After my old set of portable speakers finally gave up the ghost, I started to look around for another set to take their place. Now normally I just want a cheap set of portable speakers that I could take on holiday with me, or to a hotel when I'm on an overnight stop for business, so that I could plug them into my phone to use it as an mp3 player. They'll get knocked around a bit as they get buried in various travel bags, hence wanting to go for a cheap set that were 'expendable', but with a decent sound quality. Shopping around in Tesco one day for the weekly shop I noticed this Technika speaker in their Electronics Section for £3.97, and hence thought that it would be ideal for my purpose.

To look at it, it does look quite quirky. The housing is a sort of squashed black plastic ball (looks a little like a large yo-yo) with silver circular trimmings and a black speaker grill on the top. It doesn't feel too weighty, coming in at 210 grams, and it is self powered by 3 AAA batteries, where you have a simple on off switch on the speaker, together with a power on light indicator. Now I tend to like self powered speakers because for one, they draw their own power rather than taking it from your phone or mp3 player. Also, self powered tend to have a little more 'umph' to them in terms of sound quality. Of note, I tend to use rechargeable batteries in these because it saves on the costs of new batteries (and is more environmentally friendly). But a full battery charge will give me around 4 hours of playback at a reasonable loudness, but obviously that duration can increase or decrease depending on the volume level you set. The speaker is finished off by a fairly long lead that goes to the 3.5mm jack plug, which is a common plug often used to connect things to your phone, mp3 or cd player.

In terms of sound quality, well for that price I'm not expecting perfection. The speaker puts out 1.5W of power, which in terms of speaker outputs is quite low. But you tend to find that the lower the power output, the less bass and more tinny the sound becomes. For this Technika speaker, I've got to admit that it is fairly good. It doesn't give a rip roaring jumping bass (which you probably wouldn't expect for the size, but then again, it is not totally tinny with just treble in the output. The sound is not quite warm, but more lukewarm, but then having only paid £3.97 for it (excluding batteries), I personally think the sound is ok. Of note is that the sound quality seems to remain consistent and clear throughout the volume range, so you don't really start to get any distortion unless you're at full volume with a thumping music track on, and then the distortion is only very minor.

In summary, for the price I paid, this is a good quality speaker. Small and compact, and yet still has a fairly decent sound quality with a reasonable playback duration from a set of batteries. Thus, a 4* recommendation.