GEAR4 HouseParty II review

There's no shortage of iPod docks available.

This month we looked at two that include an infrared remote control. The HouseParty II might sound like a 1980s teen movie, but it's the follow-up to the HouseParty dock, reviewed in What's New, Shopper January 2006. We criticised the original's poor sound quality and lack of volume, but the latest version has a healthy 30W of RMS output.

The HouseParty II has a compact design where the iPod sits in front of the speakers. It is an improvement over the original's tinny, distorted sound, but it still lacks any great clarity or power. Vocals in particular seem louder than they should be, crowding out some other song elements.

Logic-3's i-Station8 costs a little more than the HouseParty II. It has two banks of four neodymium speakers, with a reasonably large bass driver in the middle. All nine speakers are unprotected, but there's a clear plastic transport cover that clips to the iStation's front. It also has a backlit LCD that displays the current song, although it's unreadable at all but close range.

Having the bass speaker directly behind the docked iPod doesn't seem ideal, but our iPod seemed unperturbed even at high volumes. The i-Station8's sound quality was marginally better than the HouseParty II's, but bass frequencies sounded less defined and some high mid-range was harsh. The HouseParty II is a little louder, but it's more prone to distortion at high volume settings.

The i-Station8 has the most comprehensive set of connections we've ever seen on an iPod dock. Owners of iPod Videos can use the composite or S-video connectors to display photos or video content on a television. If you have a hi-fi, you could connect it to the dock's headphone socket.

Neither of these products sounds as good as Logitech's mm50, which we reviewed in What's New, April 2006. If you don't need portability or a remote control, however, you'd get better sound for less money by pairing Apple's universal docking station with a set of Logitech's X-230 speakers; see our 'Also consider...' below for details.

Author: Simon Handby