The Best $50 Bluetooth Speaker?

With some of these speakers having a mic, some having multipoint, and some having extra features that the others don’t, there’s guarenteed to be one that’s just what you’re looking for.

The Design

Both the Tribit Stormbox 2 and JBL Clip 5 offer a fairly similar design, with the Sony offering a taller tower design which doesn’t really take up any more space on your desk though. They’re all around 300g with only 40g separating all the speakers here so none of them are particularly heavy.

The Clip 5 and Stormbox Micro 2 are both wrapped in a speaker fabric. This helps to offer IP67 protection making both speakers dustproof and waterproof. The XB100 comes with a plastic speaker grill instead yet still offers the same level of weather protection.

You can listen to all these speakers either with them lying flat or haging off something using the integrated lanyard, hook, or clips,that are on these speakers.

Controlling the speakers are all very similar too with all speakers offering controls that play and pause the music, and well as adjusting the volume, and powering the speaker on/off and bluetooth pairing.

Connectivity

You can pair each of these speakers up with another like speaker as they all support stereo pairing. However, whilst the Clip 5 and Stormbox Micro 2 support multipoint, so you can connect to two devices at the same time, the Sony XB100 does not do this!

Battery Life

So whilst the Sony doesn’t have multipoint, it does have pretty good battery life. The XB-100 offers 16 hours of battery, compared to 12 hours from both the Clip 5 and the Micro 2. However, what the Sony is incredibly bad at is charging. It will take 4 and a half hours to charge the XB100 up to full, which is insane! The other two take around 3 hours. 4.5 hours is just such a long time to charge a speaker this small. So that could be a deal breaker for you.

The Sound

The sound specs of all three speakers are incredibly close with only a few millimeters separating the sizes of the drivers in each one. The JBL Clip 5 has the smallest, with a 44mm driver. The XB100 has a 46mm driver, and the Micro 2 has a 48mm driver. Although size isn’t everything.

The power driving all those speakers is a bit different as well. The XB100 is the smallest with only 2.5w driving it. 7w on the Clip 5 and 10w driving the Micro 2. So on paper the Micro 2 should be the loudest.

Frequency response plays a big part in how good music sounds, and here the Sony is the lightest only supporting 100 Hz to 15 kHz. You’ll get a wider range on the Clip 5 with 95Hz to 20 kHz, but it’s the Stormbox Micro 2 with the largest range of 70 Hz to 20 kHz.

When I tested these I was surprised how loud the XB-100 was, especially considering how under-powered it looks on paper. There’s also a surprising amount of bass here, way more than I was expecting. Vocals and instruments still remained nice and well balanced too. They weren’t drowned out by that bass. It’s certainly a speaker that at low volumes I could pleasantly listen to. However, it is the smallest and the quietest out of these three speakers which makes it a speaker best suited to personal listening rather than trying to play to an entire group.

The Clip 5 and the Micro 2 are definitely a league ahead though. They both go loud for their size, neither distorted when pushed, and both were about the same from a loudness perspective. The Clip 5 had more of a bass emphasis, with the Micro 2 providing more clarity in the vocal frequencies to make people sound clearer.

Mobile App Support

The great thing here though is that you can tweak the sound of both of these using the mobile app that accompanies both of these speakers. Unfortunately the Sony does not have any real app support.

The JBL and Tribit speakers have mobile app support that allows them to not only get firmware updates but to also tweak the EQ if needed. There’s a 5-band EQ available to the Clip 5, but a number of audio presets and a 9-band custom EQ available to the Micro 2.

Taking a call

If you want a speaker that you can use to take calls, well there are two of these speakers that have a mic and one of them that doesn’t! It’s the JBL Clip 5 that has no mic. The XB100 easily beats the Micro 2 in terms of mic quality with my voice sounding nice and clear whether I’m right next to the speaker, or several meters away. So if taking calls on your speaker is a priority then the XB100 is definitely leading the pack from the other two.

The Extras

There are a couple of extra things that two of these speakers have that might push you over the edge as being your preferred speaker.

The JBL Clip 5 comes with Auracast support. This allows it to pair up with any other Auracast compatible speaker, regardless of brand. I’ve tested this paired up with a pair of the Earfun Air Pro 4 earbuds and the same music played out of both!

Something the Tribit Stormbox Micro 2 has, that the other two don’t, is the ability to act as a power bank. So you could use it to charge your mobile phone for instance which is great if you’re going traveling, or going camping, and you run out of power on your phone as you could use this speaker to charge it.

Verdict

So which to buy? Well they’ve all got pros and cons. Two have mics. One has Auracast. You can use one as a power bank. Two have multi-point. So which one’s best I think just depends on what your priorities are in a speaker.

Whichever one you get, with prices around $50 at the moment, you won’t be disappointed.