Soundfreaq Wireless 'Sound Spot' Fills a Room With Music
What's This?
2013-07-21 16:52:17 UTC
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The portable Bluetooth speaker market is sizzling hot, making it difficult to pick a standout among the crowd of contenders. I found a worthy candidate, the Soundfreaq Sound Spot, a diminutive wireless music maker with an attractive wood-like façade that makes its $69 price a surprise. Let's listen carefully, and see if it can topple our favorite tiny speaker.
What looks like bamboo on the front is a cleverly painted piece of plastic, a design embossed by using a process called hydrographic printing. The result is lovely, giving it a rich look that I swore was wood until Soundfreaq told me otherwise. If you don't care for this wood/white look, you can also get the speaker in black, and the company says there are other colors coming in a couple of months.
After wirelessly pairing it up via Bluetooth, I was again astonished with the acoustical engineering chops of Soundfreaq designer and co-founder Matthew Paprocki, whose range of fairly priced iPhone docks and wireless boomboxes have never failed to impress. The Sound Spot is no exception, rocking bass that sounds a lot bigger than its 5-inch-tall size, and giving you equalization choices of flat, warm or bright modes to suit your musical taste.
Warm, Flat or Bright?
Exploring those equalization controls, I found the "warm" mode to lack enough high-frequency response for listening to crisp mixes, but it was appropriate for classical music, making it sound smooth. The "flat" mode punched out clean sound, making saxophones sound especially good, but it still wasn't crystalline enough for me. Flipping it into "bright" mode, however, was like baby-bear territory for me — sounding just right, and giving me the shimmering and well-defined high frequencies I crave.
The advantage of most of these wireless mobile boomboxes is their road-friendly portability, and the Soundfreaq satisfies in that department as well. While it's bigger than the smallest mobile boomboxes, it's still light enough to invite you to carry it along to the beach or a picnic. Its rechargeable battery lasts "up to seven hours," according to Soundfreaq, and in my testing, certainly lasted longer than the most lengthy picnic I've ever attended.
Compared to Its Best Competitor
How does it sound compared with other speakers of its ilk? To determine that, I brought out my favorite mobile boombox up to this point, the Logitech UE Mobile Boombox, and compared them side by side. It became immediately apparent that the Soundfreaq box easily blows away the Logitech model, especially in the bass department. That's not surprising, considering that the Sound Spot is about 2.5 times larger than the Logitech UE.
The Sound Spot slam-dunked the Logitech speaker with better midrange and more well-defined high frequencies, as well. It's a better-looking and better-sounding speaker overall, and that's especially pleasing when you consider that the Sound Spot costs $69, compared to the $99.99 price tag of the Logitech UE Mobile Boombox.
If you're looking for a great deal in a wireless, rechargeable Bluetooth boombox that can amplify your portable device's sound to room-sized proportions, you've just found it. It's my new favorite speaker in this bustling and highly competitive category.
The Lowdown
What's Good
Powerful, loud and accurate sound, especially bass
Aux Out lets you connect another speaker for full stereo
Low price
Fake wood finish looks and feels great
What's Bad
Could be a bit smaller, but then the bass probably wouldn't sound as good
I only have one of them
Images: Mashable, Charlie White
Topics: bluetooth, Boomboxes, Dev & Design, Gadgets, Mashable Choice, Mobile, reviews, Soundfreaq, Tech
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