Design
Sony Ericsson's MPS-70 miniature speakers look like, well, miniature speakers. They wear the Walkman colouring of black with orange trim, and feature reflective stainless steel tweeters, but are nothing extraordinary to look at, unlike Sony Ericsson's nightmarish MBS-100 speaker unit.
The MPS-70s are more like headphones than a speaker, in that there is a single cord running from each speaker and joined at a standard Sony Ericsson mobile phone input plug. There's no volume or device controls, and no power control as the MPS-70s share power with the phone they are attached to.
Performance
We tested the MPS-70s with a K850i Cyber-shot camera phone. Interestingly, when we connected the speakers, the phone didn't register the connection, usually we'd expect a dialog box confirming that we'd attached an external device.
We played a range of music from the phone and we were pleasantly surprised. Bassy dance music sounded good with reasonable low end for such a inexpensive speaker set. As with the MBS-100, these speakers favoured the higher frequencies, but the bass was audible and without any distortion at the highest volume. That said, the highest volume setting, as set on the phone, wasn't exactly ear-drum shattering, but again we are talking about very cheap speakers.
Overall
Of course, this review will have absolutely no bearing on anyone who doesn't own a Sony Ericsson mobile handset: the proprietary audio input renders these speakers useless to everyone else. But if you do have a Walkman phone and want portable speakers to take to the beach or away on those torturous family holidays, then the MPS-70s are worth a look, especially for its low price.
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