Review When we tested XM-I's X-Mini Max travel speakers last year, we were pretty impressed. OK, we wouldn't describe them as hi-fi, in fact we wouldn't even describe them as fi but, as a trade off between cost, size and sound quality, they were hard to beat. XM-I has now updated its basic Mini mono speaker – the Max was essentially two tethered together – and come up with the Mini II.

XM-I's X-mini II maybe mono, but is a sound choice for travelling light

Since the basic design of the Mini wasn't broke XM-I has wisely decided not to fix it, the X-min II being more or less the same, just a little bigger. So instead of a 52 x 52 x 35mm unit weighing 52g with a 36mm speaker, you now get a 60 x 60 x 44mm unit weighing 83g unit with a 40mm speaker. Power output has gone up too, from 2.2W to 2.5W.

Those dimension are for a closed unit – give the top half of the speaker a twist to the left and a 15mm tall concertina section springs open. XM-I calls this the Base Expansion System and the idea is that the increased internal volume improves the bass without making the speaker bigger or heavier.

Expanding body parts deliver a noticeable bass enchancement

Other changes over the Mini include a longer battery life – up from four to eleven hours on a full charge, the addition of a built-in 120mm long 3.5mm audio cable that stows away at the bottom of the speaker when not in use and a circular volume control.

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.

At maximum volume the speaker can start jump up and down – literally - which can be a bit distracting and doesn't do much for the sound quality. Still, it does allow you to set the optimum volume easily enough – just turn it up until it starts to move, then back down a notch.

Satsuma-sized when closed, the X-mini II still functions but suffers sonically

The improvements in the Mini II don't seem to have come at the expense of value for money, the new model arriving with an RRP of £20 which we seem to recall is the same as the old version.

Verdict

As an affordable and pocketable speaker the Mini II is almost impossible to find serious fault with. The sound may not be comparable to proper desktop speakers but it beats the daylights out of any of the built-in speakers you will find in a laptop or PMP. Plugged into a good media player it makes the perfect device for anyone who finds themselves stuck a hotel room or tent on a regular basis and who prefers not to use earphones. ®

Thanks to AdvancedMP3Players for the loan of the review unit.

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