Usage and Testing

 

The first thing you’ll need to do is charge it and that’s done with the included USB cable and power adapter.  There’s a tiny LED next to the USB port that will light up to let you know it’s charging.

 

Since it’s a Bluetooth speaker my first testing was with my HTC One cellphone and it paired with no issues at all. The controls on the Mobile Speaker worked just fine, at least the play and pause did and what I mean is that the volume controls are independent of the device you’re paired to. This is a great feature I think, you can use the volume on your phone for the master level and then adjust it as needed on the speaker. Personally I think all speakers like these should have their own volume controls so it’s nice to see it here. The Bluetooth LED on the speaker will light up and blink letting you know it’s active.

 

 

I then dug out a regular 3.5mm audio cable and hooked the speaker up to my ZuneHD  which is just as easy as can be after all it’s just an audio cable so it’s a straight connection. The play/pause did not work here but I didn’t expect it to, so no surprise. The volume on the speaker works of course.

 

Using it as a regular speaker with the cable is fine but the speaker has no kind of indicator on it to let you know the device is actually turned on. It’s kind of annoying. While I was testing and switching devices I wasn’t sure if it was on or off because there’s no LED to indicate power which doesn’t make much sense to me.

The sound from the Bem Mobile speaker is decent, but it will get slightly distorted at high volume levels especially if there’s a lot of bass. Speaking of bass, if you have it sitting on your desk near you, you can actually feel the vibrations through your desk. I had the speaker sitting on my mousepad for a while and turned up the volume, the speaker actually moved around with the vibrations and vibrated its way across my pad. My mousepad is plastic and it’s meant to have little resistance, but on my desk the Mobile Speaker stayed put and didn’t move as the rubber base held it firmly in place.

The speaker can get very loud, but it depends on the device. Using it with my HTC One I found it can get much louder than using it with my ZuneHD.

Battery life seems fine, six hours usage should be more than enough than enough really, if not you can just plug it into any available USB port and you’re set.

One of the unique and useful features about this product is that it can be used as  Bluetooth receiver so you can turn any non-Bluetooth speaker into one. To do this you just use that 3.5mm audio cable and plug it into the Auxiliary out port on the speaker and then plug the other end into the non-wireless speaker or speakers. You just pair the Bem speaker as normal and play music which will then be played through the speakers you connected to it.