ChicBuds Chicboom keychain speaker review

I usually listen to music on my MacBook Air rather than on my iPhone or iPad, so initially I wasn't sure how much use I'd get out of the ChicBuds Chicboom. The Chicboom is a small, portable 2W amplified speaker that is attached to a key ring that lets you have a speaker wherever you are. It's super small, so it's not inconvenient by any means to have with you. You connect it to any device using the included 3.5mm stereo jack connection.

Since I don't really listen to music on my portable devices unless I am in a situation where I'd use headphones, I wasn't sure where the Chicboom would fit in for me. However, during a recent group FaceTime call with Grandma using an iPad 2, where pretty much no one could hear totally clearly due to the iPad 2 and its lackluster speaker, it struck me immediately that the Chicboom might help. We hooked it up, and it was immediately apparent how much better we could hear her.  The Chicboom provided clear, distortion-free audio, and made the FaceTime experience much better.

After the call we continued to use the Chicboom speaker for music while cooking and talking, and even with all the noise in the house the sound from the Chicboom was great.  A week later, I had to travel and found myself in a conference room that had no phone.  I plugged the Chicboom into my iPhone, and a group of us were all able to hear the caller on the line. The Chicboom allowed us to use the iPhone 4S to facilitate a nice, loud conference call. In this situation we still had to use the speaker on the iPhone as well, which caused some trouble (this is where a Bluetooth Chicboom would shine,) but the speaker worked perfectly.

The Chicboom keychain speaker can be purchased for $27, and we think it's worth it.  This is a great product to share music abd movies on your iPad, or to make FaceTime calls actually sound great.