Gadgetory

hey it's Justin you from CNET this is your first look at the Philips Flex Bluetooth speaker so with all the Bluetooth speakers that you can buy on store shelves these days it seems like every model has some kind of unique feature that helps it stand out from the crowd for example you got the JBL clip that has a built-in carabiner and the sole Republic that has threads on the bottom for mounting it to almost anything which brings us to the Philips flex a budget bluetooth speaker that has an impressive 12 hour battery life and an ace up its sleeve you can pull it apart on the top and bottom to expose the radiator which supposedly gives the sound better audio quality and we'll get to that more in a minute in terms of the design the speaker is really lightweight and wrapped in silicone which helps it withstand the elements unlike some of Philips other speakers though this one's not fully waterproof but it can take a few drops of water let's call it water-resistant there's two buttons on the side that help you pair it to any bluetooth-enabled device you can also hook it up to a three-and-a-half millimeter auxiliary cable to this port on the other side and the speaker takes a microUSB cable to recharge the 12 hour battery the hockey puck style design is meant to sit on its back with the speaker firing up into the air but you can also stand it up on its side or use the lanyard hole to hang it from a backpack or belt loop it comes in two colors right now this blue green combination and another black-and-white model but the company tells us that we can expect to see more colors coming soon so let's get to the sound quality despite what the marketing materials claim expanding the speaker doesn't really do much to improve the sound which isn't so great to begin with there's only a 2 watt speaker inside so we weren't expecting too much especially when you've got competing models like an Amazon B TV 2 that has a 3 watt speaker and actually cost 10 bucks less i sampled a bunch of different music through the philips flex and wasn't very impressed with the sound quality it tends to distort at moderately loud volumes and there's a definite absence of bass and mid-range frequencies there I get that Philips is trying to keep costs low here but if you're looking to expand your dollar the furthest and get better audio quality I actually recommend bypassing this model and checking out either the JBL clip the logitech ex 100 or even the Amazon btv - all of those are the same price or cheaper and they all sound much better than the Flex you can read more details in my full review on SEANET but that's going to do it for me I'm Justin you this has been a review of the Philips flex bluetooth speaker thanks for watching