In a world of smart speakers from Google, Amazon, and Apple, Samsung is quietly making wireless accessories that are simply designed to be used on your smartphone or tablets. While we can guess with almost 100% certainty that Samsung is making a smart Bixby speaker, it still hasn’t breached that market yet. Samsung has a speaker that may not be smart in the sense that it can answer questions, but it has the ability to play music through Bluetooth while putting on a show with a built-in LED lamp. It’s called the Samsung Wireless Speaker Bottle design and it’s priced relatively affordable starting at $49.99 at several retailers.
This speaker isn’t something you’d expect to find from Samsung who is typically known for its high-end product line. The Speaker Bottle design is a budget category speaker, but it offers much more with its LED lighting features. But before we get into the lights, we need to talk about the speaker first. It’s small. Most of the Speaker Bottle is the top portion of the light which leaves a small amount for the speaker. If you were to remove the light, the speaker portion would be just larger than a hockey puck. The speaker’s sound output is small too due to its physical size. It lacks bass, but it’s more than capable of being a personal wireless speaker.
I’ve used my Speaker Bottle to listen to music on the patio or while I’m in bed, and I never find the sound to be lacking in these situations. Despite its lack of bass, it is still quite clear and detailed. I especially enjoy listening to audio books and news podcasts on this speaker more than music.
But while I’m on the patio or lying in bed, I especially love the lighting feature. It’s a playful speaker that allows me to change the color to one of 16 million choices. There’s a free companion app, Lux Manager, in the Google Play Store and Apple App Store that enables the easy change of colors while offering a range of other effects too. The light can change color to the beat of your music, simulate the effect of a candlelight, or it can look like it is breathing.
The LED lighting is actually soft in tone unless you’re in darker settings. I prefer the soft light tone as it doesn’t distract my eyes from what I’m trying to pay attention to, but it does offer nice ambiance.
There are gestures you can activate in the app: shake to change colors and pour to turn off the light. The companion app that allows you to change the colors and effects in combination with the gesture lighting are very neat features that make this speaker fun to own. While it may not sound the best of my wireless speakers, I find myself in love with it as an entire package.
Lastly, the most useful feature of them all is the speaker’s ability to charge wirelessly with Qi wireless chargers. I’m a Galaxy Note 8 user and use several wireless charging pads to recharge my phone. Charging the Speaker Bottle on the same pad is quite nice and I don’t need to keep an extra micro USB cable around when I’m slowly phasing them out.
Overall the Samsung Bottle Speaker is fun to own and is worthy of its $50 price tag. It won’t be the center of attention at your next party, but it can serve as a great personal speaker that adds a bit of fun to its unique LED lighting.
Get your own Samsung Bottle Speaker at Amazon or Samsung.
