Nokia MD4 Mini Speakers review

Nicole Kobie

We review the Nokia Mini Speakers MD4 to see if they're worth slipping in your pocket

The Nokia MD4 speaker may be simple but it still pushes out sound

Published on Feb 9, 2010

These days, phones carry more than just contact details – they carry entire collections of music, too.
Most of the time, it's just fine listening via headphones, but sometimes you want to share and built in external speakers are usually pretty poor – as anyone who's been stuck on a bus listening to someone else's tinny music will agree.
To solve this, Nokia has released its own line-up of Mini Speakers. The MD-4 is tiny enough to slip into your pocket alongside your phone, but boosts sound nicely – something your fellow bus riders will surely appreciate.
Weighing in at a mere 130g, including the four AA batteries for power, the Nokia Mini Speakers are a slim 114x30x33mm. They fold out into a thin bar, presumably for better sound, shutting off automatically when snapped shut.
There's just one button on the speakers themselves, to power them on and off, so any volume control must be done on your phone, but given as they're attached, that shouldn't put you out too much.
Indeed, the speakers only connect via a 7.5cm cord - there's no fancy wireless Bluetooth on offer here. As many Nokia phones have a 3.5mm earphone jack, the Finnish manufaturer has included a matching connector in the box as well as an audio adaptor for other handsets.
Nokia promises 30 hours of battery life, so you won't need to carry spare batteries very often, as these speakers will outlast most phones. And, as they run AAs, they won't be draining your phone to keep going, either.
The sound is decent, but not stunning. It still sounds like music coming out of a mobile phone, lacking strong bass and sheer volume that other portable speakers on the market offer. If you're looking for fantastic sound quality, you may want to keep looking.
That said, though the sound isn't strong enough to power a house party, these Nokia Mini Speakers will do the job in more intimate, laid-back settings – like picnics, dinners, or the bus.
Available online for under £15, they're not as slick as many speakers out there, but it's hard to argue with a sturdy, well-built brand-name product at that price.