Home > Consumer Reviews > Hama Mini Stereo Speaker, 3.5Mm

For a little battery operated thing this can give off some good sounds. Not the most amazing sound quality... but for what it is it's fabulous.

I've been using small portable speakers with wires since the Walkman age, so that you and your travelling partner can listen to music in your hotelroom on holidays. The problem was that the wires of the two separate speakers got entagled and it was hard to put it - for example - on the dashboard of the car without it falling off. This little device makes it very simple to listen to your music collection wherever you want. And the sound, even if you turn up the volume, is not bad at all.
The disadvantage is that it needs batteries...

I did buy this speaker initially to use with my gorgeous Mecer 7" Portable DVD Player Mpeg-4 Multi-Region With USB Port, SD Card Slot but the sound was far too shrill and tone can't be adjusted on the DVD Player. So now I'm using it attached to my Toshiba Satellite laptop via the ingenious Hama Retractable Extension Cable, 3.5mm Jack to 3.5mm Socket.

This Hama speaker is an excellent amplifier and obviously does the job of emitting sound into the room (rather than into the head with ear/headphones) so gets 4 stars for that but music is rather ear-piercing which takes some getting used to. I have been spoilt by using multimedia speakers with bass and treble controls until now (but I've given them up to my new Desktop All-In-One PC which has laptop-like speakers). I've found I can improve the sound a little by tweaking some of the controls in Windows Media Player - particularly turning on Auto Volume Leveling and putting TruBass up to max.

I know 'everyone' seems to expect these small speakers to emit tinny sounds and they make allowances for this. Certainly this Hama speaker is better than my laptop speakers but what I cannot understand is why my earphones - Sony MDRE10LPH Casual In-Ear Headphones, Grey - 'produce' far superior sounds with full bass (and no shrieking!) and, of course, amazing surround sound when they cost pretty much the same.

To sum up: the difference in quality can be simplistically gauged by clicking the main volume control in Windows...

my laptop speakers: "tap tap"
with this Hama Speaker attached: "donk donk"
with my multimedia speakers attached: "bong bong"
with my earphones attached: "dong dong"

...though when it comes to playing a tune the difference between each is exponential down the list.

This is an excellent piece of kit which produces good loud sound when connected to ipods and MP3 players also minidisc players. I have tried a number of these tiny speakers but this comes out best