HONG KONG ELECTRONICS FAIR: an eye for an iPod accessory

If you can connect it to an iPod, or stick an iPod in it, chances are there's a factory making it out here, and showing it at the Hong Kong Electronics Fair.

And that's quite apart from the endless new generation iPod nano and Shuffle lookalikes already on sale on street corners and on the stalls in the infamous Chungking Mansions - how many weeks have the fakers had since the big Apple announcement?

Meanwhile, back in the land of the legit, you can find these neat doughnut speakers, available either in an iPod version or as generic MP3 devices, at the show.

Or if your taste runs more to the conventional, how about this range of clock radios from Ozaki? There's a colour there for everyone, but then the company goes and spoils it all by throwing in a couple of fluffy variations.

Gennex is much more serious, with this tube-powered dock, using ECC83s for the preamp stage, which also has a line input, and EL84s to deliver a towering 3W per channel output.

It's a hefty old beast at 7.2kg, with that output transformer playing a major part in the all-up fighting weight, but the wood finish looks classy, and matching speakers are, of course, available.

Dorchase, based in Hong Kong, offers a range of 2.1-channel active speakers including these two.



The one with the vertical drum-shaped subwoofer sounded particularly promising.

Meanwhile a familiar name to WHFSV readers, Lars + Ivan, has new speakers, now using a metal alloy cone for the main driver as part of its Samba system.


MD Lawrence Cheung also showed me this neat new dock system, which for obvious reasons the company calls the iSofa. Compact, remote-controllable and available in black and white, the iSofa is designed tobe used with either the Bolero Mini or Samba speakers, and comes complete with a subwoofer output.

Not quite so tasteful are these piano-string speakers from Shenzen-based CJC, which is in partnership with Hyundai. Mind you, if you don't like them the company has dozens more designs to choose from, including these

I was also rather taken with this iPod mixer from Taiwan company Sergio, not least because the people on the stand were having a ball mixing and flanging and reverbing like good 'uns. It's called the iSpin+ - what else could they call it?

Finally, amidst all the silicon skin cases, screen protectors and the like, I spotted this power case for the 3G iPhone, from another Shenzen company, Anytone.



Complete with a built-in rechargeable battery, it's just the thing for the serious user, giving up to 250 hours of standby time, eight hours of talk, or 24 hours of audio playback.

Form an orderly queue at booth R3B32...

Andrew has written about audio and video products for the past 20+ years, and been a consumer journalist for more than 30 years, starting his career on camera magazines. Andrew has contributed to titles including What Hi-Fi?, GramophoneJazzwise and Hi-Fi CriticHi-Fi News & Record Review and Hi-Fi Choice. I’ve also written for a number of non-specialist and overseas magazines.