Gadgetory

mini bluetooth speakers come in all shapes sizes and colors but they all share one thing in common they're small and some are really small hi I'm David Carr for cnet.com and here are a few things to consider before buying one of these speakers start by thinking about how portable you want the speaker to be versus how good you want it to sound people email me saying hey David I'm looking for the smallest loudest playing speaker that has a lot of bass the only problem is such a speaker doesn't exist small speakers just can't output a ton of bass and most distorted higher volumes so if you go really small expect to sacrifice sound quality though a lot of these little speakers play louder than you'd expect the idea is to get one that can play pretty loud but doesn't distort or at least doesn't distort badly and has fairly natural sound if you plan on using the speaker outdoors a lot it's a good idea to get one that's water resistant or even waterproof they tend to meet more durable it's also nice if the speaker has an integrated accessory like a clip carabiner or a loop that lets you hang the speaker or attach it to your backpack or belt when you're not using it if you don't mind a more generic looking design Amazon's got plenty of budget options from no-name companies some are perfectly good for the price but others sound comparatively mediocre and also may not hold up well over time battery life is important in a tiny speaker you want to get at least six and ideally eight hours of playback time anything that's rated at fifteen hours or better is very good standard range for Bluetooth is 33 feet or 10 meters but some speakers offer extended range of up to 30 meters or 100 feet which can come in handy particularly outdoors many of the latest wireless speakers are equipped with Bluetooth versions 4.1 or 4.2 bluetooth 3.0 speakers work fine but each successive version of bluetooth brings small upgrades bluetooth 5.0 which is supposed to offer improved range in bandwidth is not far often we should see speakers that use it in early 2017 certain speakers allow you to wirelessly link two speakers together to make a stereo pair or daisy chain several speakers together to cover a larger area with sound and I personally like a speaker that has a firmware upgrade option which allows the manufacturer to add features and sometimes improve the sound some Bluetooth speakers have a speakerphone function which simply means a micro phone is built into the speaker so you can take calls through the speaker it's a nice bonus feature but not necessarily a must-have I personally wouldn't pay more than about $40 for a really tiny Bluetooth speaker and I think there's plenty of good stuff in the 50 to $100 range particularly those products get discounted after being on the market for a while premium models cost around two hundred dollars which is a lot to pay for a little speaker but if the design sound and performance are clearly a step-up it can be worth the investment and that's the mini bluetooth speaker category in a nutshell to get the skinny on specific products read our text reviews and go to our top products list to see what the highest rated products are I'm David Carr Noy thanks for watching