SOUNDBOKS 4 Review
The Bottom Line:
The Soundboks 4 manifests as a pinnacle of acoustic engineering, blending powerful output with refined sound quality. Its thoughtful design and robust features make it a compelling choice for those seeking a resilient and high-performing Bluetooth speaker.
Portable speakers have come a long way in delivering high-quality audio experiences that can rival even the most impressive home audio systems. With origins from a Kickstarter project that was successfully funded, Soundboks has been featured on our list of the loudest Bluetooth speakers ever since!
The SOUNDBOKS 4, the latest iteration from the renowned SOUNDBOKS lineup, takes portability and sound quality to new heights. In this review, we’ll dive deep into the features and capabilities of the SOUNDBOKS 4 to help you decide if it’s the right sound companion for your outdoor adventures and events.
Construction & Aesthetics
Meet the Soundboks 4, a remarkable entrant in the Soundboks series, renowned for its formidable Bluetooth speakers. Despite being more compact than competitors like the JBL PartyBox 710, the Soundboks 4 boasts a staggering volume capacity, reaching peaks up to 126dB, setting a remarkable standard for battery-operated speakers.
Setting itself apart from the bulkier counterparts in the market, the Soundboks 4 is designed with portability at its core, weighing a manageable 35.5 lbs. Equipped with strategically positioned handles, it ensures ease of transport, making it versatile for both indoor and outdoor auditory experiences.
Crafted with precision, its frame is forged from powdered aluminum, paired with a front-facing steel grille, available in shades of grey and black, and easily removable for convenience. Nestled behind the grille are the architects of its powerful sound: a trio of drivers, including two robust 10” woofers and a precise 1” tweeter, orchestrating a symphony of deep lows and crisp high frequencies.
In a thoughtful touch, silicone spheres adorn the speaker’s corners, elevating it slightly off the ground, enhancing stability, and minimizing potential wear and tear. A testament to its rugged design, the Soundboks 4 carries an IP65 weather-resistance rating, safeguarding it against dust and moderate water exposure, and ensuring resilience against elements like light rain and splashes.
Opting for durability over flashy aesthetics, the Soundboks 4 foregoes features like LED lights, embodying a rugged and durable design philosophy. A reliable companion for a myriad of adventures and events, it stands as a robust speaker, ready to face the challenges of diverse environments and usage scenarios without compromise.
Audio Mastery of the Soundboks 4
Acoustic Excellence
The Soundboks 4 heralds a new era of enhanced audio performance, marking a significant improvement from its predecessors. It orchestrates a broad sound signature, delivering profound bass depths and a harmoniously balanced sound across various EQ settings. The speaker’s design allows for a natural and intricately detailed rendition of upper frequencies, setting a new benchmark in auditory fidelity.
Volume Prowess
A defining characteristic of the Soundboks series is its awe-inspiring volume capabilities. The Soundboks 4 continues this legacy, boasting the ability to produce a thunderous 126dB at maximum volume, a testament to its powerful auditory potential. This speaker doesn’t just play music; it creates a vibrant and immersive sound environment that fills the space with sonic brilliance.
EQ Versatility
The Soundboks 4 offers a palette of EQ settings, each meticulously tuned to cater to various listening environments and preferences. From the ‘Lounge’ setting, optimized for casual listening in intimate spaces, to the ‘Dance Floor’ preset, engineered to bring life to the party with deep, pulsating bass, and the ‘Stage’ setting, crafted for live performances with balanced and vibrant acoustics, the Soundboks 4 ensures a tailored listening experience.
Technical Proficiency
Equipped with powerful drivers and advanced amplification technology, the Soundboks 4 showcases technical proficiency that enhances its audio delivery. The speaker utilizes advanced components, including sensitive woofers and tweeters, and powerful amplifiers, to create a sound that is both robust and refined, ensuring that every note is delivered with precision and clarity.
EQ Settings Explored:
- Lounge: Tailored for smaller spaces and ambient listening, this setting curates a warm and balanced sound, ensuring a relaxed and enjoyable listening experience.
- Dance Floor: Engineered for vibrant party atmospheres, this preset emphasizes a powerful bass and enhanced high frequencies, creating a lively and dynamic soundstage.
- Stage: Designed for live performances and higher volume levels, this setting offers a balanced sound output, ensuring clarity and detail in every note, suitable for musicians and DJs.
Each EQ setting is a testament to the Soundboks 4’s versatility, allowing it to adapt and excel in various auditory landscapes, ensuring that the sound always resonates with the listener’s preferences and the environment’s demands.
Battery Performance of the Soundboks 4
Consistency in Power
The Soundboks 4 inherits its battery from its predecessors, the Soundboks 3 and the Soundboks Go, utilizing a 12.8 V, 7.8 Ah LiFePO4 battery. This consistent choice reflects a trusted and reliable power source, ensuring that the speaker performs with endurance and resilience.
Adaptability in Playtime
The battery life of the Soundboks 4 is adaptable, offering up to 40 hours of playtime at a moderate 50% volume. However, the speaker’s endurance is influenced by the chosen EQ settings and the intensity of the volume, demonstrating flexibility in performance based on user preferences and environmental demands.
EQ Influences
Different EQ settings have varied impacts on battery consumption. For instance, in the ‘Lounge’ setting, the Soundboks 4 exhibits a playtime of 7 hours at full volume. In contrast, the more bass-intensive ‘Dance Floor’ and ‘Stage’ settings offer a playtime of 6 hours at maximum volume, showcasing the speaker’s ability to sustain powerful performances over extended periods.
