I have been through my fair share of portable Bluetooth speakers in my time so when I saw the size of this 1byone speaker and it's MSRP I honestly didn't have high expectations. To say I was pleasantly surprised by this Bluetooth speaker would be an understatement.
The overall construction feels solid and has a very satisfying weight to it. It is lined by rubber all the way around sealing off any entry points for water or dust, hence the IPX6 rating. This is well designed for being an on-the-go speaker, small and portable, and able to take a beating. I would not worry about dropping this at all or throwing it in a bag.
Speaking of features, it uses Bluetooth 4.0 and was extremely easy to pair with my iPhone 6s+. The battery level is shown in iOS once paired and battery life was as advertised and had no issues at all. There is also a microSD card slot, but I did not have one to test with, though I appreciate this inclusion. When you open the cover that exposes the USB port and card slot, the card slot flashes blue to let you know it's waiting for card input. There is also a USB mode where you can connect it to your PC through a micro USB cable. This worked real well and worked like a charm, much better than my built in monitor speakers.
I've always wanted a good Bluetooth speaker for my shower and it works for this purpose extremely well. The speaker does not mind getting wet at all. I guess you could technically take a call in the shower as well as there is a microphone input, but I don't recommend taking calls in the shower, it's just bad form. But you could if that's your thing.
Now, being a test engineer, I know that every design is not perfect or can be improved in some way and this speaker is no different. I had to read the manual to figure out exactly how to change the volume because I could not figure out how to change it. Turns out that you have to hold down the skip buttons for them to change the volume. This can be problematic since it doesn't step through the volumes but will just increase at some unknown rate. This makes finding a precise volume quite difficult. This could either be alleviated by adding dedicated volume buttons, or an audible "ding" for each new step volume instead of being a complete guessing game. The other minor quibble was that the flap covering the USB and card readers was a tad difficult, but nothing that affected anything major and still seemed to maintain waterproof abiility.
If you're looking for a Bluetooth speaker that is a good all-rounder and need something that can take a little bit of a beating, look no further than this guy. At around $20, it's a great bang for your buck Bluetooth speaker and definitely recommended.
