Mini speakers for tape lures - a brief overview of what is available.

Over the last 5 years being able to carry music with you and then broadcast it from your tiny pocket sized speaker has become all the rage.  Luckily this has other useful benefits as this trend has made technology cheaper.  Below is a brief description of what's there:

Historic models:

XMI x-mini.  These are the original speaker at 2 Watts with just a 3.5mm input and are loud enough for general tape luring and have long enough battery life to last a morning.  As XMI were the first to push these a lot of the cost is for the name.  There are different ones on the market that are cheaper but broadly similar. X-mini now make 2.5W speakers such as the UNO.

XMI then had a cunning plan of sticking an MP3 player into the speaker and produced the X-mini happy.  These again are 2W and play every track on the SD card.  It is like going back to endless tapes without a car battery to drive them.  Over priced when you can get a cheap MP3 player for £6 from amazon.

Sonpre make some MP3 playing speakers which output 3W, the N1 and M1 which take SD and Micro SD respectively.  Like the X-mini happy they repeat endlessly what ever is on the card.  I use these over the x-mini happy as they're cheaper and marginally louder. 

Current:

The first fully integrated speaker/mp3 player with track repeat at a reasonable price was the tecknet mp3 speaker which takes an SD card and outputs 3W.  They're still available on Amazon for about £13.  The menu system is fiddly however this is the case for all cheap MP3 players.  Battery life is good enough for a mornings use.

My favourite mini speaker is the Nizhi TT-6 which takes a Micro SD card and are available from Amazon for about £20.  If you're after a handful then buy them direct from China via a company like dhgate where they are under £10 although you need to order 10 at once. Beware of import duty and, more importantly, the default menu setting is in some weird language which takes some guess work to get into English (or maybe Chinglish).  These have track repeat and 2x3W speakers.  Another bonus is they come with a velcro strap so can be easily attached to mistnet poles.

Bluetooth:

Technology has taken another step forward in mini speakers recently and the latest leap appears to be for the economy glampers who don't want to pay for a power point in their posh tent but do need to recharge their smart phone while listening to decent audio quality speakers.  This has brought out a huge array of bluetooth speakers with large battery capacities for recharging your smart phone at the same time.  Two I've tried are:

Veho Vecto 360 - this is an 8W speaker (2x4W) with a large battery that can recharge a smart phone up to 4 times on a single charge or play for 16 hours over bluetooth.  It also has a Micro SD card slot and MP3 player although rather like the Sonpre M1/N1 and X-mini Happy plays the entire content of the card rather than a track repeat.  It's also in a showerproof (IP65) housing and will output from a bluetooth MP3 player.  The RRP is massively excessive at £120 however Dabs are heavily discounting them to as low as £50.  Given the battery size (6000mAh), bluetooth etc this is actually quite a good price.

Bolse BTS-12 - This is a 12W speaker (2x6W) and has pretty good sound quality and volume without too much distortion.  It is a lot cheaper than the Vecto at £30 however the volume controls only work for Bluetooth input and not line in.  As a result it sucks if you're driving it off an mp3 player and line in with a volume far lower than a xmi mini speaker!  The best option here is to use a bluetooth MP3 player.  These aren't cheap at £90 for a stand alone unit however buying a cheap phone or tablet with bluetooth and mp3 capabilities works out much cheaper.