Rating: 5/5
Review: A very stylish speaker with good sound
This is a really nice little speaker. Audio Dynamix sent it to me for review and I am pleased to say that it is up to their usual very high standard with excellent design and build quality and very good sound for such a small unit.
The first thing to strike you is that it is beautifully designed. The proportions are very elegant at 17cm x 6.5cm x 2cm; it is remarkably slim and very easily transportable. It feels very solidly made and weighs a fairly chunky 280g (10oz). The body is aluminium with a very nice finish and it feels very robust. The controls on the top are stylish and the ports on the side are discreet and easily accessible. It's a lovely object.
The Clarity is very nicely boxed, and you also get a very nice neoprene carrying case, a good instruction manual and two leads: a jack-to-jack lead for AUX connection and a micro-USB lead for charging.
In use it works very well. Bluetooth connection was straightforward and range was good with a solid connection even with me in the way up to at least 8m. The speaker also has an AUX input for non-Bluetooth connection and a micro-SD card slot for direct playing from a card. The controls are as you would expect, with volume, skip forward and back and pause/play for music, and receive/end call using the pause/play button, allowing hands-free calls via the speaker. Battery life is good: I haven't tested it to exhaustion, but the claim of 10 hours playing time seems about right. Everything just works properly and it's a good, versatile and practical speaker.
The sound is good. It goes perfectly loud enough for me with no audible distortion. Tops and middles are excellent, and the bass is pretty good, giving an overall clear and rich sound with very good articulation. It's not hi-fi - but then it's a very small unit and you can't expect really resonant bass. The two bass radiators do a good job and I found that the bass sound improved after several hours playing. A bit of bass boost from the equalizer on my mp3 player helped, too, although too much produces distortion. It performs well on all the music I tested it on, from 16th Century choral music to London Grammar, and as a compact, portable speaker at this price it's very good. (If you want really resonant bass from a portable speaker you'll need something bigger and a bit more expensive, like the ADX Pulse, which I have been using for some time and think is superb.
I contacted ADX to ask about the equalization and got a very detailed personal reply saying that an app will be available soon which will allow equalizer adjustments to the speaker. I've copied their detailed response below; I was impressed with the standard of customer service!
Overall, then, a lovely little speaker. If you're looking for a small, easily portable speaker which is really stylish and well made with very decent sound, this will do you very well and I can recommend it warmly.
(This is the detail of the app as sent to me by ADX:
[The app] will have a number of useful features including:
1) 3-4 EQ presets per speaker specifically designed to get the most of that specific model in different environments.
2) Battery level indicator with multi colour graphics
3) Volume level indictor again with multi colour graphics
4) Gesture controlled music player - swipe the screen left or right to change tracks, or up and down to adjust volume.
5) Various 3D DSP functions
Other features will be added via updates in the future. The App will only be available on the Apple App store to start with and will be locked to only work with our speakers. The App will be free to our customers which we hope will show our commitment to providing the best user experience possible.)
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