Gadgetory

hi and welcome back to hardware unboxed I'm your host Matt and today we're taking a look at creative soundblaster raw to creatives first edition of the Sound Blaster roar was extremely well received in an already fairly saturated portable bluetooth speaker market creative somehow crammed room-filling rich audio into a small asleep package the first time around and the good news today is that the design team has managed to deliver that same audio quality into an even smaller and lighter package with the sound blaster roar - to be exact the bra - is 20% smaller and 10% lighter than its predecessor and this time around we've got a choice of either white or black in what is a much more attractive design at $230 the MSRP is a little higher than that which the original roar carried upon release although both can be had significantly cheap and then both of these figures online as I mentioned the bra - comes in at 20% smaller than the original it's just 188 millimeters long 109 millimeters wide and 51 millimeters thick the quick control buttons right along the gray strip at the top of the unit starting with the power button volume down and up and then a multi-function button for activating the Bluetooth and answering and ending calls next to this there's a small wire LED indicator that lets you know when bluetooth is active looking further along this gray strip there are four more small LEDs one red one that indicates when the device is recording and three green battery level indicators lastly the NFC label shows you where you can use near-field communication to connect with your smartphone or other NFC enabled devices at the rear of the raw - you'll find the rest of the connectivity and control buttons and ports the connectivity first you have a DC inputs to power in charge of the device with the supplied adapter and a three-and-a-half millimeter jack for aux-in next in line there's a female USB 2 port which allows you to charge devices such as smartphones through the built-in battery a micro USB to import allows users to charge this battery using a standard micro USB charger then finally we have a micro SD card slot so you can play media from removing storage at the other end of the unit you can find all the remaining buttons and controls a small switch allows you to toggle between USB and Mass Storage playback from the SD card board and back buttons allow you to scroll through tracks and a play/pause button allows you to do just that a start recording button play pause recording button and enable/disable mics which allow you to control the recording functions using the built-in microphone lastly the raw button allows you to enable the raw and Terra based audio enhancements overall the design is quite simple sleek and consistent the front cover is ventilated still while the rest of the unit is constructed from plastic that feels and looks very nice the chassis is rigid thanks to its one-piece design minimizing any rattles from vibrations and the bottom of the unit features two long rubber feet that create a nice cushion between the raw and whichever surface it may be sitting on emblazoned with the creative logo to side firing base radiators pulsate with the base during music playback and this is probably the coolest part of the overall design now let's take a look at the internals creative have informed us that the same 5 high performance drive is featured in the original raw have been carried over to the new raw - meaning inside we have two 1.5 inch far-field high frequency tweeters along with a single two and a half inch active high excursion driver or subwoofers creative call it the final 2 speaker drivers creative refer to with the side firing base radiators which are actually non-powered passive radiators these help to deliver space filling base tremendously while still keeping the package nice and small the raw button on the unit unleashes creatives Terra based feature which cleverly compensates the loss of loudness and bass during low level playback this means the device will intelligently increase the loudness of the bass that low to medium levels until the master volume is near at maximum output where this processing will stop I found terabytes worked really well and provided much more rich and dense sound especially when I was using outside in open environments when using the raw - I didn't really find a time when I didn't want the raw button toggled on perhaps the only time I could think I would be if you're listening to music in bed as you fall asleep and want some soft music at very low volume the overall audio quality this portable Blu speaker delivers is truly impressive with the tera bass enhancement the bra - provides really great performance at all volume ranges and is especially remarkable at higher volumes for its size and weight for anything under $200 it's really great value and you certainly won't be disappointed with the sound or range of features that it provides thanks for watching another Hardware unboxed review I'd love to hear what you guys think in the comments and on our forum AHA brown-box com don't forget to hit like hit subscribe and I'll see you guys next time rap on