Indoor or out, the Soulra shines!

Over the last few weeks I’ve been listen­ing to my iPod Touch tunes with a rug­ged­ized sol­ar-powered sound sys­tem — the Soulra. And this could be one solu­tion to a prob­lem I’ve had for a while now; how to take my music out­side with me  and not have to wear ear-buds or head­phones to enjoy it.

We like to camp, so port­ab­il­ity and rugged con­struc­tion are import­ant in the things we bring with us. This, and one key fea­ture of the Soulra really caught my atten­tion — the large sol­ar pan­el on the device.

Essen­tially, the Soulra looks and acts like any port­able sound sys­tem dock­ing sta­tion. You plug your iPod/iPod Touch/iPhone into the dock and it plays music. But there’s much more to it than that:

Sol­ar Energy
Sol­ar powered char­ging dock, com­pat­ible with iPod and iPhone. This is cool, espe­cially when you’re camp­ing or away from an AC out­let. The sol­ar cell will keep the Soulra’s bat­ter­ies charged as well as your iDevice.

Rechar­gable Battery
Accord­ing to the specs, the Soulra will play for about 4 hours at medi­um volume level on a full bat­tery charge. Using AC it’ll take about 4 hours to recharge, and about 10 hours using the sol­ar col­lect­or pan­el (depend­ing on the bright­ness when char­ging, of course).

Splash Proof
Rub­ber-sealed clear plastic cov­er for your iDevice keeps ran­dom splash or rain events out, and your device dry.

Rug­ged­ized
Rugged/rubberized case and alu­min­um body.Rubber coat­ing absorbs minor bumps while also seal­ing the rest of the elec­tron­ic innards from the same wet events.

Remote Con­trol
Yep, this little device has an equally rug­ged­ized remote con­trol so you can change your music or volume without get­ting out of your lawn chair.

Good Sound
Giv­en that it seems to be designed to be used out­doors, I found the Soulra soun­ded pretty good in my office. I liked the way I could dial up a Shout­cast sta­tion on my iPod Touch and stream music through it, or play­back from my intern­al music col­lec­tion. I can­’t wait to see how it’ll work out in the field.

And, a bonus, as I write this, Future Shop has the Soulra on sale.[ad#Future Shop Post Attribution]