Is Dr. Amar Bose the secret illegitimate father of Steve Jobs? Regardless, he's certainly the last of the great first-generation audio pioneers. Though audiophile publications make acid comments about the price/performance ratio of his speaker lines, he is nonetheless an inspired designer of headphones and compact systems. That — and some world-class marketing — have earned him a strong reputation both in the blogosphere and among the general public. The SoundDock Portable is the latest move in the chess game of Dr. Bose versus the world. It joins the original SoundDock, adding rechargability to the original train of thought and $100 to the price tag, now up to $399.

The retractable dock is a thing of beauty. Push the right side and it flips out on a spring. To close it, hook a finger into the docking cavity and rotate it home with a click. No button needed. So cool. Retracting also protects the 30-pin iPod docking connector from dust, addressing one of my chief complaints about iPod docking systems in general. Only one nano-sized docking adapter was included. Lucky me, I use a nano. Bose assumes you kept the dock supplied with your iPod but you don't really need it.

Visually, the SoundDock Portable makes an excellent first impression, largely thanks to an unbroken grille of brushed aluminum. Our review sample came with a charcoal-grey grille and glossy black plastic around the top, sides, and back. The plastic picks up fingerprints, but if that bothers you, order the white version.

The AC adapter is a rectangular brick with a plug that fits directly into the back. Thanks to the shape, it looks spiffy on the wall, and you can coil unneeded cable neatly into a cavity. The battery is user-replaceable, so when it nears the end of its design life, you needn't send the unit away for service (a notable improvement over the iPod itself). The dock charges the iPod whether connected to an outlet or not. Unlike the original SoundDock, it has an auxiliary line input, so you can plug in a portable CD player or music player from outside the Apple universe. Or a radio — one of the few significant omissions. An optional carry bag is $59.

Volume buttons on the right side are the only controls. They're touch-sensitive, not mechanical, so just hold your fingertip against the button to adjust level. Bose conveys a lot of status information with an LED that glows inside the grille. It's red when the system needs charging, yellow when it is charging, or green when you touch a button on the remote. Hold the off button on the remote control and the colors also indicate current battery level.

The eight-button remote has a nice clicky feel when you press a button, a welcome change from the piece-of-junk membrane remotes usually included with this kind of product. It includes two buttons that cycle among playlists in addition to the usual volume up/down, track up/down, play/pause, and off keys. Since I don't do playlists, I would have welcomed a few more buttons for menu navigation, or better yet a replica of the iPod clickwheel.

Sound comes from two full-range drivers in front supported by neodymium magnets and a ported waveguide at top rear. As with the Wave Radio and other products, Bose has voiced the port a bit aggressively, so it tends to bloat baritone voices when placed close to the wall. There are two ways to deal with this. The simplest is to move the product away from the wall, which makes the bass response more proportionate. The other is to adjust EQ in the iPod itself. Battery life is at least three hours per charge and Bose says you can extend it with lower bass and volume settings.

Overall sound quality is more than adequate, with solid midbass, a creamy but slightly reticent midrange, and not much high-frequency extension. The system has a nice way of rolling off the nasty digital artifacts of 128-kbps MP3s but also deprives higher-data-rate files of some detail. It can play plenty loud. My SPL meter measured 100 decibels from three feet away, and while I was wearing ear protectors at the time, I detected very little breakup even at that ridiculously high volume.

However, the most powerful thing about the SoundDock Portable is not its loud bark but the fact that it delivers on the basic premise of a rechargeable system. If you're the hardheaded practical type, you're probably wondering why you'd ever want such a thing — as I did, to be frank. Then you discover how versatile and practical it can be. Carry it in the basket of your bike, in your backpack, in your carry-on. Use it in the kitchen while you make dinner, in the dining room while you eat, in the livingroom later while you're reading a book, in the bedroom if you're having trouble sleeping. Sure, it's not cheap, but the price buys added utility.

In a peculiar way, the SoundDock Portable's real competition is a multizone music system that you'd have to pay someone tens of thousands of dollars to install. Chalk up another one for Dr. Bose. — Al Boline