Review: Altec Lansing inMotion COMPACT iMT320
Iain Laskey tries some mobile music and likes what he hears.
| Product | inMotion COMPACT iMT320 |
|---|---|
| Company | Altec Lansing |
| Web | www.alteclansing.com |
| Price | £60 |
| We like | Very good with speech, quality unit, battery powered. |
| We don't like | Slightly pricey, not a room filler. Manual controls. |
| Rating | 8/10 |
| Requirements |
Altec Lansing have produced a number of iPod speaker systems over the years with the inMotion COMPACT being the latest iteration in their portable range. It is an update to the earlier iMT310 with changes to enable 'Works with iPhone' certification. The changes means you no longer get nasty GSM buzzing with iPhone's.
The device itself feels suitably substantial and has an excellent build quality and finish. The shape is slightly odd though, a sort of leaning back wedge. The cover is ingenuous. A soft padded but stiff cover is unclipped from the top of the unit then folds back and under where it slots into the rear and becomes a stand. The top features a power switch and a pair of buttons to adjust the volume up and down. Finally, an auxiliary 3.5mm socket at the back lets you connect non iPod MP3 players or other devices.
The speakers consist of two full range 2 inch drivers with small ports underneath. Altec Lansing proudly claim on the box it has surprisingly deep bass - well, sort of, assuming your expecting such a compact device to be lacking it altogether!
It comes with a small mains adaptor but will happily work on a set of 4 AA batteries which should last 24 hours. There are also a pair of adaptors to suit different models of iPod or iPhone.
In Use
We tested the inMotion COMPACT with a variety of music from classical to rock. Classical was well reproduced with plenty of detail. Given it's size, there's not a huge amount of stereo effect and the volume isn't going to fill a large room but still manages to please. Rock sounded fine but did lack any real bass. We also tried it with a few speech based podcasts. Here, its midrange excelled making it very pleasant to listen to for extended periods.
The iPod has to be controlled using the iPod itself and there's no remote which was a letdown at the price. However, we were generally impressed with the sound given its diminutive size.
Conclusion
If you're in the market for a compact yet decent sounding set of speakers for your iPod/iPhone, we think the Altec Lansing inMotion COMPACT is worthy of consideration. The build quality is top notch and the device can do justice to most sorts of source material as long as you're not expecting huge amounts of bass. If you keep the volume at reasonable levels, it produces pleasingly detailed and warm music and particularly speech that should satisfy most users. We'd have liked some sort of remote control to make the £60 asking price more palatable but as it stands, this is a quality unit that does exactly what it says on the tin.
