WIRELESS SPEAKERS

TAKE YOUR BEATS ON THE ROAD

Portable Bluetooth speakers have displaced full-size hi-fi as the default music-listening experience and although they cost just as much - or more, in some cases - they offer cordless freedom and the ability to have your tunes travel with you to wherever the party is jumping

BUYING GUIDE

SOUND QUALITY

The obvious trade-offs are speaker size and portability against sound power and audio quality. The nature of electroacoustics is that it's very difficult to make music sound truly great with small speakers. In general, we advise always choosing sound quality over volume. Clear music always sounds louder anyway. And bad quality is only amplified as you turn the volume up.

WEIGHT

Most Bluetooth speakers are designed for portability, but anything over 1 kg is harder to handle with one hand, and difficult to lug around for extended periods. Look for a good carry handle on bigger speakers.

CONTROLS

Well-placed control buttons with decent tactile feedback are surprisingly hard to find, in part because proper buttons are easily broken or damaged if you are moving your speaker around. In addition, such buttons also affects the waterproofing. 

As a result, most speaker buttons are a pain to use, but you should check their positioning, at least.

INPUTS

All Bluetooth speakers also allow you to connect using an aux cable with a 3.5-mm headphone jack at both ends. This will normally result in a volume boost and save a lot of battery power.

SMART FUNCTIONS