A great little toy to add to your bag of tech tricks.
It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of Logitech hardware, keyboards, mice, speakers I’ve had them all. Now tablets are becoming an everyday tech tool, accessories are becoming more important. Logitech have been kind enough to send us another of their mobile device accessories to review and put out the good word to you. I have to say, the word is good, but not brilliant.
- Lightweight
- Physical Size is quite small
- Good but not brilliant sound for a small device
- Battery life on the speaker is outstanding
- Bluetooth range is short when not in line of site to transmitting device
- Streaming via 3G or Wifi to the bluetooth speaker destroys your phone battery very quickly!
- Audio quality is ok at low volume or for voice eg. Phone calls or podcasts but distorts at high volume
- The USB cutout on the back looks like it’s been done by a first year apprentice with a caffeine addiction
For a speaker that literally fits in your hand, I was genuinely surprised at the output from it. Not only the volume that it’s capable of producing, but more importantly the quality of the sound it produces. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not planning on replacing my Sennheiser headset with one of these but the sound is truly remarkable for what it is and in particular, the cost.
As part of the testing process I wandered around my house with the speaker and found that inside 2 meters, the sound was flawless. While still in line of site, I was able to move more than 10 meters from the transmitting device and still maintain great sound. As soon as there was a physical barrier (even a simple gyprock wall with no electrical cabling internal to it) in the way, the range of the speaker diminished far worse than I expected! Throw in a little bit of electrical interference and you’re down to little more than 3 meters range.
While this alone is not a problem, the fact that streaming via 3G or WiFi and broadcasting that stream via bluetooth to the Mini Boom Box killed the battery in my phone (which was nearly 100% at the start of this test) in a little under 2 hours. I must highlight that I don’t see this as a fault with the device, more an observation from my use scenario for the Mini Boom Box which presented an issue if you don’t have access to mains power.
As a supplementary device that you might want to take with you on a weekend trip for some music around a campfire, or out the back on your deck the Mini Boombox is a great device. The look is quite slick despite the finer details being a little lacking in the manufacturing process and the performance is at the right level for what you pay for the device. It’s not experience for music but is more than capable of playing some music at a background level. Certainly something I’d recommend adding to your bag of tricks if you’re out and about a lot and certainly the balance of performance, battery life and size is probably worth the RRP of $129.95 – You can find it cheaper with a little hunting around.
the usb cut out at the back looks fine to me?
Sounds like using the AUX port would be a smart thing.. Too bad it doesn’t do speakerphone stuff as well..
RRP of $130 is too high, halve it and you are close.
Bear in mind it’s Logitech — you can generally buy their products online for half the RRP.
Totally agree – the RRP is a bit steep.
But I’ve seen them as low (online prices) in Aus as $90 without too much effort in hunting the cheapest price.
Agreed. The best price I could find is mid to high 80’s plus delivery.