Review on 🔊 Affordable Sony SRS-XB31 Portable Wireless Bluetooth Speaker, Black: SRSXB31/B by Corey Bigglesworth

After looking at a lot of mid-range portables, I bought a pair of XB31s for stereo use. Once synced, they offer clear stereo separation, and the light show feature (if enabled) is enabled as well. I was a bit nervous about the range because the documentation I found online says the speakers must be within a meter of each other to work in stereo, but that's only during initial setup. Once they're synced, you can place them any distance away (within reasonable Bluetooth range, of course) and still get the stereo effect. Overall, I absolutely love their sound quality: clean, clear highs and lows, and I appreciate the ability to toggle between Extra Bass and Live modes; The latter basically just dampens the bass a bit to bring the highs and mids to the fore. One of these two modes always sounds a little better, with the choice depending on genre and personal preference. You can also adjust the equalizer settings in the app to tweak it if needed. The lighting function is cool and attractive; I appreciate it doesn't look cheap or strapped on, but when it's off you wouldn't guess the thin white stripes around the grille are bright. My only complaint about the lighting feature is that I wish there were more options that didn't include little strobe lights on the edge of the inner grilles. I find them a bit annoying and need attention. I would prefer if it was a separate toggle, separate from the settings that control sidebar colors. Currently there is only one lighting option called "Random Flash Off" which reacts to music without turning on the flashes. You can also set the lighting to "calm" with 5 different color settings that use a stable color scheme for the surrounding LEDs with no flickering flashes. The party booster mode, the thing that turns your speaker into an electronic percussion instrument, works as it should, although I turned it off after a few minutes and never used it again. I really don't want my friends to grab my speakers and hit them. Overall though, I admire the hardware in terms of aesthetics, build quality and sound. The reason I gave it 4/5 stars is that it would be hard to overstate how awful the Sony Music Center app is. It's poorly explained, awkward to navigate, and keeps crashing. For example, if you initially set up two speakers, you must set each separately and disable the other so as not to confuse the application. After that, if you want to use them in stereo, you just need to Bluetooth connect one, then turn on the other and add it to the first. First I tried (apparently stupidly) to connect the phone to both speakers. This confuses the app, and only by telling my device to forget each speaker and then re-pairing them was I able to get it to work. Even after I set everything up correctly, the app still shows 5 different "devices" when I have two speakers enabled: 1 for each speaker, 1 for a stereo pair, and 1 phantom copy of each speaker labeled "needs setup". (Don't click on it! It's a trap! This will break all existing pairs until you reset everything!). The good news is that once you've set up a stereo pair, that pair will of course remain intact for future use. The bad news is that the app randomly stops working and can't connect to or control this pairing unless you turn everything off and on again. This almost always happens when you leave your speakers idle for a few minutes without playing anything through them, even if you've turned off standby. This also happens when switching music sources (e.g. from your music library to Spotify and iHeartRadio). Sometimes this happens for no apparent reason; You'll play an album, decide to open the Music Center app to adjust the equalizer or lighting settings, and hey, guess what, the app can't see your speakers anymore (even if your music is coming out of them!) . Once the app tries and fails to connect, your device will be completely disconnected from the speakers and suddenly you'll start playing music from your phone, even though your phone is still connected to the speakers via Bluetooth. In short: I love speakers. i hate the app I would happily change this rating to 5 stars if Sony made the app even half as good as the speakers. I'm editing to add two things. 1) In response to a comment from a person asking what device/OS I'm using for the app: I mainly use iOS devices, iPhone 7 and iPad 6th gen, although my friend tested it on his Android, the phone was equally annoying experience. 2) After about a month of testing, I can say that the battery life is fantastic. I worked at least 15 hours with the lights on and more than 24 hours without the lights playing through the speakers at 30-40% volume. I personally find it as loud as I need to be able to hear them alone or with some friends on my balcony. Of course, sharing two speakers means I'll likely set each one at a lower volume than if I were using just one speaker, but my experience with the XB31 battery has been great.