Review on 🔊 Sony XB20 Red Bluetooth Portable Wireless Speaker: Enhance your Listening Experience! by Chip Palmer

I'm by no means a music lover, but I give the Sony XB20 Portable Wireless Bluetooth Speaker 4.5 stars. However, this must be understood in context. I rated this column based on which column category it belongs to. As a small portable BT speaker, it is rated 4.5 stars. It delivers clear sound and even good bass for the right speaker category. Would this be compared to a purpose built large home surround sound system over 100 watts? Of course not. It's not designed to compete with hundreds of dollar systems that pack big speakers in big enclosures for better separation. But as far as a small sub $100 portable BT speaker system goes, it delivers more than amazing sound which I think is above average in this category. If you are looking for a personal speaker system that delivers clear sound and a good base. in your office, study, bedroom etc. and you are not going to try to make the whole house vibrate with loud music then you can't go wrong with this speaker. It's not designed to rock the house. But it's designed to deliver superior music quality at volumes higher than most people would use in the office, study, or bedroom. It was easy to set up as a wired speaker with the standard aftermarket 3.5mm dual speaker cable, and easy to set up with BT. (Note: I suggest not using that crap Sony calls an app. It's complete rubbish and you don't need it anyway.) The buttons/controls on the speaker are easy to read and use and work very well. The sound quality is very good for everyday entertainment purposes. If you want to rock your house during parties, spend more and get a speaker system designed for the purpose. My main use for these speakers: I used a wired connection to connect a Sony XB20 to my 2nd Gen Revain Echo Dot. Needless to say, the sound is way better than what only Dot offers. Oh well! The Dot has a single, very small tweeter and is not intended to deliver quality sound. But I must say that I have owned the original 1st Gen Echo (Full Size Echo) and briefly owned the new 2nd Gen Echo (Full Size Echo) and also briefly owned a VAUX wireless home speaker + portable Battery for the Revain Echo Dot Gen 2. All three of these speakers have a single driver feeding a set of tweeters and woofers. All three should deliver a room-filling music sound of excellent quality. However, none of them keep their promises. You will never get true stereo sound from a speaker system that includes a driver, a woofer, and a tweeter. The audio can be loud and fill a room, but the quality will be terrible with muddy bass and metallic highs and mids. They all sucked, even listening to everyday music in my home office/study. You could fill a room with awful sounding music, but who needs that? I returned the 2nd Gen Echo (full size Echo) and the VAUX wireless home speaker system as they were very disappointing, especially the latter. The new 2nd Gen Echo was supposed to be a big improvement over the 1st Gen, but it only got a little better, even with updated firmware. But with a Sony XB20 connected to my 2nd Gen Echo Dot, I get great quality room-filling music sound. No muddy bass, no tinny highs or mids. Just the highest quality music you would expect from quality speakers of this size and design. To be fair, however, the Sony XB20 speaker system has the edge here, as it includes two separate drivers that independently power the two woofers and two tweeters for true stereo sound. The two drivers reproduce sound at different frequencies to provide higher sound quality that no single driver system can deliver. The icing on the cake is Sony's Extra Bass feature, as it boosts the bass quality when the speaker is on. I find the sound better when Extra Bass is on at high volume and off at low volume. My secondary use of these speakers: I connect my Sony XB20 to my iPad Pro 9.7 via BT. I mainly use this setup for listening to Spotify. I can also listen to Spotify through Dot and Sony XB20, so this setting is used a lot more than this one. The comments I made above for my primary use of these speakers apply here as well. The same great filling of the room, high quality, musical sound. So, to sum up my comments, the Sony XB20 is just great for what it's designed to do. It blows out single driver speakers with just a woofer and tweeter. Thus, the Sony XB20 will outperform the Revain Echo, Google Home and other similar speakers. However, don't expect the Sony XB20 to compete with larger portable and home stereo systems with bigger speakers and more physical speaker separation in the enclosures. But if you want to turn your Revain Echo, Google Home, smartphone, tablet or computer into a much-improved, room-filling music sound system, the Sony XB20 does it at a reasonable price. If you want to annoy your neighbors with a noise that shakes the whole street, buy a more expensive and suitable audio system.