Do you really need one of these little speakers? If you've got anything larger, probably not. But if you lack one and most especially if you're on any sort of budget, this little overachiever is worth checking out. If nothing else, you'll get more than your money's worth from it.
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We here at Stuff sometimes encounter a bit of tech we’re expecting to be okay that turns out to be worth far more than the price of admission. The Mi Portable Bluetooth Speaker, a new edition of the little puck-shaped speaker from Xiaomi, is just one such device.
If you trust us you can close the review now, head out, and drop around R600 on one of these delightful little pucks. If you’re after budget-friendly portable sound that will literally fit in a pocket (while giving you quite a bulge) while also filling a room, this is exactly what you’re after. Heck, even if you’ve got the money for something more expensive, it’s worth considering picking up one of these.
Simple little puck
The reason for our initial underestimation involved the Mi Portable Bluetooth speaker’s build. The small grey puck-shaped object is about the size of a human palm and is about two fingers thick. Since we’re using the human hand as a yardstick, there’s also an orange loop just right for jamming over a thumb. But that’s… about as far as it goes. There’s only a single button, on the base of the unit, that handles all of the physical functions. Finally, there’s a USB-C charge port concealed behind a substantial plastic plug. As Bluetooth speakers go, there’s almost no additional fat on it at all.
And that was where our mistake crept in. Yes, the build quality is decent. The grey plastic feels fairly rugged, with a rubbery-feeling finish. The port plug is similarly reassuring. Finally, the speaker vents are covered with a grey fabric, further giving the impression of a hockey puck that’s dressed up for the evening. But it’s still small and cheap, and we mistakenly thought those facts would translate over to the Mi Portable Bluetooth speaker’s performance.
What the puck?
We were wrong. The Mi Portable Bluetooth speaker’s audio capabilities are completely out of keeping with its appearance, as slick as that appearance is. This speaker is tiny. It doesn’t have so much as a volume control on it. There’s just a power button that doubles as a play-pause and Bluetooth sync key. It weighs just 185 grams. So why does the speaker sound so flipping good?
That’s actually a question for Xiaomi’s engineering department. The speaker itself is so dinky that Xiaomi doesn’t even list a wattage for the driver. There’s a 2,000mAh battery inside there and Xiaomi also opted to give its little audio wonder an IP67 rating. Technically, it’ll survive a trip into the shower with you. It’ll even make it out of the bath, if you keep the trip under 30 minutes. The battery gives you a little short of the advertised ten hours and USB-C makes charging it again a breeze. But none of that explains its outsized sound.
Your source device handles volume control but you’ll find yourself listening to audio with almost perfect clarity several rooms and several walls away. You don’t have to. It’ll ride in a hoody pocket just as happily, but we left the thing and wandered off to see where the audio would drop off.
It’s not all power and no tact either. Some music fares better than others and we found that audiobooks handled particularly well but as long as you’re not after room-shuddering bass, you should be pleased with the Mi Portable Bluetooth speaker’s performance. Mids and highs are clear and it does what it can with the bass. Your rest surface comes into play here — leave it on a wooden table and you’ll even snatch a rumble or two from your Spotify playlist.
Xiaomi Mi Portable Bluetooth Speaker verdict
The Mi Portable Bluetooth speaker looks like a R600 speaker. It’s got the basic feature set for one, but if you happen to have two (they’re cheap enough) you can also pair them in tandem for some stereo action. But the build, the waterproof rating, the battery life, and most especially the audio quality are at odds with the price. Maybe it’s the size of the speaker. If Xiaomi put exactly this hardware into a bulkier pill-shaped chassis it could probably charge approximately double for the hardware with no other changes. As it stands, picking one of these up feels almost like robbing the Chinese firm. Maybe you’re into that. What the puck do we know, after all?