This little beauty – the SurroundXi – looks best with an iPod Nano, but plays well with other music toys. I’ve been tinkering with these speakers for a couple of weeks now, and they’re fun, highly portable and easy to use. The sound isn’t Bose quality, but with my iPod Shuffle and my iPod Mini, it’s not bad at all. Here are the pros and cons.

Pros:

  • Plug and play
  • Very portable (runs on wire and on batteries)
  • Works with multiple audio players and flash drives
  • Auto-play from flash drive is seamless
  • Comes in many colors
  • Cheap! $40 at Target, but word on the Web says you can get the speakers for much less

Cons:

  • Music played from a flash drive worked very well the first time around, but now is accompanied by a very loud windy sound out of one speaker. Faulty unit? iPod Shuffle still plays well.
  • I plugged the SurroundXi into my Squeezebox a while back, and initially it worked reasonably well, but now the speakers make an annoying buzzing sound.

Bottom Line: The SurroundXi speakers are fun and cheap, but probably won’t hold up to years (months?) of use. Buy’em with that in mind, and you’ll be happy.

Oh yeah, and my cat liked them.