down much like any normal speaker cone would do. The fun begins when you stick it to a random surface like a cardboard box or plastic tub….suddenly the music is massively amplified and you effectively turn the random item into a speaker!

It doesn’t matter how old you are, you’ll run around the house like a little girl with her first Barbie frantically sticking the PocketBoom to every and any surface you can trying to find out what is the loudest, what is the crispest, what gives the best bass etc

From my experiments it seems that anything too large or with too thick a surface doesn’t work well as the vibrations are simply dissipated over the massive area of the thick surface resists the vibrations. So a 50″ flat screen TV doesn’t work too well, the front glass is too ridged and the overall surface area too large and things with surfaces that a material/leather like iPad 3 cases don’t work very well either.

An empty tissue box works very well, thin cardboard that can vibrate easily coupled with the opening (where the tissues used to come out of) to allow sound to come out. The following are also quite good (note all empty):

  • plastic milk bottle
  • the box the PocketBoom came in
  • beer can
  • baked bean tin
  • plastic Tupperware container
  • mess tin (the type you take camping)
  • cereal box

and the best of all

  • a Pringles tube

The Pringles tube is the outright winner, placing the PocketBoom on the metal base and removing the plastic lid makes an excellent portable speaker. You might wonder why anybody would find this useful, but I for one will be taking my PocketBoom on all future camping trips and holidays. Small, light and compact but with the simple addition of a Pringles tube, beer can or any other item you’ve probably already got to hand it gives you some great portable speakers.

And the following were not so good:

  • TV screen
  • iPad 3 covers
  • fridge door
  • cupboard door
  • my cheek
  • iPad screen
  • my cat
  • Canon S90 camera screen
Scoopz: Creator of http://blog.scoopz.com Computer Nerd with a bias towards anything and everything Apple. Petrol head with a 5.0L V10 507bhp 205mph car...and a plug-in hybrid BMW i8...and a 2.0L 25yr stripped out, rolled caged car for the track too. Owner of a giant Bernese Mountain Dog. Proud to be an all-round geek!

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