After enjoying the Philips Revolution speaker dock for a while, I started to look for a better sounding iPod dock. I found that in the Altec Lansing M650, which is a 2.1 channel system (yes, stereo speakers plus a tiny, down-firing subwoofer!) in a compact, triangular case, with a 30-pin iPod/iPhone dock on a ledge in front.

I thought, and still think, that it sounds great. Its sound is warm, rich, and natural. While I wouldn’t consider the bass response to be very tight, or there to be any stereo separation at all, it does sound really nice, and can fill a small bedroom or a home office with a pleasant sound that I could listen to for hours on end.

I used one as my main desktop stereo system for a couple years while I worked from home. It replaced my Harmon Kardon Soundsticks, which sounded better for music, but were not as easy to connect to my iPhone. It sounds great for music, podcasts, and for TV—thanks to its line-in jack, I often plugged an iPad into it for better audio when watching baseball or Netflix. I liked this speaker so much that I bought another one for the kitchen, where it was a great base station for phone charging and playing internet radio for several years.

Unfortunately, while this speaker sounds great, its 30-pin dock is poorly implemented. After several months, both speakers emit annoying static from the 30-pin connector unless the iPhone is seated just right. I think I’m the only one in my house who knows how to fiddle with it until the sound clears up. Plus, of course, the 30-pin connector was made obsolete by Apple’s change to the Lightning standard.

I still use both of my M650s in my children’s rooms to play white noise while they sleep, and occasional music while they are awake, through our old iPhone 4 and 4S. It has gotten increasingly difficult to seat an iPhone on them without getting static through the 30-pin connection, but it is still possible. However, because the 30-pin iPhones that drive them are old and barely work at this point (software-wise), these speakers’ days as iPhone docks are numbered. They have a line-in jack in the back, however, and are prime candidates to pair with an Amazon Echo Dot (or something similar) sometime in the future.