Hands-on with Altec Lansing's inMotion Classic

The Altec Lansing inMotion Classic is an angular, powerful boombox made for the iPod and iPhone.

(Credit: Donald Bell/CNET)

Altec Lansing has a long history of producing some stellar little speaker systems designed around the iPod. Their latest portable speaker, the inMotion Classic, continues the company's tradition of delivering quality audio in a compact and stylish design.

I've reviewed a number of Altec Lansing's iPod speakers, including last year's inMotion Max and im600, so I thought I had a pretty good idea what to expect from a seemingly basic, $149 speaker dock. I was wrong.

So far, my initial impressions of the inMotion Classic are excellent. For a budget-minded portable speaker that stands only 4 inches high and measures just 2 inches thick, this thing cranks. Sure, it's not as thin as the im600, or as impressive-looking as the inMotion Max, but the engineers have juiced the two 3-inch speakers on the Classic for all they're worth.

Altec Lansing inMotion Classic iMT620 -- photos

There are no EQ settings on the Classic, but the overall sound is crisp with a surprising amount of meat on the low end compared with other fold-flat speakers we've tested from Logitech and Griffin