XM-I X-mini II travel speaker

If the 120mm audio cable is too short for you fear not, the Mini II also has a 3.5mm jack so it can hook up to a source using a separate cable. SMI actually call the built-in cable a Buddy-Jack, as it allows several Mini II's to be linked together in series. Linking two or more speakers together doesn't give you stereo sound, just mono sound times two or more times over. Proper stereo is a possibility; just buy two Mini II's and nip down to your nearest branch of Maplin for a 3.5mm stereo splitter cable to two mono connectors.

Base grooves keep cabling clutter at bay

XM-I supplies a USB-mini cable that splits off providing a USB interface and 3.5mm audio connection, so you can charge the unit via USB and play music simultaneously with just the one lead. Thankfully the cable dispenses with the spring loaded tidy used on the Mini I and Max which was too heavily sprung and had a habit of sending speakers zooming across the desk at an alarming speed.

For something the same size and weight as a Satsuma the Mini II delivers a mightily impressive sound that is noticeably superior to the original Mini. It seems futile to bang on at length about absolute levels of sound quality with a device like this – so we won't and we will just say that both Seth Lakeman's Poor Man's Heaven and Chris Knight's Heart of Stone sounded clear and tuneful when piped through the Mini II from a Sansa Fuze and that it did sterling work when plugged into a Cowon A3 playing a DVD rip of The Return of the King.

Linking speakers only multiplies mono, but there are workarounds for stereo

It’s not all sunshine though. Throw some classical repertoire at it – we tried Howard Skempton's Lento and a collection of Puccini arias sung by Maria Callas - and things get rather too fuzzy and brittle at the top end of the frequency range. Incidentally, pushing the speaker “shut” while it is playing does indicate how useful that Base Expansion System malarkey is – closed the sound takes on a very confined and tinny aspect.