I am an avid podcast listener, and by avid I mean that I listen to about 34 different ones. Most of these are weekly. I listen to podcasts pretty much everywhere I go but predominantly in the shower, while driving, and while I am working. The trickiest one of these is listening while in the shower, I say tricky because I have had trouble finding inexpensive speakers that sound decent, get loud enough to hear over the water, and will be ok to use in a small, steam filled room. I’ve used many a cheapo drug store speaker setup but none of them ever sounded quite as good as I would like and typically do not get loud enough to hear everything. Enter the Scosche boomCAN.
Impressive Little Guy
This little portable audio canon is the inexpensive answer to my very specific prayers. At $24.99 this little guy can put out a decent amount of sound from its 35mm driver and with a 7 hour battery life I’m going to have to try really hard to drain it before my tolerance for water and luffas runs thin. It charges via its accompanying combination USB/audio jack cable and it comes with an oh-so-stylish carrying pouch as well. The device itself is attractive enough with a body made of colored aluminum (it comes in blue, red, grey, and black), and a single blue power LED. It also feels sturdy enough to take a pounding and be thrown in a backpack with little concern for its safety.
Sound Quality
Aside from podcasts I am a huge music fan, but really who isn’t? Thanks to Spotify and the magic of the internets I was able to test the driver on this with a whole ton of music, including some seriously loud, heavy on-the-bass, lossless dubstep tracks. The first song that I threw at the boomCAN was “Age of Adz” by Sufjan Stevens and I have to say that it sounded great. I chose that particular sound due to its rapid changes in volume, bass, etc and I was thoroughly impressed that it didn’t sound like a tin can. Obviously this sounded much better than the speaker on my cell phone that I normally use when I don’t need headphones, but the sound was rich enough (for a single, 35mm driver that is) that I plan to use this from now on unless I am moving around. After running it through a few more songs to get a feel for its basic limitations I decided to see what it would take before this little guy bottomed out, so I turned on some deep, grimy, bass dropping dubstep. And just to be sure I was getting everything I could out of it I used lossless audio files. That little 35mm driver is a total trooper. The audio got pretty distorted once I got about ¾ of the way to the maximum volume on my phone. But by this time it was plenty loud enough to upset my dog and to be heard from my kitchen.
Overall Sense
I definitely recommend this for someone who, like me wants to listen to music or podcasts in the shower but feels squeamish about putting a decent quality sound dock in their bathroom. I would also highly recommend this as a stocking stuffer for a certain holiday season that’s looming around the corner. For $25 dollars you shouldn’t feel too bad if it gets broken and with as sturdy as it feels I think you’d have to try pretty hard to break it. The sound quality is pretty good but it’s obviously not going to beat a good sound dock or speaker system, but it’s a clear sound and provides a respectable amount of bass. The boomCAN is available at Amazon.
We’d love to know what you guys think about the boomCAN in the comments, and of course if you have any questions, fire away!
