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When audio legends Altec Lansing, JBL and Bose take on the iPod, it’s a battle — against the laws of physics, which say you need big speakers for big sound. And against each other to blast your gotta-hear-it music.
Their speakers slug it out with ingenious designs using exotic magnets, tuned enclosures, and efficient digital amplifiers, folding room-filling performance into ultra-compact spaces and playing oh so nice with iPod.
Lucky for you, you don’t have to choose just one.
Each model delivers remarkable sound in a small package, but they offer a different mix of features that appeal to different needs. Let’s size up the contenders:
Weighing just 4-1/2 pounds, the Bose SoundDock delivers big sound in just about any room in your home or office. It uses an enhanced port design, high-performance drivers and stereo processing circuits to create a wide music soundstage which provides good listening from anywhere in the room, much like Bose living room and automotive sound systems. Bose engineers know how to get amazing bass and realistic sound from multiple small drivers. An infrared remote controls system and basic iPod functions, and the SoundDock also charges the iPod.
For a versatile combination of portability and power, pick the 16-oz. JBL On Stage, with a six-watt amplifier and four speakers pumping out sound with a wide frequency response: 80Hz-20KHz. Advanced equalization and compression provide astonishing bass and clear, accurate sound at high output levels. Angled speaker placement in a striking round design generates an ultrawide stereo image.
If you take your music outdoors, the 15-oz. Altec Lansing inMotion iM3 can run for 24 hours on battery power, so you can play it anywhere. With four full-range drivers and a highly efficient class D digital amplifier, it produces deep bass without a subwoofer. Boasting a wireless remote, this second-generation iPod design is just the right size to drop into a big jacket pocket in its protective carry bag.
The inMotion iM3 and JBL On Stage both offer auxiliary input jacks and cables which you can use to connect older iPods via the headphone jack. Their dock connectors let you use them for recharging and synchronizing with your computer.
One secret these speaker systems share is neodymium drivers. A silvery rare earth metal, pure neodymium quickly tarnishes in air. But it’s stable when combined with iron and boron, making a powerful supermagnet.
Neodymium-Iron-Boron stomps butts of previous high-power magnetic champs. Ferrite magnets? TKO! Aluminum-Nickel-Cobalt? Yesterday! Samarium Cobalt? Close, but no cigar. Neodymium-Iron-Boron wears the permanent magnet crown. Neodymium magnets are so strong that a pair pinches fingers like pliers and shatters when it slams together, spraying chips of metal. But harness them in a speaker driver and they sing. Each of these competing speaker systems uses multiple neodymium drivers and sophisticated audio processing to achieve maximum bass response and surprising volume levels 
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| Size | 8 x 1.1 x 5.5 inches | 7 (diameter) x 2 inches | 11.9 x 6.5 x 6.6 inches |
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| Weight | 15 oz. (0.43 Kg) | 16 oz. (0.45 Kg) | 4.56 lb (2.07 Kg) |
| Power | 2 * class D 2-watt amps 4 neodymium drivers |
2 * class D 6-watt amps 4 neodymium drivers |
Bose does not release power specifications |
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