Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsAmazing performance, great value, but some quality issues :( !!
Reviewed in the United States on December 9, 2019
OK, so to make things clear, I think that on paper the specs of this Bluetooth speaker are amazing, it has 30 watts of power, stereo speakers, a long lasting battery, party lights, can be used as a charger for a phone and has LDAC high resolution codec playback, has an AUX input, it’s water proof and can float, so yeah it seems like the perfect speaker for modern music and also some Netflix movie nights. After the break in period (approximately 12 hours’ playback) you can start to notice the real sound that it is capable of and it is very impressive, it’s louder than most 200 dollar speakers, so yeah it’s a great value.
The problems started with the first speaker that I received, it simply stopped charging after close to a month of usage. No problem Amazon immediately replaced it and sent a new one. Now the real issue that I have right now is that the second speaker also has defects, as you can see in the pictures the party lights seem to have imperfections on the inside of the crystal and show as weird artifacts on certain angles. This is a huge problem because well I was expecting a new unit, with zero defects and now this comes in.
So take this into consideration, apparently this model in particular has some quality issues, received two speakers and both had some issues, I’m still thinking if I return or not the second unit because it actually sounds very good. The movies sound really good with this speaker and most music sounds great, so it really is a hard decision whether to return the speaker for the second time because of some imperfections with the lights.
If my speaker didn’t have the lights issue I would say that this is close to the perfect portable speaker, because like it or not it has way better sound than most mono speakers in the 200 dollar range, it still fits in a back pack and I can travel with it, just having stereo and the ability to play 3d effects makes it superior to any mono speaker out there and the Sony app actually works great with me, you can change or turn off the party lights, you can change equalizer settings even for the AUX input with the app, and can turn on LDAC codec for high resolution playback.
So take into consideration that you might run into some quality issues, I hope that the speaker last at least two years without any more problems. Some people have complained of hearing the music sound distorted or low quality, but if you have high quality music files & turn on LDAC codec you should not hear any weird imperfections, I did notice the music sounds weird at very high volumes if you are very close, but If I take some distance it balances itself and sounds really good, it sounds good but not as crisp as the JBL xtreme, but almost the same and at a smaller size. I use it at the office at low volumes and sounds really good, really HD. I think this is a great speaker for a small to medium size room, but you need more power for anything bigger if you want some decent bass, for a portable speaker this is really on the edge, probably the best sound for the price. The JBL Xtreme sounds better for me, but it’s bigger and more expensive & also has exposed passive woofers which complicate traveling and can be damaged if anything touches it while it’s playing music. the SONYXB41 practically sounds as loud and almost has the same quality sound so to me the Sony speaker is simply a winner here, more features and at a lower price.
