A while ago Brando Workshop announced that they were to produce a music dock for HTC Hermes based devices. As soon as it became available we just had to get one to review. ‘Orange M3100 Docking Cradle’ and ‘HTC TyTN Docking Cradle’ are two of the more popular search phrases on the site at the moment.
The TyTN Music Dock is of a silver-grey colour which closely matches the TyTN. It measures a mere 176 x 70 x 42 mm and is of a decent weight which makes it feel quite sturdy when you place your device in it. The placement of the phone connector at the bottom of the unit is better than on other docking solutions which means that the device slides into place a lot easier. The soft rubber feet mean that it stays put on your desk.
The cradle comes with the required USB cable to plug it into your PC and a mains adapter if you want to charge your device without using a PC. It also comes with a 3.5mm Stereo cable so that you can use other audio equipment with the dock. As with the standard Hermes Dock that Brando make, there is a blue LED to indicate that the unit is powered up. Fortunately the LED isn’t as bright on this unit and is a lot less distracting.
Having docked my Orange M3100 I connected the unit to my PC using the supplied USB cable and straight away ActiveSync found the device and synchronised.
The SPV M3100 looks just as nice in the Music Dock as the TyTN, in fact I quite like the black and silver contrast. Both devices fit in the Dock perfectly.
The cradle is suitable for Dopod CHT9000, Qtek 9600, i-Mate JasJam, O2 XDA Trion, HTC TyTN, HTC Hermes, htc Z, Orange SPV M3100 and T-Mobile MDA vario II devices.
Having tried the Music Dock with my SPV M3100 I have to say that I’m impressed with the sound quality. It’s a whole lot better than the M3100 loudspeaker. You are never going to get powerful bass out of such a small set of speakers but the range is pretty good and, using the volume control on the top of the dock, it goes pretty loud!
The only criticism I have of the dock is that there is no socket to attach headphones. A headphone socket would be pretty good as it would mean that you could sync and charge your device at the same time as being able to use headphones.
Overall the Music Dock works well and the sound quality, for such a small unit is pretty good. For the money, around £15 + p&p, I think it’s a bargain!
Visit Brando Workshop for more information.
We’ll be giving one of these Brando Music Dock units away as part of ’12 Days of Christmas’ competition later this week.
Matt
[Technorati tag(s): smartphone, Pocket PC, Tracy & Matt, Orange, M3100, HTC Hermes, HTC TyTN, SPV, Orange SPV M3100]
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