Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsA Good Sounding, Inexpensive Bluetooth Speaker
Reviewed in the United States on March 11, 2020
I purchased this product to replace a Logitech X300 I gave to a friend who was facing several months w/o his stereo and only a phone. The Logitech sounded pretty good for my purposes, which is basically replacing hotel room radios. I needed to get a replacement as I will be travelling in a month or so and Amazon had this on a deal, so I snapped it up.
I was favorably impressed with the build quality of the speaker when first unboxing it. It feels solid, with a nice grippy exterior, good heft, and rubber sealed aux and power ports. The speaker is quite handsome, too in its elegant oval form and basic black color scheme. It is a little bit wider than the Logitech, but not as high. The buttons on top of the unit are glossy black on flat black and are easy to see. The one drawback is the multifunction "Play" button whose function varies depending on how many times you press it. Press once and you pause, press twice to skip forward a track, press 3 times to skip back. And everything changes if a call is coming in. Oh well, I usually use the phone for these functions anyway. Pairing with my phone was cake, put the phone into pairing mode, press the Bluetooth button, select the speaker as the device on the phone, and accept the pairing request. Easy, peasy.
But this is a speaker and no matter how nice it looks or how reasonable the UI, how does it sound? First remember that this is a fairly cheap Bluetooth speaker and it has its limitations. I didn't expect it to sound as good as my ZVOX Soundbase that I use as a Bluetooth speaker in my bedroom when I am not using it as a speaker for my TV. I also didn't expect it to sound as good as the HEOS 3 wireless speaker I use in my office. And I certainly didn't expect it to sound as good as my main 5.1 system in my living room. That being said, it did not disappoint. The sound was quite a bit more lively than the Logitech. Without the XBASS turned on the bass is solid and balanced with the midrange and treble. Overall, the sound is pretty good, much better than the Logitech. However, on dense mixes the sound can get a little muddy, I heard this on some afro-beat stuff I listened to with lots of horns. I wouldn't hold this against it too much, since these sorts of tracks are difficult for just about any reasonably price speaker of any size. Dense horn mixes are hard. With XBASS turned on the bass becomes artificially bloated and tends to muddy the sound. This might work for bass heavy music but did not work for my ears.
Overall, the sound was quite good for this type of speaker, especially given its price and form factor. I gave it four stars for sound quality in the universe of small speakers I have had experience with. In it's class, it gets five stars. For my purposes, replacing a lousy hotel radio, it is superb.