i2i Go Wireless Gadget Review
What
a utopian world it is for lovers of gadgetry and technology.
Hardly a month seems to go by without a much publicised new
gadget or gizmo hitting the market place, whilst a myriad magazines
and websites, coupled with Channel Five’s hit Monday night programme,
The Gadget Show, cater for our ever-increasing appetite
for all things electronic.
For music-lovers, this can bring with it a host
of difficult choices and decisions, from choices of MP3 players,
to docking stations, to music servers that can deliver our computerised
music libraries straight from our computers to our hi-fi systems
.... wirelessly, of course.
And that is where this potentially handy little
gadget comes into play. When it comes to musical “connectivity”,
what suits one person might prove completely pointless to another;
for instance why bother with wireless audio when, if your music
is stored on a laptop, one can simply move it around and plug
a set of speakers into the rear? Why the need for wireless music
connectivity when an ipod can simply be housed in a docking
station and transported anywhere?
Well, both scenarios might well be true in some
cases, but if, like this reviewer, your downloaded music is
stored on a desk-top computer, wireless audio can have its advantages.
Especially when the packaging boldly claims “wireless audio
to everything” including home hi-fi to headphones, computer
to headphones, computer to speakers, computer to home hi-fi,
iPod to speakers .... the list goes on.
What you actually get is two small black transceivers
roughly the size of match boxes - the i2i streamers - one of
which acts as the broadcaster, the other acting as the receiver.
The transceivers come with two USB charging cables as well as
two sets of audio jack cables, giving a choice of either 12”
or 28” lengths for convenience. Lanyard neck loops and belt
clips are also provided for portability. A central illuminated
button on each i2i Stream allows a colour-coded channel to be
set ensuring compatibility between the two devices when broadcasting,
whilst also allowing for additional broadcasters (up to three
in total) within a thirty feet range to broadcast at the same
time on different channels. Listeners can also switch between
broadcasters by changing channel, of which there are seven in
total.
When this multi-broadcasting facility is likely
to be used might be somewhat debateable, but having charged
the two i2i streamers (about five to six hours on a first charge)
we started in the simplest fashion by plugging one unit into
a desk top computer and the other into a pair of lightweight
stereo headphones. Set up was simple and within seconds of setting
one unit to send, we were happily listening to music through
the headphones. The literature promises “uncompressed audio
quality” and first impressions of the sound were good with little
or no loss of quality apparent. In fact, listening from the
computer’s iTunes library or Spotify, the sound was pretty close
to listening direct from an iPod.
Volume can be conveniently controlled from the
receiver although it is worth noting that there is no receiver
playlist control, meaning that the listener is limited to the
musical trajectory the computer is set to; something of a disadvantage
if you have to run up the stairs whenever you wish to change
the playlist.
Having satisfied ourselves on sound quality,
we next put the range to the test - the quoted range on the
packaging being thirty feet. Walking around the first floor
of the house where the computer is located was initially fine
in the neighbouring room, but continuing to the next room (a
distance of about fifteen feet) there was some drop out as the
signal was intermittently lost. The same was true when walking
downstairs to the ground floor, giving the impression that a
range of thirty feet might be the case in open space, but not
necessarily with walls or obstacles between.
Next we hooked the receiver up to a pair of Creative
fold-away travel speakers, the kind many of us take on holiday
to plug our MP3 player into. Again, sound quality was fine and
although some sound drop-out was again evident as we moved the
speakers around the house, anyone who stores their music on
a laptop will find this much easier to deal with.
One subsequent issue that we encountered is worth
bearing in mind though. Attempting to plug the broadcaster into
a Pure Chronos CD/DAB radio unit we found that the supplied
jack did not fit the either headphone or auxiliary socket on
the CD player, whilst if you have aspirations of playing music
from your computer through your hi-fi separates system wirelessly
as we did, you will almost certainly require a suitable adaptor
to fit the socket on your amplifier.
At a retail price of around £68, the i2i is likely
to provide a reasonably cost-effective wireless solution for
a good many people in a wide variety of situations. It doesn’t
come without its drawbacks but in terms of sound quality it
is hard to fault. In a world where wireless music and gaming
solutions are increasingly beneficial, this could be a very
handy little gadget to have both around the house and on the
move.
Christopher Thomas
