Tivoli have been around for a long time as far as consumer electronics go. Their close partnership with the legendary late designer Henry Kloss has enabled them to stay up to date with the current trends whilst keeping classic designs as part of the trademark.

The iPal is essentially a top-quality mini radio covered by the umbrella of the iPod. The popular PAL (Portable Audio Laboratory) radio has been launched in many different colours and limited edition styles, and now is the turn of the iPod to get the Tivoli treatment.

First Impressions...
Appearance wise, the iPal caters for all tastes. It has the retro lovers covered with the manual dials and perforated mesh-like speaker cover, yet appeals to the modernists with the cool chrome finish and smooth lines. An extendible aerial adds further comparisons to the nostalgic radio ga-ga times. The large tuning dial is not only stylish, but allows finer station selection to be achieved, though this is supposedly superfluous as the iPal is designed to (and does) automatically locate the best signal.

This single-speaker audio system is the perfect complement to the iPod. It can connect directly to the iPod via a cable, or can be used in conjunction with an FM transmitter such as the Griffin iTrip for wireless broadcasting. And if you ever get bored of your own songs, you can switch to listening to AM or FM radio stations for a bit of variation.

Not only is the iPal powerful, it’s also portable, but only in the most rudimentary sense of the word. The boom-box of the 80s was also portable. The iPal provides nothing by way of compaction or carrying handle/case, but it does offer fully rechargeable batteries topped up in around 3 hours, and giving around 15 hours of playback. No other iPod speaker system offers the novelty of a rechargeable power system, and although it is slightly more expensive than other similar products, the saving on batteries would be substantial.

Performance
The sound quality is amazing for a single-speaker system. It is really broad and clear, with only minor distortion at full volume, and it doesn’t have the harsh sound that some mono radio systems can produce. Surprisingly refreshing is the great bass response, even out-performing the Altec Lansing inMotion, which has the advantage of stereo speakers. The weight of it when compared to the other portable speakers such as the inMotion or the Logic3 i-Station does provide a sense of significance in speaker output, and adds to the notion of quality, but that factor has implications for its portability.

If there could be anything to complain about with the iPal, cradle-lovers may wish for some sort of housing to rest or charge their iPod in whilst broadcasting. Due to the fact that the speaker is merely an i-vamped radio, Tivoli are yet to provide for the iPod. In addition, the sound is extracted from the iPod through the headphone jack, whereas other speaker systems use the dock connection, which is generally thought to be the most effective in reproducing music. The plus side of this though is that the iPal is generation-independent, and so iPod mini and also 1st and 2nd generation iPod users do not have to feel left out of the music liberation era.

Overall...
On the whole the iPal is a great, compact system, not specifically designed for the iPod but completely compatible with it. It does ask the question though, that with so much choice on your iPod, are you really going to want to use a radio, or just buy a less-expensive speaker-only system? Either way, it looks great, sounds fantastic and does more musically than the usual iPod speaker systems can. A definite recommendation for the style- and sound-conscious iPod user.