Conran Audio, new ipod dock from studio conran also wireless.

Conran Audio, the name conjures up the idea of an Audio company, which is news to everyone since no-one realised that Sir Terence Conran was in the Audio/Visual Market.  However, what we have here is a brand new iPod dock which was designed by Studio Conran, with the personal Touch of Sir Conran Himself, and surprisingly it looks good, and sounds good too.

An attractive slab of Plastic, metal trim and Solid oak, it pleasingly performs its function, based purely on the perspective of aesthetics, this is a winner already, compact dimensions of 283mm x 120 mm x 233 mm allow it to fit into any room without difficulty, the angled top fits any model of ipod, right up to and including the old classic models, and a simple yet clever feature is the remote, designed to allow complete control of the basic functions when the ipod is docked, the side panel pictured above IS in fact the remote, so when the ipod is in your hand the remote can be docked and neatly out of sight, and when the remote is in your hand the ipod is docked.

On the performance side of things, it is no slouch either, 2 75 mm bass speakers, 2 25mm tweeters, outputting a total frequency response of 75hz max or 2 x 15 watts.  And, in addition to this, it incorporates A2DP stereo Bluetooth support, some may say "why not airplay?"  Apples proprietary tech is all well and good, but what if you want to play music from any other device that is not an apple product?  And what if a friend pops round and wants to play music from their non apple product?  That is the answer to the question "why no Airplay?".

All in all an excellent product from a well regarded British Design brand, the name could have been a little better, but who knows, this could be the first in a new generation of Conran Audio products, in which case the Moniker is more than justified.

Priced at £249 and can be bought at www.conranaudio.com/thedock.htm.