Review: Divoom Airbeat-10 Wireless Bluetooth Water Resistant Speaker
Not sure what a “saction cup” is but it might explain why it does not hold like a suction cup would
I’ve reviewed so many compact bluetooth speakers over the years that I feel I have written “Sounds great for it’s size” over a hundred times. And it’s true. Even $30 speakers sound pretty damn good these days, and if you take into account that they are the size of a deck of playing cards AND have a 6 hour rechargeable battery life, it’s hard to complain about the sound quality. However, it’s also hard to review them, as there’s not much to differentiate them from the countless others on the market. They all fall squarely in the “sounds great for the size” category.
So it admittedly takes a gimmick to get me to bother reviewing one of these portable speakers, and the Divoom Airbeat-10 (On sale for $30 at Amazon) HAS that gimmick in the form of its water resistant construction.
Like many of you, I like to listen to music while in the shower. What I HAD been doing was just leaving my iPhone on the sink or bathroom windowsill while I showered, relying on its not great-but-ok-sounding speaker to blast out slightly distorted tunes. IT worked OK, but had two drawbacks – first, it was sometimes hard to hear over the sound of the shower, and second, I kept feeling that all that shower steam couldn’t be doing anything good to the insides of my iPhone. So when I saw the Airbeat-10, I figured it would be worth a shot.
Soundwise, yes, this speaker falls squarely in the “sounds good for its size” category. However, it DOES deliver both surprising volume and above-average bass for its size as well. The bass is accentuated by a design which uses any flat surface to sort of function as a sub-woofer, and since the Airbeat comes with a suction cup mount (as well as a screw on handlebar mount for bikes) this would appear to be ideal. However, I found that the suction cup would not hold for more than a day or two, and would usually fall in the middle of the night, causing a startling amount of noise in my shower. So eventually I just decided to leave it sitting on my sink, where my iPhone used to sit, and it sounds great.
I suppose I could have used the handle bar mount to fasten it to my shower curtain rod if my shower had one (mine has a sliding glass door) but then the bass would not have had anything to bounce off of, and there is DEFINITELY a difference in sound quality when you hold the speaker versus when you lay it flat on a table (or sink).
Given that I am listening to this speaker in the shower, and echoey place with suspect acoustics AND a loud amount of water hitting my head, I can’t exactly say I expected or needed the sound to beat a Bose home theater. All I wanted was to be able to hear my music while in the shower, and that it does well. IT is clear enough that I can listen to podcasts or 1010 WINS news via my iPhone, which I now leave sitting safely on my dresser in my bedroom, away from the shower’s steam.
Other nice features that I doubt anyone will use is the aux port, if for some reason your phone does not have Bluetooth, and the mic feature, incase you wanted to use this speaker as a speaker phone. I would think that would be overkill, and the iPhone alone would work better, but it’s there if you want it. The Airbeat 10 charges via an included USB cable (not included AC plug though), and the battery claims to last 6 hours. I’d say this sounds about right. I only listened to it 12 minutes a day on average, and I went over a month without charging it.
Conclusion
Aside from the failed promise of being able to suction this to my shower wall and leave it there (it kept falling every day or two) the Divoom delivers on its promise of cheap, compact, rechargeable music for your shower/bathroom. The included bike mount means there are other mounting options, although sound quality will suffer when not placed against a flat surface. The real selling point is the water resistant design, which means from the shower to poolside, you can still have your tunes while keeping your iPhone safe and dry.
Price: (On sale for $30 at Amazon)
Pros: Small, cheap, sounds great (for its size/price), water resistant, 6 hour battery needs only month charging when listened in 10 minute increments, saves your iPhone from getting wet, included bike mount
Cons: Suction Cup mount fails after a couple days and inevitably falls
MacChick anyone?