Woogie Review

     The Griffin Woogie is an iPod touch or iPhone case with a built in amplified speaker, all packaged in a soft toy:

Griffin Woogie

     I've had a Woogie for a few months now, and have some fairly mixed feelings towards it. I think the case is very cute, and my 2.x year old loves it - as a soft toy.  As a case and powered speaker designed for toddler though, it's got some shortcomings.

There's a speaker in there.  Somewhere.

     My first issue with the case is the volume of the speaker.  It's pretty quiet.  I didn't expect it to be loud (don't want to hurt the kiddies ears) but it's not even as loud as the built in speaker on my iPhone 4.  It's really too soft for in-car use, which was one of the main reasons I bought it.  Maybe the low volume is meant to lull kids to sleep?

Non removable battery box.

     The battery box and other hardware are non removable, which means that there's no chance of dropping the Woogie into the washing machine.  You can wipe the outside with a damp cloth and that's about it.  To be fair, the case has been remarkably good at shrugging off small spills, but I still think it's a big oversight on a plush product designed for children.
     The switch to turn the Woogie on and off is also at the wrong end of the battery box.  Meaning that you need to fully remove the box from its pouch whenever you wish to turn the Woogie on or off.  You need to do that a lot as well, otherwise the batteries go flat, it's got some serious phantom power drain issues.  I expected that you could leave the Woogie turned on and it would only use batteries when playing music, or plugged into an iPod, but that's not the case at all.  If you don't turn it off at the switch the batteries will be flat in a day or two.

Tidy little slot for inserting battery box.

Battery box halfway into its pouch.

     On the positive side, the battery box does tuck tidily away into a neat little pouch.  And while I think the audio plug should have been located inside the iPod/iPhone pouch the cord isn't really long enough to be a problem.  Before I got the Woogie I was concerned that it might be a choking/strangling hazard, or that the cord would just get caught on things and yank out of the iPod all the time.  That's really not the case though, it's never been accidentally removed in use.


     I can live with most of the products shortcomings, but the lack of volume from the speaker is really disappointing.  Speaker volume should be part of the basic functionality of this thing, but it's really its achilles heel.  I think it's a great idea but it just wasn't thought through that thoroughly.  I still use it a fair bit - but mainly with a first gen iPod touch which wouldn't have any sound otherwise.
     Cute and well manufactured, but not that well designed.

ToughSkin is Coming!

     Yay!  Speck have finally released a version of their fantastic ToughSkin case for the iPhone 4.  See the Speck site for details.
     The ToughSkin cases are pretty unique, they offer a great deal of impact protection along with super chunky styling.  These cases look like you could, in a pinch, use them to retread your car tyres.
     On the 3GS version the silicone was support by a plastic skeleton frame that you clipped onto your phone first.  This skeleton was designed with little protrusions which in turn held the silicon case on nice and snuggly.  It was a neat system and worked really well - none of the saggy bulgy squishy loose problems that I have with the Otter Box Defender which is currently on my phone.  The Defender is also not very grippy - which is a major reason I like to have chunky silicone cases. I thought Otter Box were meant to make premium products?  Though having said that, it seems the current Defender case now incorporates a substrate, similar to the ToughSkin.  My "first generation" one was purely silicone.
     It seems like the ToughSkin for iPhone 4 has taken this skeleton/substrate design one step further - the  ToughSkin "skeleton" is actually a complete hard case for the phone now, which could be handy.  The downside of a chunky super sticky case is seriously reduced pocketability.  The case also comes with a belt clip/holder which doubles as a stand - it works well but sorry, I'm not a phone belt clip kind of person.
     Very happy that they've finally brought this market - can't wait to get my hands on one.  It's taken a lot longer than I expected - I've got an email from Speck customer service from June 2010 saying it'd be on the market in "about 5 weeks".  5 weeks, 7 months - whatever. ;)