Speaker Month Day #4: Tweakers miniPOP Portable Bluetooth Speaker Review

     The market is flooded with miniature Bluetooth speakers. The Tweakers miniPOP, the newest speaker release by Grandmax, a small tech firm, is not much different than other small Bluetooth speakers on the market in terms of features. On the flip-side, the miniPOP is competitively priced at only $20.00 on Grandmax's website.

     Despite its humble appearance and the fact that it is even packaged in a plain white box, the speaker is well-built and has all the features you would want in a speaker this size. It feels extremely lightweight and good in the hands, things probably attributed to the fact that it has only a small, 320 mAH rechargeable battery inside of it. It also utilizes Bluetooth 2.1 and also has an auxillary cable feature if you want to directly plug in your MP3 device and play music without a loss in quality. Unfortunately, you cannot daisy-chain the speaker to other speakers to get stereo sound. 

      Another thing I found interesting about the speaker is that, despite it being rated at 3 watts (the average for speakers in its class is 2 watts), it sounded like a 2.5 or possibly even a 2 watt speaker. Compared back-to-back with the 3 watt Francois et Mimi "Trois" speaker reviewed here, the miniPOP was clearly the loser in terms of volume (but fared slightly better in terms of sound quality). On the other hand, songs playing at maximum volume on the miniPOP played flawlessly and without distortion.

     Stay tuned for my review of the Tweakers Lites, another new product by Grandmax, coming this month.