Options for passive speakers

Question

I would like to buy a small external speaker (mono) to use for my laptop and mobile phone, both of which have very poor-quality and low-volume built-in speakers.

However, all that I can find in shops are powered (battery or AC) speakers, and no passive speakers at all. I would be using the speaker at home most of the time, and thus it would not make sense to keep charging the battery every few hours. I don't need the new speaker to have massive volume, thus I'd have thought that a passive solution should be doable.

Also, for convenience, I would prefer the speaker to not require mains plugging, but only a wired connection to the device's audio jack.

Is such a solution at all possible, or will I have to settle for powered speakers?

Answer 1

This won't work out: the speakers in your devices are as loud as they can be with the built-in amplifiers.

Sure, you could argue that maybe these built-in speakers are very inefficient, i.e. bad at converting amplifier output power to loudness, and you can buy better, higher-efficiency speakers that can make more and better sound out of the same power, but that's extremely unlikely, since mobile devices typically pick astonishingly high-efficiency speakers.

So, with the power you'll get out of these, you're very unlikely to get better sound out of external speakers, unless you're willing to accept less loud speakers, and you won't get much louder speakers, unless you're willing to accept more horrible sounding.

So, you'll need an external amplifier. I don't understand your requirements – you're mostly using them at home (where you have power), but don't want to plug them in – you're making your life unnecessarily hard.