With the multitude of portable Bluetooth speakers on the market nowadays it can get pretty confusing to find one that suits your requirements and doesn’t cost the earth…take to the stage the Philips BT3000B which looks to offer a well priced and decent sounding portable Bluetooth speaker.
A good place to start, like most things, is at the beginning and from unboxing to playing music via Bluetooth it only takes a few minutes which is exactly what you want from a portable speaker. Another thing you’ll notice straight away is the impressive size of the unit, most items at this price point are small nimble affairs but the Phillips is a big bulk of a unit and that’s always reassuring.
A big cabinet always means big sound and this can go to a pretty decent volume but you will notice that as you get louder the sound does start to distort slightly and some of the nuances of the song can get lost. Of course if you’re using this as an outdoor atmosphere maker or if you are not to fussed about the highest fidelity then this loss as a high volume isn’t going to be as important. With that being said though it does have a reasonable separation of sound at lower volumes and a nice enough sound stage ability.
From listening to it I found that it was well suited to Techno style music giving me a satisfactory rendition of Hudson Mohawkes’ Ded Sec album, and it could also handle Punk music as it managed The Drips “16, 16, Six” as well as I could hope. I also listened to a mixture of metal, drum and bass and easy listening through Spotify each of which giving a decent sound but having a slight struggle when certain tracks started throwing around more variable sounds than an ordinary song. I would advise that if you do listen to complex music or Hi-Res music then maybe this isn’t the right speaker for you.
For portability you do need to use 4 AA batteries which is a blessing and a curse. A blessing because if you do ever forget to charge it you can just pick up some batteries from your local shop, and a curse because you may end up spending more than you want if you run out of juice on the go. My advice would be to go for some nice rechargeable batteries that you can use for this or anything else. Of course you do have the ability to plug this into the mains for power if you don’t want to have portability.
Connectivity wise there’s a 3.5 line in and of course you have the Bluetooth ability, and whilst we’re on Bluetooth the Philips has a built in mic so you can even take calls by pressing the phone button on the speaker and save yourself disconnecting it to take the call.
All in all if you’re looking for a nice affordable speaker then the Philips BT3000 could be the unit for you…so if you would like to check it out of if you’re looking for something a little bit more intense then don’t hesitate to pop into your local store and hear what else is on offer.
Click here to find out more about the Philips BT3000B.
Author: Hal, Plymouth store
