Meet the Beosound Explore, the newest portable speaker from Bang and Olufsen. It may look a little tame considering the audio maker’s lineup of more extravagant (or abstract) designs, but make no mistake: this bad boy has some pretty impressive tech packed into it, the most exciting of which being the inclusion of the new standard for Bluetooth connections, Bluetooth 5.2

Explore anywhere with the Beosound

Bluetooth 5.2 is partially responsible for the tiny speaker’s 27-hour battery life, says The Verge. It’s also significantly more efficient when it comes to transferring audio from your devices, so you can get more out of it for less battery.

The Beosound Explore is also impressively rugged. It’s an 8x12x8cm speaker that’s fully dust and waterproof, with an IP67 certification. Bang & Olufsen’s demo videos show a couple of folks putting the speaker through the wars: rolling it around a sandy beach, dumping it into the dirt, and submerging it entirely in a rock pool. Then they pop it on a rock, turn it on, and get some jams going sans difficulty, it seems.

It looks like the perfect speaker for rugged outdoor excursions, or if you’re just… incredibly careless with your tech.

Sound-wise the Beosound Explore has some solid tech going for it as well. It’s got a pair of 1.8in sound drivers that offer 360-degree sound that Bang & Olufsen says will perfectly carry in up to a 30m² room. How well it fairs outside is hard to judge and dependent on what kind of environment you’re in, but considering the specs, you can probably bet it’ll still deliver some sweet tunes outdoors.

The speaker is currently available in black and green, with a grey model coming later this year. The US price is $200, which translates to R2,800 in SA. That’s not confirmed though, as we’re not sure about local availability just yet. We’ll keep you posted.