5 of the best iPad speaker docks
Pimp your iPad with one of these plush padstands
The Apple iPod spawned speaker docks by the truckload but tuneful chairs for its tablet-brother, the iPad, have been much slower to emerge. From budget speakers to posh penthouse airshifters, here is the pick of the five finest iPad docks your spondulicks can buy.
iLuv iMM747
£90, www.i-luv.com
If you’re on a tight budget, the iLuv is worth a punt. For a dock sniffing around the sub-£100 mark, its audio set up looks quite impressive; each of the two channels boasts a tweeter, mid-range driver and a radiating subwoofer for low-end clout. An adjustable docking wall provides much needed back support so the iPad doesn’t topple over.
Continues…
Altec Lansing Octiv 450
£130, www.alteclansing.com
Altec Lansing has good form when it comes to iPod docks so expect a solid sonic performance from its debut iPad desktop system. Its docking stand rotates 90-degrees to flip your iPad landscape, so you can watch movies and enjoy a fuller soundstage through the double 2-inch speakers. Lovely.
Philips Fidelio DS8550
£250, www.philips.co.uk
The £400 top-of-the-range Fidelio proved to be a B&W Zeppelin-baiting, high-class premium dock, so fingers crossed its music talent hasn’t been diluted too much on this more affordable model. Its ‘SoundCurve’ concave cabinet is certainly eye-catching but is also designed to deliver a distortion free sound.
Bang & Olufsen BeoSound 8
£900, www.bang-olufsen.com
The Danish designer outfit is renowned for fashioning pricey but outrageously cool-looking audio kit and this dock is another engineering miracle. It’s also a bit of an audio clever clog with three adjustment switches that modify the bass boom according to its position in the room. Up against a wall? Let’s tone down those low-end rumbles.
Denon CEOL
£600, denon.co.uk
Ok, it’s not strictly a dock but this wild card system makes uses of the iPad’s iOS 4.2 AirPlay update. Part with £40 for a firmware upgrade and you can update the CEOL to support Apple’s new works-with-iTunes wireless streaming technology and beam your lossless or compressed music from the iPad to this quality mini system. It’s the future, or so we’re told.
– News Nugget – Pure Twilight dawn sim alarm clock
– British Black Friday bargains
– Stuff Christmas Gift Guide – gaming
– Acer teases its 2011 touchscreen bounty
– News Nugget – Altec Lansing Octiv 450 iPad speaker dock
– Rumour Mill – Xbox 360 app explosion coming
– iOS 4.2 hits iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch
Dan Grabham
Editor-in-Chief 
