It is no surprise to anyone with a tablet that the tiny rear-facing speakers aren’t very good.
Definitive Technology has produced a clip-on improvement, the Sound Cylinder.
As its name implies, it is a cylindrical speaker system. What its name leaves out is that it clamps onto a tablet and acts as a stand as well as a speaker system.
There aren’t many features, so it is simple to use. It has a rubber clamp to attach it to a 7- or 10-inch tablet, and a pull-out kickstand so it can sit on a tabletop with the tablet in place.
A button on one end turns the Cylinder on and tells it to sync to Bluetooth. That end also has a volume control. That’s it for the features.
The sound is certainly better than what you get from a tablet. It produces respectable volume without much distortion, certainly enough for a couch full of friends to watch some YouTube.
It reproduces highs and midtones well enough, although as you might expect from a 7-and-a-half-inch-long speaker, bass is lacking. As you would also expect, that tiny enclosure doesn’t give you much stereo separation.
It sounds more like a good 1970s transistor radio than a good 1990s boom box, although both are superior to the sound of a 2013 tablet.
There are some design quirks. On smaller tablets, like the iPad Mini, the clamp covers part of the screen if it is attached horizontally. That made it impossible for me to get to the iTunes controls. On the larger iPad, the clamp blocked the magnetic cover from turning off the screen.
Since the Cylinder connects via Bluetooth, you can use it with devices other than tablets. It’s lightweight and portable, so it might be something to carry to bolster the sound of a phone or music player. You could even clip it to a laptop screen.
The Sound Cylinder claims 10 hours of battery life and lists for $200 from online retailers.
