Griffin Evolve iPod speaker

By Nate Lanxon on 19/02/2008 Tagged with: evolve, griffin, ipod, speaker

The bottom line: A brilliant idea and despite average audio performance, a great little system.

RRP: AU$599.00

The Good

Wireless performance
General usefulness
Simple to use
Well-implemented features

The Bad

Sound quality
Price

If you've dabbled with wireless audio in the past you may have had mixed results -- some solutions require networks, some just cost a whole heap of money. Available in mid-March at a RRP of AU$599, Griffin's Evolve is designed to work right out of the box, with no messing around with wireless networks, media servers or even wires.

At its heart is an iPod speaker system, but with the ability to detach the stereo speakers as and when you please, it's potentially the dream setup for anyone who hates staying in the same place for any length of time.

Design
Essentially, the Evolve is two things: a base station and a pair of cube-shaped speakers. Each weighty cube rocks a sturdy, glossy black enclosure, trimmed with a chunky rubberised edge, back panel and base. Inside is a single woofer, so everything from booming bass to crystalline highs need to be concurrently conveyed by a single driver. There's also no reflex port to rear, so air backfired by the driver has no way of escaping.

Metal contacts on the Evolve's speaker enable wireless charging.

The base unit itself sports the same glossy plastic enclosure, only unlike the speakers it's not that heavy. Or chunky. In fact, it feels distinctly unfinished and hollow. Amazing really, considering the rock solid construction of Griffin's excellent Amplifi system. This all said, when the base is set down, it does its job, albeit in a Lego-esque fashion.

But it's inoffensive and it would be totally impractical to build something designed to be moved around so much out of wood. Around the back of the base station are a bunch of ports, including some inputs for non-iPod devices. Though there's no headphone jack, so you'll never be using the Evolve when you want some private listening.

Features
Once you look past the highly plastic design, you see how appealing this kind of system is. It's the kind of thing a younger music fan will stop having tantrums about an unfair bed time in order to get one as a gift. It'll beam music from a base station in a bedroom to the kitchen downstairs. Buy a second pair and have it beam into the garden, too. Hey, buy as many pairs as you want and have music simultaneously playing in each room -- ideal for house parties.

The speakers will pump 12W from the built-in amp, and will play continuously for about 10 hours on a full charge. For charging, you simply plonk them on the base station -- metal contacts between the base of the speaker and the base station allow power to travel into the batteries without wires. It's a great idea and works a treat. Docking the speakers also allows them to decide which is a left-channel and which is a right.

Of course, should you not care about stereo, a switch lets you change the transmission to monaural, allowing you to use a single speaker in two separate rooms at the same time.

Performance
Forget about whether you like the design or not -- the Evolve's amazing convenience and ease-of-use is special. You can have a wireless music system set up in less than 30 seconds: dock your iPod, stick the speakers anywhere in your house and hit play on the remote. That's it.

The speakers use RF signals with a limited bandwidth, and the speakers themselves are only very average. Together this means sound quality's not amazing -- bass is a little weak and bright highs are nowhere to be seen -- it's vastly just mids. But they're reasonably loud and absolutely perfect for anyone who just wants music wherever they are in the house or office, without wanting to set up wireless music servers.

We had the Evolve's speakers pick up music from the base station located at the other side of our office -- a distance of about two house widths, separated by two walls. The remote control works on a slightly lower RF frequency and worked as far away from the base unit as the speakers were -- in either direction.

You can output video from the iPod via the composite cable socket on the base station. Well, you can when it's available in March -- the new iPod models didn't work with the video output feature, as we had a very early sample. We're told an update has been made for the time of launch, so new models will work.

Conclusion
The Evolve may well be a very appealing product for a lot of people, despite its hefty AU$599 retail price. It's painfully simple to use, decent enough to look at and full of potential for parties.