Before we dive in it's fair to point out that this Houseparty unit is not in the same league as the offerings from Bose, monitor audio  and Altec Lansing. Instead it's nearest rival is the Logic3 iStation and both sit around the £40 - £60 bracket for cheap and cheerful iPod amplification.

The Podgear Houseparty tries to offer basic amplification to the whole range of Apple iPod's from the smallest shuffle to a full size iPod. The main slot into which you site the player is full iPod sized and then you use a series of plastic holders to make the smaller models fit. Our 30gb iPod sat snugly enough and started to both charge and sync with iTunes as it's able to connect to your PC from the dock, but the iPod mini seemed to rattle around in it's plastic holder which all felt a bit cheap and nasty.

With our iPod sitting in the Podgear almost comfortably it was time to see what it sounded like. The first track was some MOR pop and to be fair it sounded ok, the whole range was present and the volume was about comparable with the Logic3 speakers and the 2 x 6 Watt units did their best to generate some bass. Changing to a funky number from the latest Jamiroquai album, the Houseparty started to show the cracks, bass distortion was present from around 70% of full volume and even when it doesn't distort it sound pretty unconvincing.

Just to check it wasn't anything to do with the iPod we fed in a CD player using the Podgear's auxiliary input, we got the same results with a muddy sounding reproduction of James Brown and a horrible distorted bass line. Of course we were meant to be marvelling at the blue LED's that light up your iPod when sat in the Houseparty's cradle and it's overall styling (which isn't bad) but we just can't let you buy one of these without telling the truth.

The 120 x 230 x92mm Podgear Houseparty isn't that small and required a mains adaptor which weighs as much as the whole unit to drive it making is a less than portable system. Perhaps if we had not used the Logic3 iStation we'd not have been so hard on the Podgear offering and accepted that for this kind of money the sound is unlikely to be 1st class.

The truth however is that you can either spend £50 on a Podgear Houseparty and get the equivalent of a boy racers keved up fiesta (all downlighters and no engine) or invest less (around £40) to buy a better sounding iStation. We know which we'd choose and our offices are even in Essex.

Published - 01/10/2005

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