Travel speakers you should pack for your summer holidays

Wowee One Slim

£80, wowweeone.com 
Along with its tiny tweeter, the phone-sized Wowee Slim also has a mini sub-woofer that emits an almost inaudible bottom end growl that causes it to literally shake in your hand. But position this clever gel-backed box of trickery on the right kind of surface – a wooden chair, glass table, etc – and the bass suddenly comes alive. The top end distorts if the volume's wound up too much, but you'd be hard pressed to find a bigger sounding speaker packed into this small a box.

Sony RDP-M15iP

£120, sony.co.uk
Sony's flair for minimalist design is very much to the fore with this classy-looking 10W iPhone speaker dock. A single charge will keep it pumping for over five hours – pretty impressive for the beef on offer. Normal mode sounds a bit dull, to be honest, but flick it into 'extra bass' or 'spatial' mode and it starts to sing.

Geneva Sound System Model XS

£180, uk.genevalab.ch
Don’t be put off by the Geneva’s price. The most expensive dock here is also in a class of its own. Even the old-fashioned alarm clock-style case feels a million dollars and that's before you've discovered there's an FM radio, alarm clock and external mini-jack on board too. Shame there’s no holiday insurance thrown in.

Gear4 StreetParty Size O

£70, gear4.com
With its brightly coloured liveries, Gear4's ultra skinny but big-hearted stereo unit is clearly aimed at the teenage iPod set. It's more cheaply constructed than online pictures suggest, but it dishes out a commendably loud, bright sound and doesn't distort unless pushed to the limit. It's not particularly bassy but that's to be expected given its 16mm depth – about the thickness of two iPhones.

Scosche boomCAN

£20, amazon.co.uk
Yes, it’s cutesy, but can the boomCAN really live up to its big-talking name when it’s a good half inch smaller than the X-Mini? The tiny rechargeable cylindrical mono speaker performs well when presented with sparsely-arranged acoustic-orientated genres like folk and classical but, like a mid-60s Dylan fan, it starts to protest when you throw in some electric guitars and big drums.

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