When leaving the Nokia World 2009 Party, everyone got handed one of these mini speakers, the Nokia MD-9. I had spent a full year looking for its old brother, the Nokia MD-6, but never managed to find a place to buy it for a good price, so I was extremely happy to receive an MD-9 to use.
The MD-9 is a mini speaker with a black pod design and a red contour on the bottom. It easily fits in one hand, with physical dimensions of 42 x 67 x 67 mm, and is lightweight totaling at 90g with the batteries inside.
The bottom of the MD-9 houses the ingeniously simple winding design for its audio cable. You can wrap the cable around the pod, right below that black cap, and then insert the 3.5mm plug in its dedicated trap. When you do that, there’s no visible wire or tangle coming out of the MD-9, so you can throw it in any pocket or bag without worrying. It’s definitely one of my most favorite features.
When you remove the 3.5mm plug, you can see a red On/Off button that lets you save battery life when the speaker isn’t in use. The black cap can be twisted and pulled off a bit to reveal the 2 AAA batteries that power the MD-9. Battery life is documented as 50 hours on the official site, but after a couple of months of intermittent usage, I still haven’t needed to change mine, so I’ll say it’s pretty good.
The audio cable is short but practical. Some people might think it’s too short for their needs, but I personally find it perfect because I always keep the phone next to the speaker, and I also hate unnecessarily long cables. This plug also houses an integrated FM antenna, so you can use the MD-9 instead of your earphones, to listen to FM radio stations on your Nokia devices.
The MD-9 comes with a regular 3.5mm plug, so you can connect it to almost any audio device around your house. In the picture below, I show it connected to the Nokia E52, but I have also used it on my iPod Touch, Nokia 5530 XpressMusic and Macbook without any problem.
The good part though, is that it also has a 2.5mm to 3.5mm converter tip, so you can connect it to any device that uses the 2.5mm plug instead of the industry standard. For example, you can use that on the Nokia E71, 6220 Classic, 6210 Navigator, and many other models.
The MD-9 are said to have an output of 0.63 Watt RMS, which sounds ridiculously small, but upon usage ends up being louder than expected. They are effectively as loud as my Macbook’s speakers, louder than my iPod Touch and any Nokia mobile device I’ve tried them with.
All in all, the MD-9 are a small set of speakers, practical to carry around with a smart cable design, and that can be connected to lots of mobile devices to enhance their music output. You can get the Nokia MD-9 mini speakers for 19EUR on the European Nokia Online shops, but if you find a better deal on other retailer stores, be sure to tell us.
