In black and grey (for men?) or lavender and grey (for women?)
Jim Jamieson
Province
What is it? Boynq Sabre iPod stereo speaker
Price: $99.99
Why you need it: You want to share those same digital tunes you carry around in your iPod.
Why you don’t: A CD player seems so much easier.
Our rating: 3 out of 5
There are so many flavours of iPod speakers out there that it’s hard to maintain an appetite for what’s new in the marketplace.
But Dutch company Boynq seems to have an interesting variation on the theme, with its Sabre — an oddly shaped device that produces decent sound and has some interesting features.
First off, the shape will catch your eye. From the side it looks like one of those weird 19th-century bikes with the huge front wheel and tiny back one.
There is a metal-grilled speaker on each side and a control panel on the front face with a button and three dials surrounding the dock.
The dock accommodates inserts so the Sabre can fit all iPod models. It includes a stereo line in for the iPod Shuffle. On the back there is a dock-connector pass-through port, allowing the device to be used as a computer dock for charging the iPod or data synchronization.
There are line-in and line-out ports, as well as an S-video output. Sadly, there is no battery compartment in the AC-only Sabre, which detracts from the unit’s portability.
Boynq had its own idea of fashion, so the Sabre comes in two colour schemes. The black and grey is presumably for men, while the lavender and grey is for women.
We found the sound quality to be acceptable — especially if you like to turn it loud — but found the buttons on the face to feel a bit flimsy.
Available at Amazon.com and boynq.com.
© The Vancouver Province 2007
