Summer is coming to end, but that doesn’t mean our parties or tunes need to end. Music brings people together and can make a stale gathering a rather innervating one. Moreover, music can also provide excellent background noise for when working outside or in the garage on a car.
Sometimes though, there is more to the speaker than just giving you music. There’s the clean aesthetic appeal, the additional features, and, of course, the price.
Everything from rugged, to high dollar, to compact and portable, I’ve taken my fair share in reviewing a large selection of speakers. After listening to so many devices, you’ll be amazed at what you can pick out and know whether you are listing to quality or a knock-off.
A good contact of mine recently reached out to me and informed me of a new speaker hitting the Amazon store. With nearly 1000 reviews, a near perfect five-star rating, and a price that allows for quality, but not over doing it, this was something I had to check out.
Known as the VAVA Voom, this speaker won’t be winning any naming awards, but it shines so brightly that most people won’t care. Containing dual-connection Bluetooth, 20W surround sound, and a deep bass, this may be one of my favorite portable speakers on the market.
Welcome to my review of the VAVA Voom Bluetooth speaker. Throughout this review, I will be discussing the following topics: the design, functionality, and my final thoughts. Thank you to Sunvalleytek for providing me with this speaker.
Design
The VAVA Voom has a different, yet appealing design and shape. Marked in an all-black finish, the Voom is crafted into, what can be best described as, a long oval shape.
A tour around the Voom showcases a top mounted I/O which contains a power button with battery indication, Bluetooth pairing, phone connectivity, an equalizer button, NFC, Play/Pause, and, finally, independent volume control. On the rear you’ll find an AUX-in, a full sized USB port, a micro-USB port, and a DC-Power in jack.
There are gripes I have about these buttons. One is that they are not backlit. While this isn’t a deal breaker, for a $99.99 product, it’s something I would expect on a model like this. When you compare this to say a RIVA speaker, Riva use backlit and capacitive buttons for a similar price. The second grumble I have is the feel of the buttons. This product’s quality is superb in its build quality, but the buttons feel cheap. I believe this feeling comes from the plastic buttons combined with a shallow button press.
Building material of the Voom is a mixture of the aluminum front and rear speaker guard, followed by a thick plastic housing that makes up the top, bottom, and sides.
With only three speakers inside and an internal battery, there is some significant weight to this speaker. Weighing in at 1.76 pounds and dimensions at 6.89 H x 10.59 L x 3.31 W inches, it isn’t as travel-friendly as you’d expect, but it does make a great visual appearance in the room.
Something to note for the rear I/O, this speaker is designed to be powered by either the micro USB port or the DC jack. I tried powering the speaker with the micro USB port, but discovered that even after five hours of charging I was still at only 1 – 33% battery. DC charging is far superior, but be careful as you can accidently put the DC jack into the AUX plug as I did.
On the subject of charging, the Voom can sacrifice some of the internal 6,700 mAh battery to help charge your connected USB device. In most cases, this will be a smartphone, as the output is only a minuscule 1A output.
Functionality
An internal blown up picture of the Voom shows us that there are three front facing speakers. Two of them are 5W drivers and the other a 10W bass. Then on the back are two passive radiators.
My first connection with the Voom was through an Aux cable to ensure a clean and secure connection. I loaded up SiriusXM radio for my favorite rock station.
Straight away I was surprised at the impressive bass this speaker was outputting. It wasn’t overwhelming, but it made a presence in the room. After about two hours of listening, I played around with the equalizer buttons on the Voom.
There are three EQ settings. The first is your standard audio playback. Here I enjoyed the music the most, but what I found is that it seems very muted. I turned the speaker up to maximum volume and then the phone to 50% and it was just beginning to get loud. I would prefer louder sounds with this setting.
Next, there is the party EQ. This is deep and bass focused and it was too much for my liking. If you listen to hip-hop or heavy bass songs, then party will be ideal for you. However, in rock and roll, the bass overwhelmed nearly everything and sent the mids and highs to the void.
Then, you have your surround EQ. The description here is that you get sound coming from every direction. While that is somewhat true, what I liked the most about it was the louder music. I like to call the surround setting the best of all three EQ settings.
My time with the Voom remained on an equal amount of time for the standard and surround EQ settings. When it comes to sound quality, I was quite pleased with how everything sounded. This speaker didn’t blow me away as something like a RIVA unit, but impressive for what it is.
Voices and instruments were present and they didn’t overlap each other. Lows, mids, and even highs were well liked by bystanders, and I must agree with them. One thing I really enjoyed was how well the bass felt and even sounded.
The Voom uses a aptX codex and can output to a maximum volume of 78 dB. The sound frequency rests around 60 – 18k Hz which is fair for a speaker of this size.
For battery life, it could be better. Just after four hours, the Voom was reporting that I was already at 33 – 67% battery life. VAVA reports that you can get ten hours of total playback and I expect in its early life you can manage that time.
I mentioned before that this speaker comes with NFC connectivity. I asked myself, why? Perhaps the Voom has onboard storage and you can put songs onto it for listening to later! No. They claim that it’s a faster way to connect over Bluetooth and I find that to be false. Bluetooth is already a fast connectivity method and NFC in this speaker is just an unfortunate useless selling point. The Amazon page for this product hypes the Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity, which it should.
Recall the play/pause button on the I/O. You would expect this to perhaps play and pause your songs, like Pandora or SiriusXM. Instead, all this button does is pause the actual speaker. Hitting it again will play the sound, but the song has continued on. The real usage I found for this button was that I could pause the sound to listen or talk to somebody.
My Final Thoughts
I believe that for $99.99 this is a quality built and well-designed speaker. The sounds are rich and were well liked by others that I had listening to it. While this is an indoor designated speaker, the surround 360° room filling sound is fair when the right equalizer mode is applied. Let’s also not forget that this speaker also comes with a lifetime warranty. You’ll never need to worry about it breaking down on you. While this isn’t a $200 RIVA model, this is a speaker that fits its class well for a reasonable price.
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