Score K1 Mini Portable Speaker $3 (was $40) at Noel Leeming.
Only one available per customer online, but moving down the page to "frequently bought together" a bundle of two units is available. Click buy now on the bundle, then hit continue shopping and repeat the process. You can add as many to your shopping cart for purchase as you want.
Free click and collect.
I have one of these from last time when they were $5. They're pretty terrible, I almost returned mine to recover the cost of a coffee on principle. But arguing with Noel Leeming staff over $5 isn't worth the stress.
Might be worth a few dollars if you can use one though. It does work, albeit badly. And while I haven't measured the battery life, it's not a measly 1 hour or something stupid. Here are the downsides in my experience.
1: The little black dot you can see on the top is the on/off button, NOT an input jack as I had thought. There is NO input jack. So you can't connect this with anything that isn't bluetooth, like some computers or a simple mp3 player. I'd not realised any speakers DIDN'T have this option before.
2: No volume controls - yes you can use the source device to control volume while in use, but that's after it's paired. When you switch this on and off initially, it makes an unnecessarily loud chime which can't be disabled or lowered. I guess that's not a problem for 95% use cases but my landlords live upstairs and I'm scared to turn it on after a certain time of night in case it wakes them through the ceiling. My other fairly cheap speaker only chimes as loud as the pre-set lowered volume on the speaker itself.
3: Range - This has trouble playing podcasts from my laptop on a desk in the lounge while I'm doing dishes in the kitchen - all open plan free air, about 5 metres distance with no obstructions. I can walk down the hallway and into another room and still hear the same laptop on my bluetooth headphones. I've also noticed if I have my phone on the left and the speaker on my right, then it cuts in and out while I'm moving around doing my dishes - so I have to keep them both on the same side. All in all pretty terrible.
Like I said it's worth the $3 or $5 or whatever it is, but that's ALL it's worth if you ask me. Enjoy :-)
Why do you have to "argue" with NL staff to return a product? Is it that hard to return a product at NL?
Well you shouldn't have to. And I can't speak for anyone elses experience.
But I've had to argue to get them to honour their price matching before and to me that's an indicator of how they do business. Also friends experiences and other anecdotes suggest they are one of the companies that like to push back hard on returns and warranty faults. Whether that's accurate or not doesn't matter - that's the impression I have of their business and that determines how I interact with them. So this impression and their pushy sales staff means I don't ever routinely walk into a Noel Leeming (or Harvey Norman) store any more.
If it was an expensive item I wasn't happy with then yes I absolutely would call them on it (and I have done so in the past and made a return - but it wasn't straightforward). As I said, for $5, I'm not prepared to risk the stress of an unpleasant confrontation and having them ruin my day.
I had similar experience where one of the staff was arguing about price match with pbtech prices. Well I then used the free shipping code and got delivered from pbtech.
@dkiwi: Yes my negative price-match experience was for PB Tech too. The family had nominated me to select a new laptop for our nieces 21st birthday. PB Tech was the cheapest but Noel Leeming were open late night so I wandered in but they wouldn't price-match PB Tech. It was identical model 100%.
I asked him who he would price match with and he started rattling off some shops, to my surprise one was Extreme PC across the road at St Lukes (Akl). I happened to know their price was only $3 or $4 more than PB Tech so I just told him that and got it for the few dollars more anyway, which saved me an even bigger argument. I did have to smile inside that it was several hundred dollars off NL price.
The reason he gave for not price matching PB Tech was something to do with parallel importing.
sold out online and only a couple left in Dunedin.