iHome iDM8B Bluetooth Wireless Speaker

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Product Description

The iDM8 offers a round world of sound. The spherical rechargeable Bluetooth speaker looks and sounds great anywhere, and provides crisp sound that's perfect for your music, games or apps. An auto-pairing and -linking feature makes Bluetooth setup simple and fast. The built-in lithium-ion battery is rechargeable, so you can enjoy music on the go without worrying about batteries. 2-in-1 audio/charging cable included.

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Product Details

• Color: Black
• Brand: iHome
• Model: IDM8BYC
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 3.07" h x 3.47" w x 3.47" l, .6 pounds

Features

• Wirelessly stream music within 30 feet (10 meters) from your Bluetooth-enabled phone, iPad, PDA, computer or other device
• Auto-link for fast, easy Bluetooth setup
• Built-in rechargeable lithium ion battery
• 2-in-1 USB/3.5 mm audio to micro USB cable included for aux audio and charging the battery from your computer
• Plays audio from audio devices equipped with 3.5mm headphone jack (cable included); SRS TruBass circuitry

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Customer Reviews

Most helpful customer reviews

49 of 50 people found the following review helpful.
Better Than Expected
By Ron O
Small bluetooth speakers have limited sonic capabilities due to their size and power limitations, and they are, after all, supposed to be as portable as your phone or tablet. Given limited expectations, I was very surprised with the performance of this speaker. Even though it is mono, the omni-directional design imparts a feeling of spaciousness since the sound reaches and reflects off of different objects in the room at different levels/times. Speakers of this size in stereo require you to sit 3 feet in front of them to perceive stereo anyway. But I think pumping twice the power into a single driver rather than dividing it is a very sensible solution.

This speaker will fill a medium size room with sound without maxing out the volume. It is a mid-range speaker, great for MY purposes. Voice podcasts are crystal clear as is classical chamber music and other small ensembles. After testing with a sound meter, I found that it is strongest from 250HZ to 8Khz, with some response at 125HZ and 10 Khz. A freebie Android equalizer set to the "Pop" setting (midranges) REALLY plays on its strengths and gives it a lot of spaciousness. And the speaker is very surprisingly linear in this range. Trying to recover bass with the equalizer does not work; it only attenuates the total volume and makes it sound muddy. This is the first time I have used an equalizer to enhance a speaker's natural tendencies rather than attempting to counteract them. There are 2 buttons on each side on the band, 90 degrees from the logo. Holding or carrying by the grippy grill and rotating the ball sideways to adjust seems easiest.

Pros:
Very good fit, finish, and material quality
Quick and easy bluetooth pairing
Maintains bluetooth connection in all rooms of a modest house
Remembers last paired device
No audio artifacts- it's dead silent between tracks and there is no perceived loss of mid-highs due to bluetooth
Long battery life, probably 6 hours at 3/4 volume
Charges quickly via USB- no wall wart (transformer)
Volume buttons and a play/pause button that sends a signal back to the tablet
Unobtrusive green LED in mesh above logo stays on, but blinks when recharge is needed. No glaring white aircraft landing light here. LED turns amber when pairing.
Footprint- plop it down anywhere with 3 1/2 inches of space without aiming it.
Price

Cons:
None, if your expectations are reasonable. Otherwise, buy a Bose at 6x the price.

5 stars for me, but gave it 4 for limited bass which I'm sure will be a big issue for some people.

I have a library of music built up over years that I never heard because I can't sit in front of a computer or in one room for an hour or two at a time without interruption. Now I start my tablet music player, set it's volume to max, and walk all over carrying this thing like a baseball. You can pause or shut it off anywhere, then turn it on hours later and pick up where you left off.

26 of 29 people found the following review helpful.
Convenient, but not good for all music...
By C. Williamson
Let's get to the positives first. This is a convenient little speaker for your desktop or small room. It linked to my iPhone very quickly, and the Bluetooth connection worked very well. Turning it on gave me some problems at first -- you need to hold the button for about 4 seconds, not the 2 the manual states. But the main concern with any speaker, of course, is how it sounds, and this is where the iDM8B is problematic.

I hooked it up to my 19,000-song iPod, and put it on shuffle to test it with a lot of different types of music. There's no stereo here, and the single speaker seems to be a midrange. For some types of music, it's quite good, but for others it's nearly unlistenable. I found that anything with a lot of highs, such as drum sets, cymbals, harmonicas, etc., sounded pretty bad -- quite hissy, or, as my wife put it, like a swarm of angry bees. One Dylan song with harmonica actually made my ears hurt. And it suffers in the lower end too -- one track with a heavy bass up front in the mix was muddy and distorted. Anything in the mid-range -- folk, acoustic singer-songwriter, most jazz and classical, classic pop vocals -- sounded pretty good, but there's a lot of music you just aren't going to want to hear on this speaker.

I have another iHome speaker, the 12BX, which is a stereo speaker. Though it doesn't have the omnidirectional qualities of the iDM8B, I think the sound is slightly better, though it too is shrill in the high end for many tracks. With a speaker in this price range, however, this seems to be the norm, so caveat emptor.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
Excellent
By Stephanie
I purchased 2 of these for my kids and they love them. Best part is, once charged up they can take them anywhere and play their music. The size is just perfect for portability!