I’m always on the lookout for wireless audio solutions that really work, because I’m perpetually in need of quality wireless audio. Whether it’s for better headphones while I run, less fussy audio in the car, or less clutter in the home, a solid wireless audio solution has to have that perfect balance of decent fidelity, easy handling, zero clutter, simple use of space, and so forth.
Enter the LON Little Speaker… and if that isn’t the truthiest truth in advertising ever, then I can scarcely imagine what would take that crown. At 2 inches by 2 inches, this tiny white speaker can easily fit in the palm of your hand and, without any intrusive wires or connection cables to be found, will fit pretty much everywhere you need it to be.
Let’s take a few looks at the unit. Here is the general unboxing:
The unit is safely boxed and padded, and the speaker comes with a charge cable (your basic mini-USB) and instructions.
The left side of the speaker houses the charge port as well as a line input in case you want to connect audio directly:
… whereas the back of the speaker has your power button.
According to the instructions, the speaker requires two hours of charging and provides four hours of playback time. After charging the speaker, I found pairing it to my phone via Bluetooth was a breeze. I simply turned it on, put my phone into Bluetooth scan mode, found the speaker, and clicked the Pair button. No passcodes any other connection issues presented themselves. The pairing took barely a few moments and we were good to go.
To give you an idea of how small this thing is, here it is stacked against my 3″ Ludwig von Drake vinylmation:
Again: this thing is tiny! The biggest (and let’s be honest, most important) question here is, “How well does audio sound when coming through such a tiny speaker?”
The answer is: Not bad. In fact, it’s probably better than what I was expecting from 8 cubic inches of electronics. Still, expectations have to come into play here; anyone expecting serious fidelity from this speaker probably needs a serious talking-to. This speaker is for quick, easy, portable listening, travel, background audio in a work environment, or any kind of temporary or in-a-pinch needs. For comparative purposes, I listened to music as diverse as Miles Davis’s Sketches of Spain, Rush’s 2112, Punch Brothers’s Phosphorescent Blues, and a few podcast episodes. I was overall pleased with the results I received from the speaker. For a little mono speaker, it had reasonable sound quality and decent reproduction values. I was expecting something thinner, maybe tinnier and with less range, but my expectations were exceeded. The results were fairly impressive.
Now there is no volume control on the speaker itself. Volume changes are handled from your paired Bluetooth device. This really isn’t a drawback in and of itself, but it does mean any kind of equalizations and levels you want to make must be done on your sound source. I wanted to see how loud I could make this thing go and I was able to really make some noise erupt from the Little Speaker; at those levels though, everything got pretty messy and distorted. You’re not going to break any windows with the Little Speaker. But why would you want to?
While the manual promised four hours of playback time, I was able to squeeze almost six hours from it (the online advertisements and marketing for the device also state up to six hours). I generally used my speaker at lower volumes at my work desk, which resulted in a longer playback time.
The LON Little Speaker retails for $38, which means how much value you’ll get out of it is directly proportional to what your audio needs are. For work, travel, or business needs that require easy wireless portability and simple, reasonable sound fidelity, this tiny but effective unit will perform quite well for you.
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2015 Matthew Millheiser
