This Bluetooth speaker is a little different to the ones that I have looked at on the channel, this speaker has a built-in lamp that is housed in the top of the speaker.
Video Review
Design
The design of the speaker is very minimal and fits right into a home environment. Most of the spherical design is taken up by the soft diffused light that is the main feature of this speaker.
On the front side, there is a small display that can be used to see the time, battery level and audio source. It is also used to set the times for alarms. On the back is where you will find your various connectivity options. The speaker not only supports Bluetooth but also microSD cards up to 32GB in size containing MP3 and WAV files and 3.5mm AUX input.
The button placement is at the bottom of the device. I think this is quite an “interesting” place to put the buttons as it means that if you want to interact with the speaker at all without a phone, you’ll need to pick up the speaker and flip it over to see what you’re pressing.
This isn’t a huge problem, but I do think that some of the buttons, such as the play and skip buttons, could’ve been placed in a more convenient place.
But enough of where the buttons are, the buttons themselves are media playback controls and buttons to set your alarm, set the time and sleep. Around these is a rubber ring that will help prevent the speaker from sliding around on a surface.
On the top is the speaker driver itself as well as a capacitive button that you can tap to cycle through different light intensities and modes.
Sound Quality
The sound quality of the speaker is okay, it isn’t terrible, but it isn’t fantastic either.
The low-end bass frequencies sound quite good and punchy, but it’s the mids and highs where the speaker falls a little short. The higher end frequencies sound a little muffled and not that clear as the bass frequencies.
Part of this could be because the speaker only has a single speaker driver, in comparison to a typical Bluetooth speaker that may have two or three to cover different frequencies.
If you listen to a lot of podcasts or stream spoken radio, you won’t notice the muffling as much as if you were listening to music, spoken word sounds very clear and easy to listen to. The speaker does get very loud though, so that can be good if you want to have sound playing throughout your room, it will have no problem getting up to volume.
But if you’re considering this speaker, I’m assuming the speaker quality isn’t going to be a huge deal breaker as you may be looking at it for the added lamp functionality.
Features and Accessories
The speaker supports Bluetooth 4.1, which unfortunately isn’t the latest 5.0 technology, but is still extremely common in mobile devices.
The speaker has alarm functionality which you could use to wake you up in the morning as the speaker also turns on its lamp when the alarm begins.
The LED lamp functionality is also handy to have as you could have the speaker on your bedside as save some space on the surface as you wouldn’t need a speaker and a lamp. The lamp itself has four different brightness intensities for its warm colour temperature as well as a red and colour changing mode.
The speaker can also work over USB with your computer and act as a computer speaker when you plug it in over micro USB.
Battery Life
The speaker is estimated to have up to 4 hours of play time when listening to music depending on the playback volume – which does seem quite short. As speaker does get very loud it is unlikely it would be all the way at 100% volume, so you should get a decent amount of battery life from it when you want to listen to music.
Charging the speaker will take a few hours to get it back up to 100%.
Conclusion
So, in conclusion, if you’re looking for a Bluetooth speaker – there are definitely better-sounding speakers out there for the price. But if you’re looking for a speaker with a built-in lamp, I think this is a good choice. The build quality is decent, and the speaker manages to blend into the environment it is placed in.