The battery performance of the Soundboks 4 is a harmonious blend of consistency and adaptability, ensuring that the speaker is always ready to deliver a captivating auditory experience, regardless of the setting or volume intensity.
Connectivity in the Soundboks 4: A Symphony of Options
Versatile Connections
The Soundboks 4 orchestrates a symphony of connectivity options, ensuring versatile and convenient user experiences. Equipped with a 3.5mm auxiliary input and output, it allows for a traditional wired connection, enabling music playback from various source devices, and offers the flexibility to daisy chain additional speakers for an amplified sound experience. For the enthusiasts of live performances and karaoke, the inclusion of two XLR inputs facilitates connections with guitars, DJ controllers, and microphones, enhancing its usability and appeal.
Wireless Wonders
In the realm of wireless connectivity, the Soundboks 4 embraces Bluetooth 5.0 technology, ensuring a reliable and stable connection across significant distances. This allows for a seamless wireless experience, enhancing usability and convenience. The speaker also harmonizes with the ability to pair wirelessly with up to five speakers, creating a powerful and synchronized auditory environment. While some speakers offer more extensive chaining capabilities, the Soundboks 4’s offering is substantial and apt for most scenarios, ensuring a vibrant and immersive sound landscape.
Intuitive Pairing
Pairing is orchestrated with intuition and ease, allowing the Soundboks 4 to wirelessly synchronize with other models like the Soundboks 3 and Soundboks Go. This thoughtful feature invites users to explore enhanced soundscapes by utilizing existing speakers for increased soundstage and coverage. The control panel and accompanying app are tuned to facilitate effortless navigation through pairing modes and settings, allowing for customization such as stereo configurations and channel assignments.
The Soundboks 4’s connectivity suite is a composition of versatility, convenience, and thoughtful design, ensuring that it resonates with a broad spectrum of user needs and preferences, creating a harmonious and user-friendly auditory experience.
Mobile App: The Conductor of the Soundboks 4 Experience
User-Friendly Design
The mobile app for the Soundboks 4 is crafted like a maestro’s baton, guiding users through a symphony of features with ease and intuition. Its user interface is elegantly designed, ensuring that navigation feels natural and effortless, allowing users to engage with the speaker’s functionalities seamlessly.
Versatile Control
Acting as a remote conductor, the app empowers users to orchestrate the Soundboks 4’s performance with versatility. It allows for precise control over pairing configurations and provides a palette of EQ modes to tailor the auditory output to the user’s preferences and environment.
Informative Display
In a harmonious blend of functionality and information, the app also serves as a real-time guide, illustrating essential details about the speaker’s performance. It provides insightful information such as the selected EQ setting, estimated battery life, and the potential volume output, ensuring that users are well-informed and can optimize the speaker’s performance based on real-time data.
The mobile app enhances the Soundboks 4 experience, ensuring that users have a powerful and intuitive tool at their fingertips to optimize and enjoy the speaker’s performance to the fullest.
Soundboks 4 vs. Soundboks 3
Design and Build: The transition from the Soundboks 3 to the Soundboks 4 is marked by subtle yet impactful refinements. While the foundational design retains its essence, the Soundboks 4 introduces a reimagined grille, enhancing durability and aesthetics. This new design feature not only improves the speaker’s resilience but also simplifies the grille removal process, marking a thoughtful improvement in user experience. Despite these enhancements, the Soundboks 4 maintains a familiar silhouette, with a slight increase in weight attributed to the grille redesign, ensuring continuity in its robust appearance.
Acoustic Improvements: In the realm of audio performance, the Soundboks 4 orchestrates a symphony of enhancements. While the Soundboks 3 was celebrated for its sound quality, the fourth iteration elevates the auditory experience, focusing on depth and detail. Innovations such as an upgraded Digital Signal Processor and improved drivers contribute to a richer sound profile, allowing the Soundboks 4 to delve deeper into low-end frequencies, crafting a balanced and refined auditory landscape.
Volume and Battery: The Soundboks 4 maintains the series’ iconic volume prowess, with both models peaking at a powerful 126dB. However, the battery life in the Soundboks 4 strikes a higher note, offering enhanced performance and longevity, particularly at maximum volume, where it outshines the Soundboks 3 by up to 20%, ensuring that the rhythm keeps playing longer and stronger.
Connectivity: Connectivity in the Soundboks 4 remains harmonious with its predecessor, preserving the reliable and versatile options such as Bluetooth 5.0, auxiliary, and XLR connections. This consistency ensures that the speaker remains adaptable and ready to connect with a variety of devices and setups.
In the symphony of evolution from the Soundboks 3 to the Soundboks 4, each change, whether subtle or significant, plays a part in composing a refined and enhanced user experience, marking a thoughtful and impactful progression in the Soundboks series.
Conclusion
The SOUNDBOKS 4 lives up to the high standards set by its predecessors. It’s a portable speaker that offers not only powerful, high-quality sound but also the durability and features needed for outdoor activities. With customizable sound options, versatile connectivity, and an impressive battery life, it’s a versatile audio companion for any occasion.
The SOUNDBOKS 4 will ensure that your music is the life of the party. While it comes with a premium price tag, the combination of sound quality, durability, and long-lasting battery life justifies the investment. So, if you’re looking for a portable speaker that can handle the great outdoors without compromising on audio performance, the SOUNDBOKS 4 is the one to consider.
The Bottom Line:
The Soundboks 4 manifests as a pinnacle of acoustic engineering, blending powerful output with refined sound quality. Its thoughtful design and robust features make it a compelling choice for those seeking a resilient and high-performing Bluetooth speaker.
