Portable Gaming Revolution

One of the first experiences I had with my PSP was watching the included Spider-Man 2 UMD. I was on a flight and had a couple hours to kill, the fact that it allowed me a great chance to test out the PSP at the same time was a great bonus. The sound pumping through the headphones was great. Really, except for some arm and neck cramping from looking down at the screen, I quite enjoyed the experience. Once landed and in the hotel room, I tried to duplicate this feat sans headphones, and was quite disappointed with the PSP’s built-in speakers. I can hear you all saying “Well of course the audio was poor, the PSP has tiny built-in speakers!” and I would have to agree. The speakers are tiny, and they sound a little tinny. If only there was a device that would offer not only a nice pair of speakers, but also a stand to hold my PSP while watching movies and save my poor arms. Thankfully, the Logitech Playgear Amp does just that.

I’ve been a long time fan of all the Logitech products. From their mice and keyboards to their speakers, every Logitech product that I have used has been both affordable and high quality. The Playgear Amp is no different.

Logitech’s attention to detail presented itself upon first opening the packaging. Inside the cardboard box was a felt-like travel case that contained the whole kit! Included inside the travel case was the Amp itself, the clip-on PSP Stand, pass-through audio cable and the Amp’s AC adapter. Setting up the Amp was quick and effortless. The speakers fold out, the support bar in the back folds down and the PSP stand clips to the bottom of the Amp. One thing that really surprised me about this device was the fact that it shipped with its own power adapter. It would have made much more sense to me if this device would have accepted the PSP’s own adapter, then provided a pass-through power port for the PSP to get its juice from. The included adapter is small however, so the added weight is more of an annoyance then a problem.

I fired this device up, turned on my PSP and was presented with a booming PSP startup sound flowing from the Amp’s speakers. Impressive! I went through a whole range of tests from playing Burnout and SOCOM using the Amp as a set of external speakers, to watching a series of movies. I even hooked up my iPod and cranked up the tunes for a good 4 hours. The overall sound and range of the 4 little “Micro Drivers” is quite amazing. I’ve tested some other external speaker systems on the iPod, and the sound would quickly distort if turned up to the louder levels that I like. This did not happen on the Amp until I turned its volume to max and did the same on the PSP. This is to be expected though, abuse like that should be rewarded with distortion.

All of the controls for the Amp are found behind the attached PSP on the top of the Amp. These controls mimic the PSP’s own volume and home buttons for size, and they feel great. If you tend to watch your PSP movies in the dark like I do, you’ll find that controlling the audio consists mainly of fumbling around trying to hit the proper buttons. You can just control volumes with the PSP’s volume buttons, so it’s not that bad.

The included AC adapter is nice for powering your Amp, but what if you want to take this bad boy on the road with you for some portable entertainment? Well Logitech has your back here too. The Amp can run off 4 AAA batteries (not included of course) if portability is what you need. I grabbed a fresh set and tried to kill them as quickly as possible. On a medium-high volume I had this baby thumping for 30+ hours! And these were a set of no-name batteries that came in one of those 50 batteries for $9.99 blister packs. Drop in a set of Energizer E2’s and you could probably double that at the very minimum. This totally surprised me, as I was expecting this device to last maybe 8-9 hours to power the PSP through 2 full charge cycles. Battery power like this is overkill, but the good kind of overkill.

Overall this product will give you good bang for your buck. I was disappointed with the lack of a power pass-through, but the included travel case holds the Amp’s own adapter without any problems. Although this product retails for $59.99, a little more than the cost of a game for the system; I think the performance and quality make it an excellent value. Being a smaller speaker package, you won’t be getting any low-range thump out of the four “Micro Drivers”, but for a small portable package the Amp sounds and looks great.

Pros:
Great sound.
Included travel case looks and works great.

Cons:
The Amp needs its own separate power adapter.
Minimal bass “thump” due to the lack of a sub-woofer.

Just a note. My digital camera refused to give me any of the images I took of this device. I’ll try to get some up later today when I have more time to fuss with the camera’s horrible software..