Groovy battery operated boombox?
April 18, 2012 8:51 PM

Best battery operated boombox

I'd like to find the sweet spot of price and performance for a battery operated boombox. Something that can play thumbdrives and sounds decent and has reasonable battery life. I don't really care if it has an actual iPod dock.

Do you have a model that you like? What sort of battery life do you get out of it? I assume that running a USB stick uses much less juice than a CD player? Or no?

Bonus points if it doesn't look like it can transform into a monster truck robot that is fueled by RedBull.

Thanks!
posted by ian1977 to Technology (4 answers total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
Having just bought a battery boombox a couple months ago, I now know what feature I should have checked for: automatic shutdown after hours of inaction. Five times now I have left the boombox on by mistake (not playing anything, just powered on) and come back to find the batteries dead. I special ordered some nice rechargable C cells, and running batteries all the way flat is baaaad for NiMH and Lithium Ion cells.

I haven't actually ever heard of a boombox that plays music off thumb drives. I just use mine to jack my cell phone (aka mp3 player) into.

I was hoping for a boombox that could tune in HD Radio stations, but there was only one of those and it sounded like crap. I ended up settling for a small black Insignia, that sounds one step up from crap. I agree with you, I wish they'd make great sounding boomboxes that didn't look like hot rod abortions.

Can't comment on battery life, as I inevitably leave it on by mistake and kill the batteries prematurely!
posted by intermod at 9:14 PM on April 18, 2012


I'm partial to these. You can plug in an ipod, but it also will play from a thumbdrive or an SD card.
posted by ActingTheGoat at 11:26 PM on April 18, 2012


ActingTheGoat, how's the sound quality on that power box? It looks like the perfect system for burning man.
posted by lannanh at 12:12 AM on April 19, 2012


Here is a DIY solution.
posted by jackmakrl at 1:11 PM on April 19, 2012


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