Digital Trends

Vers 2X October 7th, 2007 | by Jason Tomczak

Features and Design

The most notable feature of the Vers 2X iPod speaker system is the beautiful wooden body. While the interior cabinet is composite like most speaker enclosures, each Vers 2X features a unique, hand-crafted cherry veneer exterior. Because the outer skin is made from actual wood (and not some hackneyed plastic copy of a single sheet of wood), each Vers 2X retains its unique look and feel. Running my fingers over the outside of the Vers 2X, I can feel the ridges, pores and changing grain of the wood exterior. It's almost as if I had planed and sanded the wood cabinet myself. Not to get too graphic, but the cabinet exterior even has the faint smell of hand worked and preserved wood. Nice.

The Vers 2X has a detachable grille - perfect for that raw European audio look. Under the grille, we find two 3" speakers. Their matte black texture contrasts beautifully against the wood. Just south of dead center between the speakers is a dime-sized IR receiver that communicates with the included remote control.

On the back side of the Vers 2X are the two rear ports for the speakers, helping to naturally push thicker bass out of the small cabinet. The power input is located underneath the Vers 2X cabinet - an odd location, for sure, but one that pays respect to the wood exterior and saves it from superfluous holes. Right next to the power input are two audio jacks. First an Audio Out, allowing you to send the audio signal from your iPod (or other player) to an external source, such as a laptop audio-in jack, an external receiver, etc. Second, an Audio-In jack allows you to use non-iPod MP3 players, laptops, desktops and other devices to deliver sound to the Vers 2X speakers.

The Vers 2X and remote control (with speaker cover off)

The Remote

While the remote control itself is larger than most iPod speaker remotes and the buttons sometimes need to be pushed all the way down to affect a change (lazy me), the Vers remote more than makes up for size by sheer awesomeness. The top trio of buttons allows you to navigate and control your iPod's menus! That's right - use the remote to navigate from the main menu to playlists, to Artists, back up to main, over to Photos, down to Settings, change the EQ, etc. Anything that you can do with your finger on the iPod remote, you can do with the remote control, including putting your iPod to sleep. Wow. 

In addition to the above, the remote allows you to fast forward and reverse within a song, pause, play, mute, sleep, shuffle, etc. There's a replaceable 3V battery under a flap on the back side of the remote.

Dock Adaptors 

The Vers 2X speaker system is compatible with any dock-connector iPod, whether touch, nano, video, mini, etc. The Vers 2X comes with seven (7) dock adapters for various iPods and a universal adapter that will allow any MP3 player to rest in the dock. A spare audio cable is included for connecting non-iPod sources to the speaker system.

Power Brick

Unlike many speaker system power adapters, the Vers 2X power brick is relatively small. There's only one piece - no connecting adapters or cables. This makes it easy to transport and makes losing a vital part virtually impossible (or at least less likely).

Alt Control

The main way of controlling the Vers 2X is by remote. For those times when it's easier to control things manually on the speaker set, there are two buttons - power on/off and volume up/down. The remainder of controls are on your iPod. Pretty simple.

Technical Stats

The 3" speakers peak at 15 watts each, giving a total of 30 watts power. Frequency response is a could-be-better 60Hz-20kHz. How could it be better? Maybe a little more aggressive on the lows, like 30Hz-20kHz, for that serious boom-shaka-boom. Signal to noise ratio is a very decent 90dB. Total harmonic distortion (THD) is 5.7%, probably the weakest factor of the Vers 2X.