Awesome sound, half-baked features

This speaker has awesome sound, impressive volume, and a ton of features.. but many of the features seem half-baked. Still, the core functionality is very solid.

Sound

Over bluetooth or playing from microSD, audio sounds amazing. The default mode feels well balanced, with plenty of bass, and the bass-boosted "Outdoor Mode" takes it up a notch.

And the volume - it gets SO LOUD! I still haven't turned mine up to the max volume yet, but it it can reportedly output over 100 DB. There's a rumor that someone cracked their drywall by playing this thing at max volume with the bass boosted for a party - maybe that's why they call the bass boost "outdoor mode"!

Bluetooth

When connected via bluetooth, it supports the "universal volume" feature, so your phone's volume buttons control the speaker volume and vice-versa. It does not support battery level reporting, so all you have to go on is the 4 dots next to the power button. Bluetooth latency is pretty bad, at ~500ms. It's fine for playing music, but could be annoying for movies or gaming. I don't have any other auracast speakers, so I haven't been able to test that feature out yet.

Line-in

The line-in, however, has almost no latency. (I measured about 40ms, but that's what I get when playing directly through my phone's speakers, so that might be entirely on the phone's side.) There's a bit of a hiss at higher volumes, but you can turn the volume up on your source and down on the speaker to reduce this. I don't have a guitar, but I assume that input is about the same as the line-in.

MicroSD

When playing from a microSD card (and, I assume a USB flash drive), it supports .mp3 files and that's it. I tried opus, flac, and aac (.m4a), and it wouldn't play any of them. It does support folders, and it remembered my place when I switched to bluetooth and then back to microSD, so that's nice. Long-pressing the volume +/- buttons switches track, but I don't think there's a shuffle mode or anything like that. I haven't tried USB, but I assume it's the same.

USB-C OTG

The USB-C OTG (On The Go) input was the biggest disappointment. It doesn't support volume control, so it's always at max volume, with an audible hiss when nothing is playing, as if it's going through an analog step somewhere along the line. It also doesn't provide any power, so you can't use your phone as a source and charge it at the same time. Finally, it doesn't even want to work half the time. Sometimes, if I connect the phone, then turn the speaker on, it works, other times it doesn't. And I've never had it automatically switch to USB-C from another input, even if it was just connected moments ago. I got better results with a $7 USB-C to headphones adapter and then connecting to the line-in port on the speaker, because at least then I could adjust the volume to remove the hiss. Apparently it's supposed to support audio output over OTG for streaming, but I haven't tried that yet.

Battery

Battery life seems fine - it went from 4 dots to 3 after an hour or two of playing music at moderate volume levels. It does not work without a battery installed - the lights come on, but it won't connect, play, or output any sound.

When I plugged it into USB-C, it drew ~60w (with a 100W e-marked cable and 85W charger) when not playing audio, so it recharges the battery reasonably quickly.

Microphone

The microphone works but is kind of annoying. It has a fake echo turned on by default (possibly to hide some latency?) and I haven't figured out how to turn it off. There's an echo button, but it seems like it actually makes the +/- buttons temporarily control the microphone volume (?) There are also volume controls on the mic itself, and some other settings that I don't understand. It is pretty good at suppressing feedback (possibly related to the latency), and my kids like it. But I probably won't use it.

RGB Lights

The RGB lights are meh. My kids like them, but I cycled through all of them and didn't find any of them that appealing. Half of them don't seem to even respond to the music.

Size and weight

Physically, this thing is a chonker! It seems sturdy and well-built, but it's over 20 pounds and doesn't fit inside my largest backpack. I haven't tested the "waterproof" claim (really should be "splash proof" for IPX6 - do NOT submerge this thing in water). I assume it'll handle some spills as long as you have the little rubber strip covering all the ports.

Summary

Overall, I'm pretty happy with it, but I really think they could make it a better product by either fixing or dropping some of the broken/incomplete features.