Not everyone is a Slacker fan. Analyst Michael Gartenberg blogged recently that the application crashed his Blackberry, and he subsequently dropped it from both the Bold and his iPhone. However, I’ve had good luck with the online app and certainly with the Slacker hardware, and as a result I’m interested when the company tosses out something new. Last week Slacker sent me some accessories to try including a G2 dock, car charger, and arm band. They’re all available online for under $30 along with an FM transmitter (for the car) priced at $39.99.
The G2 dock is a very simple device, and will not be unfamiliar to anyone who’s ever owned an iPod. It can be used to charge the G2, connect to a PC, and hook up a set of speakers. You can do any of these things without a dock, but in theory plugging into one dock for multiple purposes is easier than fooling around with several cables. I tried it out in my living room by unplugging my Squeezebox and hooking the dock into a set of Dell speakers connected to a subwoofer. Simple process and my Slacker tunes were immediately audible. The dock is also unobtrusively black, unlike its iPod counterparts, and faded right into the background of my media center.
Given my Squeezebox + speakers set-up, I have no real need for the dock and will be shipping it back shortly with the car charger and arm band. However, it’s worth noting that I am now paying for Slacker Premium service on a monthly basis after getting the free trial to review some months back. Turns out the unlimited skipping and, more importantly, the ability to keep songs I like for playback any time is addicting. Slacker’s now promoting its cheaper Radio Plus service over Slacker Premium, but despite the difference in price ($3.99/mo vs $7.50/mo), I decided to stick with Premium for the song-saving feature. It’s worth the money.
Click to enlarge: