Skip to main content

Get big sound from a small package with the Mini-O speakers

The Mini-O speakers are now available for pre-order on Kickstarter

Introducing Mini-O (Part 1)
There is a tiny speaker making a big claim. Meet the Mini-O, heralded as the world’s first flat magnetic mini Bluetooth speaker. With that many descriptors, aren’t you just a little bit curious about what the Mini-O can do? If so, head on over to Kickstarter.

Just a bit bigger than a credit card, this device promises to deliver powerful and clear sound that is “unparalleled by any existing speaker on the market.” While that certainly seems like a bold claim, the Mini-O does have a few things going its way. For one thing, it only weighs 70 grams, which means that you can easily slip it into your pocket and take it just about anywhere you want to go. But despite this diminutive size, the Mini-O promises six watts of power and high-resolution audio. And because these mini speakers are actually meant to be ordered in pairs, you can fill your room with up to 12 watts of power, creating quite an impressive sound environment.

Recommended Videos

Apparently, what really makes these speakers special are their dependence upon flat magnetic speaker technology. While it’s not entirely clear what this entails, the Mini-O team notes that the tech “significantly reduces the cost of manufacturing while providing unforeseen design flexibility and groundbreaking output.”

Please enable Javascript to view this content

Supposedly, the idea is that the Mini-O radiates sound by “transforming horizontal vibrations into vertical ones at a plate diaphragm.” Per New Atlas, “The flat design is said to result in equal dispersion, which leads to high-quality sound output, while also allowing for unit size and weight reductions.”

The technology was first popularized in Korea but now, the Mini-O is hoping to bring the innovation to the U.S. as well. The speakers boast a range of 3o feet and are compatible with just about any Bluetooth-enabled device, be it your computer, your smartphone, or your tablet. On a single charge, the Mini-O speakers should be able to broadcast between four and six hours of music and a micro USB is all you need to re-juice the devices. Total charging time is slated to be an hour, so you can get back into the music pretty quickly.

You can test the validity of the Mini-O team’s claims yourself by pre-ordering it on Kickstarter (upon our test, they held their own quite well for their size). You can get two of these little speakers for $55, with delivery estimated for December.

Lulu Chang
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Fascinated by the effects of technology on human interaction, Lulu believes that if her parents can use your new app…
New superslim speaker tech will put sound in unexpected places
resonado bidirectional speaker

The last decade has seen the nonstop development of new kinds of audio products, like soundbars, true wireless earbuds, noise-canceling wireless headphones, and smart speakers. Yet despite these innovations, the underlying technology that produces the sound we hear has pretty much stayed the same for the last hundred years. But that might be about to change if Resonado Labs has anything to say about it. The company, which is based in the U.S. and South Korea, has patented a new way to build drivers -- the core component at the heart of every speaker -- that drastically reduces the space needed to accommodate them.

Resonado calls the technology Flat Core Speaker (FCS), and as the name suggests, it can be used to create speakers that have a much smaller overall depth, which expands the number of places speakers can be installed. Erikc Perez, Resonado co-founder and chief marketing officer, says that FCS achieves these benefits without compromising sound performance.

Read more
B&O’s Beosound Level is a $1,499 portable speaker that’s built to last
Bang & Olufsen Beosound Level

Bang & Olufsen (B&O) has made its fair share of wireless portable speakers, but its newest model, the $1,499 Beosound Level, has been built with much more than portability in mind. The Danish audio company has designed the Level with a slew of upgrade-friendly features that it claims will keep the speaker future-proofed for years to come, which is a comforting thought when you're spending this much money.

You can replace the front grille and the internal battery yourself, but B&O has also made it possible for service technicians to swap out the streaming module and the wireless module, should future advances in either of these areas make them obsolete.

Read more
Netflix’s prices are going up, including its ad-supported tier
A close-up of the Netflix app icon n an Apple TV.

Netflix is ringing in the new year with two big pieces of news. First, in the fourth quarter of 2024, subscriber count crossed the 300 million mark and revenue growth wildly exceeded expectations. Second, despite this apparent success, the wildly popular streaming video service is looking for even more money and will be bumping up prices across all of its subscription tiers, including its first-ever price hike on its ad-supported plan. These increases, which will affect the U.S., Canada, Portugal, and Argentina, according to The Verge, run anywhere from an additional $1 to $2.50 per month go into effect during your next billing cycle.

You can expect to pay $2.50 more for the standard, ad-free tier, which goes from $15.50 to $18 per month. The premium tier sees a slightly smaller hike from $23 to to $25 per month. And even the ad-supported tier, which had so far been spared from any increases, is going up from 12.5% from $7 to $8 per month.

Read more