There’s something great about being able to access your favourite music at the press of a button, wherever you are (taking care not to annoy all those around you, of course). Encouraging a love of music in your kids is a great thing too, so this new offering from Canal Toys could provide them with musical freedom without the need for a mobile phone. It costs less than £10, but does the Canal Toys Mini Speaker live up to expectations? We tried it to find out. 

What’s Hot:
+ It puts kids in control of listening to music
+ Pocket money price tag

What’s Not:
– The sound quality
– Battery is non-replaceable

Canal Toys Mini Speaker – What is it? 

The Canal Toys Mini Speaker is just that – a tiny speaker that is highly customisable and can be attached to a bag or backpack with the keychain attachment that comes with it. It’s designed to appeal to kids who love to listen to music wherever they are, and want to express their creativity and individuality, too. 

Canal Toys Mini Speaker in packet

It’s available in six different colours, is rechargeable, wireless, and can stream music wirelessly from a Bluetooth-enabled device or from a microSD card. Once switched on, the coloured LED lights glow, and the buttons allow you to skip through tracks backwards and forwards and adjust the volume. 

It is a pretty simple device, which means kids can enjoy the music they want to listen to without complications. 

Is it actually any good? 

That’s a surprisingly difficult question to answer, as it really depends on what your expectations are. The Mini Speaker retails for less than £10, so I’d say expectations should be pretty low in terms of sound quality. Which is good, as the sound quality for anyone who really appreciates music is dreadful. There’s absolutely no bass, which makes most tracks sound tinny and lacking in depth, and turning up the volume does nothing to help the situation. 

The key here is to focus on who the speaker is designed for. For a 5-year-old who likes to boogie around to a bit of music he’s heard his parents play, or to favourite nursery rhymes, being able to control that for themselves would bring a lot of fun and laughter. 

For anyone else who has ears and any real appreciation for music, it’s probably one to steer clear of. 

The price of £10 for a few weeks of kids’ holiday fun doesn’t seem too extravagant for this fun little speaker. The sticking point is that this isn’t all you’ll need if you want to give the kids the freedom to play their music their way. To use the Mini Speaker without a mobile phone or other device streaming to it, you’ll need to buy a microSD card, as it doesn’t come with one. 

Canal Toys Mini Speaker and accessories

Once you’ve got that, you’ll need to download the songs your child might want to listen to onto it, which takes time and patience. All of that can be done, of course, but it all comes at a cost over and above the headline price tag. 

Canal Toys Mini Speaker: The verdict 

The idea of the Mini Speaker is a great one. Putting the ability to play music into the hands of the kids, so they can enjoy it their way, has so much merit. With customisation to make it their own and add personality, and coloured lights adding extra pizzazz, kids will undoubtedly have some fun with it. 

Where it falls down is with the target audience. With more and more young teens and tweens having access to a mobile phone or tablet, the market for the Mini Speaker within that age group diminishes. With the speaker’s questionable sound quality, those who can will simply use their phone or device instead, gaining better sound quality and the ability to stream music directly, rather than needing an SD card. 

The Mini Speaker is rechargeable and needs just 2W of power to run, so each charge should provide a reasonable amount of play time. The downside is that the battery isn’t replaceable, which isn’t great on an environmental level. 

It’s by no means a flawless product, but for a pocket money-level purchase which is essentially a toy, it will bring smiles to little faces, even if only for a short while. Don’t set expectations too high, and you might be pleasantly surprised. 

Tested: Canal Toys Mini Speaker
Price: £9.99
Average Joes Rating: ★★☆☆☆

Sam Huff
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