There are an abundance of portable speakers on the market now, and it feels like Gear4 have made a good percentage of them. They’ve just released their new Soundwave, a small portable Bluetooth speaker that holds a 6-hour charge.
It’s designed with carrying around in mind. It’s extremely light, and small enough to fit into a small bag or backpack. Being Bluetooth means that it can be connected to any Bluetooth enabled device like your mobile phone or tablet. If your battery is running low, there is a 3.5mm aux input so you can hard wire your music device directly into the speaker.
Charging the speaker uses a micro USB connection from a PC or a laptop. You can even use a USB wall plug to charge the speaker too. It took an overnight charge for us to get the speaker to full battery power. The Bluetooth max range of the speaker is 10 meters. This works great if you’re outside, but indoors, this becomes a bit of a struggle due to other signals and walls being in the way.
The device is covered in a black soft matte material making it slightly shock proof if dropped. The front mesh is also black. Silver buttons are on top giving you skip track, volume up and down and Bluetooth activation options. I’ve never had a problem with connecting Gear4 products to a device via Bluetooth – this one was the same – it connected first try with ease. ready to play music.
The Gear4 Soundwave is driven by two large speakers, giving some nice mid and high frequencies. However, due to the portability of the speaker, I feel there was a lack of punchy bass. That’s okay. It’s not big enough to be a big party speaker anyway. Think bedroom background music at lower volumes.
The Gear4 Soundwave is a great little portable speaker if you’re looking for some background music. For the price of around £24.99 online, you can’t really go wrong if you’re looking to replace that small Hifi in your house. Although the battery life isn’t the best, 6-hours will still get you through an evening of music.
