Gear4 Blackbox Bluetooth Speakers
Listening to music has just become more stylish with Gear4 releasing their new Blackbox Bluetooth speaker system and the Blackbox Mini for those who want more portability. The Blackbox allows the user to connect via bluetooth or 3.5mm jack to your PC, Ipod and even mobile phone.
So after a week of waiting the day finally came where I received my Blackbox from Gear4. My first impression was that it is much smaller than I’d expected it to be. Upon opening the packaging the first thing you notice is the look: a sleek high-gloss black finish with blue control lights and a brighter red LED display for the equalizer on the front. I know that to some people this might not be important, but I like it when something doesn’t only perform well but looks good while doing so.
It was simple to set up, just a simple plug-in and play. The controls are kept to a minimum which comprise of volume, play/pause, track skip and pairing functions, along with a LED control which will cycle through different equalizer display modes. Along with the player came a remote control which allows you to use any of the controls mentioned before from quite a distance away and also includes mute and standby buttons which aren’t on the player itself.
The 24 watt output from stereo speakers is pretty good for a device this size; it’s more than enough for the average sized bedroom. The sound quality is great, even when on a higher volume. Although the sound doesn’t overly distort it would be a nice addition to have treble and bass controls for the user to fine tune the sound.
The pairing process was quite straightforward; it gives an in depth explanation in the user manual for those who have any trouble with it. The only downside I have found was when I paired it to my PC, it worked well for half an hour but then my PC went into power saving mode and the music stopped, I wouldn’t really consider this to be a fault in the blackbox, more something I need to remember in the future as I can imagine if pairing to a PDA or mp3 player for example it would act the same way if the player goes into standby. When using the Bluetooth aspect of these speakers I have paired it with my mobile phone and my PC, both paired quite easily but the sound quality is reduced, quite significantly when I used my mobile so much that I couldn’t listen to it for that long, when using a PC it was reduced, but not by so much.
All in all I’d say that Gear4 have done a pretty good job with these speakers. The wired output from them is excellent, the Bluetooth is average and it looks amazing, especially if the black gloss finish matches your PC.
06.02.2008. 19:04
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