Houseparty iPod 'mood enhancer' speakers

Home audio, MP3 players
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I read the announcement for GEAR4’s HouseParty 24/7, and was drawn in by the title: ‘around-the-clock mood enhancer’. Wow, how’s it going to do that? Invite Noel Edmonds round?

Well, no (thankfully) that’s not part of the deal. What we’ve got is the usual iPod dock-and-speakers affair – not that you’d think it was ordinary by the way its features have been described.

Apparently this unit is better than a glass of Moët for lifting your mood, more versatile than a Swiss Army knife, and sexier than a supermodel. I’m not convinced – the one that maybe comes closest is ‘bigger sound than Pavarotti singing in the shower’.

What they seem to want to extol is its portability. Move it to the bedroom and – well I won’t go into details about how it performs in there, though it does have three LCD brightness settings so as not to keep you awake at night (yeah, ’cause I’m constantly awoken and blinded by my clock radio display), as well as an alarm clock to, err, wake you up.

The kitchen’s the place for the built-in AM/FM radio, apparently. Or, you could let it receive admiring glances from your guests by putting it in your living room. It comes in (sexy) black or (cool) white.

Audio wise (I’ll just stick to the specs now) it has 2x6W speakers plus a 12W subwoofer and ActiveBass 2.1 technology. It works with all iPods and anything else you can plug into its audio in port.

The radio has 5 presets (it’s not digital, though) and there’s a remote control with 16 functions.

I can’t say I get over-excited by iPod speakers these days, but if you like the look and want to get it in your home, it’ll cost you £99.99 – not half bad.

Andy Merrett
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