🔊 SMSL SA-36A Plus: HiFi 30W2 TPA3118 Bluetooth Amplifier w/ USB & TF Card Input Review

I'm impressed with this product, especially at this price. Drives two Bose 100 outdoor speakers perfectly and would be a welcome addition for streaming music while I work in the garage.

This is a great way to make "dumb" unamplified speakers work without a powerful amplifier. If you're like me, you've got a couple of vintage speakers that still work and sound great, but there's no easy way to use them with a Bluetooth-enabled smartphone or tablet. Well here is your answer!

Good product, I had other SMSL stuff and that seems to be standard. Bluetooth isn't very strong I suspect due to the short antenna. I'll try higher gain and see if that helps. The manual is printed on the back of the box and is included with this review for reference for others as it is not published anywhere online.

I bought this to power my ceiling speakers and play Bluetooth music from my phone. As an amp it's ok. Much energy. But the Bluetooth capabilities were too limited and it was very difficult to figure out how to get it to connect to the phone or reconnect after it wasn't used. Basically, my technique was to randomly press the buttons until it finally connected to the phone. I just replaced it with a better model hoping it would be easier to use.

I connected the SMSL SA-36A to a pair of SONY speakers (SS-H170) and the sound quality is pretty good. It's amazing how such a small amp can drive such large speakers. The Bluetooth connection works great, music plays from the USB stick (mp3 and wav files) without any problems. It remains to test the micro SD card connected to my laptop, the AUX input and the USB input to use the amplifier as a DAC. The manual that came with it says it can work as a DAC, so I'll test it.

Bought this amp to replace Lepai 2020A; It has twice the net power (almost 30 watts). When all my wires and cables were taped together, I had poor Bluetooth performance. I've had better results with a cleaner setup. I like the equalizer button and the four "tone" settings that can be easily toggled for podcasting and music streaming. I didn't use the USB or microSD card inputs, but the AUX port works well for a better Bluetooth/Chromecast audio receiver or phono stage. Loud enough for bedroom…