Small speakers were quite visible at CES (see earlier post), with mini boxes and cylinders that can come along in your bag to boost the sound of your smartphone or tablet. At a couple inches in size, however, while these do better than built-in speakers, they really aren't particularly powerful.
One nice way of getting more sound from small speakers comes from vibrating designs that have you position the speaker on a flat surface so the sound can resonate to give you 360 degree omni-directional sound (see earlier post). You can get amazing sound from surfaces like wood, glass, metal, walls, mirrors, and cardboard, especially if they have an enclosed air gap like a desk or even a simple cardboard box.
The Mighty Dwarf 5W Vibration Speaker is a nice example of this kind of approach, with some very interesting bonus features. It's a small cylinder, 2.25 inches tall by 2 inches in diameter, and chunky at 11 1/2 ounces so it makes strong contact with the surface.
For even better resonating action, the Mighty Dwarf has a sticky gel pad on the base to temporarily adhere to the surface. It also has has a screw mount on the base that can attach to accessories for a more permanent connection, including a glass mount (suction cup) or wood mount (woods screws).
To hook up to your portable player, the Mighty Dwarf comes with a dual-purpose cable with a miniUSB connector at one end to plug into the speaker, and the other end split into both a 3.5mm stereo audio jack and a USB jack. Plug the audio jack into your device to play music, or plug in the USB jack to recharge the internal battery. There's also a LED to warn when the battery is low.
But there's more -- The Mighty Dwarf also has a microSD slot, so you can insert a memory card with MP3 music files, and use the speaker as a stand-alone media player. The final addition is the play controller -- push to stop/start play, flick to skip forward/back to the next song, and press and hold to adjust the volume.
The Mighty Dwarf 5W speaker is available for around $49. There's also the Mighty Dwarf 26W model with external amplifier, and a Bluetooth speaker coming.
See my article on Portable Accessories 2012 for more on portable audio, portable power, and cases.
Find the Mighty Dwarf 5W Vibration Speaker on Amazon.com