Griffin Evolve

Greetings! I'm Nate Lanxon and on this cloudy Tuesday afternoon we're going to check out Griffin's new silver lining, the Evolve. This is quite simply a wireless set of speakers. You dock an iPod in the top here, pair the connected speakers with the main unit and you're good to go. These speakers can just be picked up from the base and put anywhere around your house. Each speaker has a built-in battery and amplifier so there's no need to mess around with replacing batteries. They actually charge wireless too. When you dock the speakers on the base station, metal contact points pump power into the built-in battery packs. Each speaker determines whether it's a left channel or right channel speaker, so you'll be able to get stereo sound wherever you are. Audio is transmitted wirelessly through RF signals. This means you don't have to have the speakers in the same room as the base station, or even on the same floor of your house. It also means you can connect as many additional pairs of speakers as you care to buy. This has great potential as a house party system, as you could put pairs all over the house and outside and have music playing whether you're in the kitchen getting punch, in the garden throwing up or upstairs consoling a friend whose just found out their partner's been cheating with next door's labrador. Each battery will last about 10 hours after a full charge, which could be better but it's certainly not bad. The speakers themselves are reasonably lightweight, and have a convenient little carry handle around the back. The amp inside is capable of pumping 12W of power which, again, could be better but combined with the convenience of trule wireless functionality is more than acceptable. There's a fair bit of connectivity involved as well. To the rear there's some stereo outputs, composite video out and stereo audio in. So it's not just about the audio. Some companies make little bluetooth adapters to clip to your ipod. You then stick a receiver in your iPod speaker system, letting you wirelessly send music from the iPod on your pocket to the stereo at the other side of the room. Imagine the fun you could have with that! iPod in your pocket, base station in the next room and speakers all round the house. That boys and girls is a sweet bit of progress. In the future wires will only be used when people want to hang themselves, because the future's going to be wireless, and if this is anything to go by, the future's gonna be fun, but only for 10 hours at a time. I'm Nate Lanxon and this is the Griffin Evolve.