The speaker and iPod nano are about the same size together as an iPod classic.

Creative’s TravelSound is incredibly compact and plays forever, but its so-so sound might not be enough to rock your world.

With your third-generation iPod nano docked, the TravelSound is roughly the size of the 80GB iPod classic and weighs 5 ounces. It’s less than 1 inch thick and a pocket-sized 2.3 by 3.9 inches. You also get a small stand to keep the speaker upright when it’s on a tabletop. The lithium polymer battery charges via the mini USB port (you can sync the iPod with iTunes too), and Creative includes both a USB cable and an AC adapter. It took about 2.5 hours to charge it fully. But we wondered: When the built-in, nonremovable battery ultimately won’t hold a charge anymore, do we just throw the TravelSound away? Perhaps Creative figures the third-gen nanos will be more or less obsolete by then anyway.

The sound is nothing to write home about, but the battery life is. The speaker uses four micro drivers and a digital amplifier according to Creative, but to us it sounded just slightly better than a transistor radio. Disappointing sound quality for $80, especially at higher volumes, but at 50 percent volume or less, it’s not terrible. And it just plays and plays—Creative estimates up to 15 hours of continuous music per charge, but when we charged it up and set our nano to Shuffle Songs, the nano’s battery died before the TravelSound’s did—23 hours later.