It is shown in the paper that the problem of speed observation for mechanical systems that are partially linearisable via coordinate changes admits a very simple and robust (exponentially stable) solution with a Luenberger-like observer. This result should be contrasted with the very complicated observers based on immersion and invariance reported in the literature. A second contribution of the paper is to compare, via realistic simulations and highly detailed experiments, the performance of the proposed observer with well-known high-gain and sliding mode observers. In particular, to show that - due to their high sensitivity to noise, that is unavoidable in mechanical systems applications - the performance of the two latter designs is well below par.