USB Fever are a company that specialise in everything USB, from the very practical, to some of the most bizarre gadgets and nick knacks that I’ve ever seen. By no means, not the least of these is the Fingertip Mini Cube speaker, a plug and play add on for, well anything that has a 3.5 mm headphone jack. This little gem is the size of a largish dice, 26 x 26 x 25mm’s, and well on first look, would be easily dismissed as a novelty. Whilst it is probably not the dream of sophisticated audiophiles, it’s not a throw away toy or novelty that I would use once and leave in a draw to gather dust! I found a couple of uses for this tiny speaker that made me happy to have it!

So lets have a better look at this mini wonder, and I won’t bore you with a complete unboxing, although I will say that everything was mini, the envelope it came in was only just bigger than the customs declaration certificate pasted to the back of the package, and I was rather chuffed with it cause it was well, retro looking. The speaker unit, plus a 75 cm (3 inches approx) USB to Mini USB cable were contained by a silver cardboard box, with no labelling or flourish, inside a small bubble wrap bag. The only documentation was a small slip of paper with a few details printed on it, that looked like it had been hand cut with scissors.

Something that I was a bit disappointed with at first, but then I had to remind myself that this unit was shipped to me as soon as it was in stock so the packaging and literature were probably not perfected at that time. Basically, there is enough information to get you up and running, with a little bit of an idea of the make up of the speaker. I can be a little bit absent minded at times, and I’m sure I read the specs of this baby, but I did get a surprise when I read my included note, and it dawned on me, in that little black, not quite a cube, there is also a battery, the means to charge it and an on off switch. So there’s a bit more to this than you would think!

So as you can see the, I don’t know whether it’s the back or the side, of the speaker, has a Mini USB port, used for charging, and an On/Off switch. Now the fact that it is self powered maximises your device life as the speaker does not draw power from your PMP, PDA etc. It’s easily charged from a USB slot on your PC or laptop, and after a full overnight charge, I let it run continuously, on the shuffle to see what sort of life I could get out of it. It probably took about three and a half hours for the volume to start to degrade. In the specs it was claimed four and a half hours total battery life so I thought this was a pretty good result.

One of the really nice features, is the hide away, fold out 3.5 mm audio plug, that really enhances the portability of this little boombox, the jack completely disappears into the device. You can’t see it until I actually made it obvious.

I don’t know what more I can say about the Fingertip Mini Cube Speaker, except to give a conclusion!

In real life this thing worked a treat, I tested it with my iPod shuffle, a friends iRiver Zen and playing games on my axim. It made a real difference.
Playing games with a soundtrack, was always a bit of a let down because the case mutes the internal speaker quite a lot, this is the perfect solution. It’s novel, it has some geek cred, and It works!

Product info: Fingertip Mini Cube Speaker

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