Valco Laboratoriot

Jasse here again, hello. Already last summer I was cursing that how the hell is it possible there still isn’t a good travel speaker on the market. You know, one that isn’t either some impossible plastic flimsy thing and/or doesn’t sound like a moped car with a sound system tuned according to Yngwie Malmsteen’s philosophy: More is more! Which usually gets you a spitty bass blob that smothers everything else.

Okay, fine, that was a bit exaggerated. There are good gizmos on the market, sure, but they also tend to be expensive as hell. We can’t afford those. 

So we got to work ordering assorted boomboxes from various manufacturers for testing, to see if we could bring one good and reasonably priced gadget to market. Something that would wipe the floor with those basic boxes that are everywhere by the billion.

 So what exactly would make this thing excellent? 

Well first of all, a flat frequency response and sensible distortion figures, which guarantee clear playback for music, podcasts and audiobooks alike.

We’re not joining the contest over which box plays louder than the others or which one has the most rap bass. We’re putting all our effort into sound quality.

Then the thing has to be easy to carry around. So it can be at most the size and weight of a half-liter water bottle.

Also, it has to survive Vacon’s Midsummer party. Meaning it has to be bombproof and waterproof.

And guess what? We actually pulled it off! And on top of everything mentioned above, it’s got a bunch of other tricks too: with stereo widening at the push of a button, this little thing sounds noticeably bigger than it is, and even magically creates a pretty decent stereo image, without turning plasticky like this kind of effect usually does.

And if the size and power of the soundstage still aren’t enough for your pool party, you can pair two of these together, and then they work as an actual honest-to-god stereo system.

And you can play music not just over Bluetooth 5.0 but also with a good old-fashioned cable, since very few cassette boomboxes come with any other outputs, and of course the semi-retro crowd can also blast their music files straight from a memory card.

And just to clarify for the negative Nancys: yes, this thing does have bass. In fact, it goes surprisingly low for such a small little jar. It’s just not that all-covering diarrhea blurp that drowns everything else.

And yes, it can also put out plenty of sound when needed. Enough that the old lady next door comes over from a block away asking, is that where Tuomisjamppa is singing so beautifully? It’s just not the default setting of the thing.

Check the video below for a slightly more detailed introduction. These will go on sale once we actually get them from the factory into our warehouse. With the headphones, our entrepreneurs’ blood pressure got high enough when customers had to wait because of corona, so we’re not doing pre-orders anymore.

Seriously, it wasn’t far off that customers would’ve shown up at our office with pitchforks and torches.