Portable Summer Sound

Acoustiphase Mini Cannon Bluetooth Speaker

This sweet little speaker does exactly what it says on the tin. It’s highly portable, would fit easily in a backpack, and looks like what it is: cheerful and no-fuss.

Set-up is easy, although not obvious without the guidance of instructions. For its size, the Mini Cannon has fairly decent sound quality, with very good volume output. There is a certain tinniness to the sound, but that’s to be expected for a speaker this wee; there are no magic spells case on it to make it do the impossible. It works best with genres that aren’t so heavy on the bass, where the missing frequencies aren’t so obvious, and sounds better when listening a bit off-axis rather than straight on, because the harshness is less obvious. For the frequencies it covers, it covers them fairly well.

A conveniently-placed mute button on top, surrounded by a touch-wheel for volume, make for a clean and intuitive design, and as a useful addition, it has a 3.5 mm stereo auxiliary input – great to conserve battery or connect to a wider variety of sources. The metal enclosure feels robust and solid, and although it makes the speaker slightly heavier than one might expect, it’s clearly made to travel, and would probably hold up well. At £79 it might be slightly on the pricey side for what it is, but it’s certainly not the kind of product that you’ll be tossing after a few months. If you’re looking for something portable, this is durable, sleek, and decent-sounding.

NAD VISO 1BT Wireless Bluetooth Music System

The NAD VISO 1BT is a dream to set up, and although it comes with minimal instructions in the box, it’s laughably easy to pair up with a phone and get playing. The Bluetooth connection is also solid, with no drops in signal. It’s a sleek-looking device, with the only buttons being the volume controls, power button, and source selection (Bluetooth or optical cable). The power indicator light is, unfortunately, slightly awkwardly placed, which means it can be a tad difficult to see if the device is on.

With smallish audio devices, too little bass is always a concern. Not so with the NAD, which overcompensates with an exaggerated bulge in the bass and low mids, resulting in a loss of clarity in the higher mids and trebles. It sounds a bit like it’s had a blanked thrown over it, and while the bass-heaviness might appeal to some, it probably won’t be a good fit for audiophiles.

Fortunately, there are fixes. EQ fiddling at the source of the music could help to mitigate the muddiness, but there’s also a much more lo-fi option: the single bass port that exaggerates the really low bass can be blocked with a cloth to give a more balanced sound. We found that a pair of socks worked beautifully.

With a £399 price tag, the NAD is not really a portable speaker, but it's smaller than many home audio systems and doesn't boast the quality you'd expect in one. Its handle makes it easy to move around, and it's light enough, so if you're road-tripping to somewhere with a power source, it would fit in nicely as a better-than-a-matchbox holiday audio system. If you’re looking for something fairly decent that won’t break the bank and will sit neatly as a single unit, and you don’t mind either the bass or donating a pair of your socks to the good cause of decent sound, this might just work for you.

ThumbsUp Bluetooth Splash Speaker

This tough little demon set our hearts a-pounding for one principal reason: it’s splashproof. Its robust, rubberised enclosure can happily stand to take a fair number of drops, and it can even be used in the shower. Setting all other considerations aside, this alone makes it the perfect summer companion, for pools, beaches, or the much more commonly Scottish rained-out summer picnic.

But does it sound like rubbish, you ask? No, it does not! In fact, it packs a serious punch for its size, with good coverage of a balanced range of frequencies. While the Mini Cannon has better sound quality in the frequencies it covers, the Splashy sounds a tad better because it doesn’t leave so much of a gap. At £23, this seems like a dream companion for summer and beyond.