Speakers, at heart, are small devices that vibrate a larger surface, and then make that vibration rebound through an even larger box until it comes out much louder than it would be with the device alone. But there are some speaker-like products that simply put the vibration device in your hands and let you turn anything into a speaker. A handful of these have popped up over the years, and they've generally been terrible-sounding gimmicks. The Bass Egg Verb ($99.95) is a serious attempt to make the concept work, and it does a decent job. It still doesn't meet our standards for a good speaker, but it can produce middling-to-good sound at loud volumes on the right surfaces if you stay away from tracks with deep bass.

Design

The Verb looks like a comically large, modern-style kitchen timer. It's an hourglass-shaped 3.6-by-2.4-inch (HW), 17-ounce hunk of gunmetal-colored (or black) metal, cylindrical in shape and pinching inward in the middle. The topside is flat, and the bottom side is elevated slightly on an additional metal disc with a sticky rubber foot under it. The foot is the Verb's resonator, and the speaker makes noise by vibrating it against certain objects. The rubber is a dust magnet, but it's easy to clean off with a damp cloth.

A minimum of controls and ports sit on the side of the Verb, near the top. There's a three-way switch for turning the speaker on to either wired or Bluetooth mode, an LED on either side of the switch indicating if the speaker is on and in which mode, and a mini USB port for charging and wired audio connection with the included USB/3.5mm splitter cable.

Finding the Surfaces

Unlike nearly every other speaker there is, the Verb doesn't have any cones, domes, or other elements that resonate. Instead, it vibrates any flat surface you sit it on, turning it into the erstwhile driver for your spontaneously created speaker. Because of that, sound quality can vary wildly. At its worst, it sounds horrible. At its best, it sounds decent, if inconsistent.

I tested the Verb with a variety of materials including metal, plastic, wood, and my work desk. Surprisingly, my cheap plastic TV tray sounded the best, with wood coming a close second and glass trailing behind it. No matter what material I tried, though, I needed to clear the surface of other objects and make sure it wasn't attached loosely to anything (like a sliding keyboard tray under a desk); otherwise playing any music would make it rattle horribly.

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Performance

Despite its name, the Bass Egg Verb is terrible with deep bass. On our bass test track, The Knife's "Silent Shout," the Verb distorted, crunched, and rattled on every surface I tried. This isn't particularly surprising, since most household items aren't designed to clearly resonate the thumping beats of a kick drum.

The Verb performs fairly well with less bass-heavy music, though. Dragonforce's "Heroes of the Wasteland" sounded clear, if slightly hollow, on both my desk and a window, and Herman Li's high-pitched shredding came through every material I tried.

Yes's "Roundabout" sounded similarly good, with the opening acoustic guitar notes sounding out crisply, albeit without much depth. When the thumpy electric bass kicked in, the Verb gave the notes a good sense of force despite a lack of any low-end power behind them.

Miles Davis' "So What" demonstrated the Verb's low-end weakness and emphasis on treble the best. The piano notes in the track sounded clear on most surfaces, while most of the rumble of the upright bass disappeared or vibrated the surface so much that the sound distorted.

The Bass Egg Verb is the best turn-anything-into-a-speaker device we've seen yet, but that's a ridiculously low bar. For $100 it can put out decent sound if you have a solid enough surface you don't mind clearing when listening to music, and don't mind staying away from deep bass. It's an interesting novelty and a fun gadget to show off, and that's about all you can expect. I suppose it's a shame you can't get great sound from a filing cabinet, desk, or window, but that's a limitation of physics just as much as it's a limitation of the Verb. If you want a better-sounding, conventional speaker in that price range, consider the Editors' Choice Bose SoundLink Color ($80.49 at Amazon) or the less expensive Logitech X300 ($24.99 at Amazon) . They offer generally superior, much more consistent audio without the need to find a flat surface to use them.

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Further Reading

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• How to Control Your Roku With an Amazon Echo
• No More Bricks: Sonos Drops 'Trade-Up' Program's Recycle Mode