Neat design, decent sound
Distorts at full volume
Despite its warmongering moniker, Philips' convenient go-anywhere speaker boasts an eye-catching design, can stream sounds over Bluetooth, and creates a much bigger boom than it looks capable of.
It's on sale now for £40.
There's a lot to be said for the design of the hand grenade, which dates back to 1915. Palm-sized, with rounded grippable casing, it's perfect for secure carrying in a bag or on your person.
Philips' take on the design is encased in a ribbed rubber coating that gives it a bit of protection if you should drop it and it comes with a detachable caribiner clip so you can hang it from your belt or backpack to boost your sounds when you're in company.
It comes in combat-style olive drab or electric blue.
The single 1.5in speaker pumps out 2W of power and sits beneath a protective arm which stretches across the speaker aperture. The microphone on the side means the Grenade also works fine as a speakerphone.
The supplied dual-purpose USB cable allows you to connect to a PC for playback and charging, but also incorporates a 3.5mm mini jack connection for a wired connection to any phone or MP3 player.
It can run off the mains or via its rechargeable battery, which connects via microUSB. We ran it for six and a half hours solidly via Bluetooth before it needed a recharge.
Delivery of tunage via Bluetooth was straightforward enough.
Every phone we tried it with found it within a few seconds of flicking on the Blueooth switch.
The sound is big and even bassy -- up to a point. Trying it with several different phones, including the iPhone, it was never comfortable playing at full volume, leading to distortion and excessive harshness in the high end on many tracks. Crank it down a little though, and it gives a pretty good account of itself, with neat balance between bass and midrange, with high end delivery that stops just short of strident.
The sound's big enough to fill a small room and it even sounds pretty good out in the open air. Placing it on a hard surface boosts the bass a little but as a rule you won't need to do so, the bass sounds tight and expressive enough as it is.
Conclusion
The Philips SoundShooter Grenade chucks out a big sound for a portable speaker. It's particularly easy to carry, though a proper cover for the speaker diaphragm would feel a bit safer when you chuck it into a bag. There's no option to hook up two grenades to deliver stereo sound, so there's no pretence that this is a hi-fi speaker. It offers a pretty good sound considering its size and weight but its main attraction is definitely the design, which is neatly portable and lightweight too.
Speaker: 1.5in Neodymium magnet
Power: 2W
Connections: MicroUSB, Bluetooth
Bluetooth range: 10m
Rechargeable battery: Yes
Microphone: Yes
Size: 67x82x65mm
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
