MP3 Gaze

“Wake Up to exceptional sound!”

No, no, no. Wake up gradually in complete silence. ‘Exceptional sound’ would be far too frightening.

GEAR4’s HouseParty speakers are an alarm, radio and speakers for your iPod - if you’ve got one. Technology writers never seem to consider that maybe, just maybe, not everybody owns an iPod.

I’m a bit troubled by the 24/7 aspect of the name as well. Is there no off switch? Speakers are only of benefit part of the time. Sometimes you don’t want noise. Sometimes its distracting. Of course, if you’ve got an iPod, you’re probably the kind of person who’s ‘up’ all day every day.

I’m rarely, if ever, ‘up’. I wake up in the morning in only the most technical sense. Eight hours later, I have a brief window of ‘up’-ness when the coffee’s kicked in, but before the day’s worn me down. It’s a about 12 minutes long. Some days this doesn’t happen at all. Having speakers blaring ‘exceptional sound’ 24/7 would really start to irritate me quite quickly.

I know I’ve previously said that I won’t mention the price of anything because of the international nature of the internet, but you’ll just have to excuse me this once.

Fifty quid! These headphones cost fifty quid! Think what that could get you down at Bargain Booze. All you’ll get from these is unwanted attention from the criminal elements of society. A headphone wire is a means of securing your headphones. These are asking for trouble.

Of course, being as they’re wireless, they need batteries. If you’re actually listening to stuff, those batteries will last five hours. If the headphones are on standby, they’ll last 60 hours. That’s 60 hours of battery life while doing nothing.

GEAR4 use two exclamation marks consecutively in their press release when they’re saying that the BluPhones are “the smallest, lightest and most practical Bluetooth headphones EVER designed!!” This smacks of desperation to me.

They’ve also called their product ‘BluPhones’ without a space and even though they’re not blue.

Verdict: None out of three. Or None out of ten, a hundred, or any number you can think of really.