Thursday 29 May 2014

Tecevo Soundbox review



Aesthetic design

The Tecevo is a reasonably nice looking portable speaker, if a little too similar to the offerings from Jawbone. The front facia has a metallic grille that protects the two front firing drivers. The grille features a diamond pattern that also wraps around the sides of the speaker. It flows quite nice and is generally pleasant to look at. Above and below the grille a two slim line bezels the flow around the front, sides and then seamlessly blends into the back panel. Round the back you get your connections which I will cover in a later part of the review. The top of the features three small circles that act as your controls for the device, they look quite as well as serving as physical controls for your media. To the right of the top panel you get the Tecevo logo that is simply printed onto the speaker.
Underneath features the third speaker in the set up and is this time covered by plastic. The bottom plate has a hole patterned design in it, this doesn’t look at all inspiring but its fulfils its purpose at the same. Also on the bottom are two rather not nice looking strips of plastic that are supposed to provide a bit of isolation and grip for the speaker. That just about wraps up the aesthetics, overall it’s nice for the money, if a little bit too similar to a lot of other speakers on the market. It’s not a in your face look at me design but I can’t really complain as it wasn’t much money to purchase.

Build quality

The build quality is actually good. The speaker is finished in a quite a good quality soft touch plastic, it’s very smooth and soft and feels nice. The front grille is plenty strong enough to protect the speakers and adds a touch of solidity to the design. The back panel is ok. The connections are well made and there are no imperfections around the edges of the ports. The only thing that lets it down is the slightly cheap feeling power switch. The top buttons are fairly nice, the feel nice to press and they aren’t too soft or squidgy. There is a few issues though as the buttons are not correctly spaced in their mounts and there are a few imperfections in the finish around this area. The speaker as a whole is well made, with a few minor issues.

Features 

This is where the speaker sort of shows off a bit. It has USB charging, NFC, Bluetooth, Line in and Line out. Considering its low cost I was not expecting the NFC but it’s there. The Bluetooth is version 2.1 which is now quite old but it still works fine. The Bluetooth range is approximately 10m but this all depends on if there is anything in the line of sight. So things like walls and doors will slightly reduce this distance.
The speaker has twin 40mm drivers and a small passive radiator for your lower frequencies. The speaker also features a set of notification lights. One lets you know when Bluetooth is active and ready to pair and one lets you know when the device needs charging.
On the top the speaker has a mic for hands free calls, as well as three multifunctional buttons. The first of these buttons is to skip back your music or to lower the volume. The second is your play/pause and answer calls button and the final one is to turn up the volume and skip tracks forward. These are ideal as there are only three buttons instead of one button for each function.
The speaker comes with a USB cable and a 3.5mm to 3.5mm connection for non-Bluetooth devices. Handy if you want to connect it to an older mp3 player, laptop or PC.

In use and issues

This is where all the features are tested. So in use the speaker is quite average. The Bluetooth connects fine with my Nexus 5, it wasn’t too slow and the connection was stable. The NFC on the other hand is quite a poor integration; it’s very difficult to establish a connection this way. This is because of a few factors.

1.      There is no NFC logo on the phone or device. This meant I had to search for the chip on both my phone and on the device. This was quite annoying and an oversight on both. Eventually I found the NFC on both. The NFC on the Tecevo is under the Tecevo logo on the top of the speaker and in the middle of the Nexus.
2.      Poor connection. Now I have found the NFC I thought ok this is going to be easy and work. I was quite wrong. The phones NFC works fine as I have tested it with other NFC devices but the speakers NFC is not good at all. It just will not connect and believe me I did try. I am not sure why it won’t connect but I have had nothing but problems with it. So I just the Bluetooth, because at least it worked.

The other issue with the speaker is the LED notification light, yeah it’s handy to have but not when it flashes constantly for no reason. Usually after pairing to you phone the light goes off, not with the Tecevo. The light flashes all the time and it is very annoying and quite distracting whilst trying to listen to your music.

The battery in the Tecevo is quite a small 800Mah one and is quoted to deliver up to 10 hours. I didn’t get anywhere near that. The best I achieved was around 7.5 hours, fair enough you can extend that but then you can barely hear the music. 7.5 hours was achieved at just a bit over 50% volume and it sounded quite reasonable up until the last few minutes. 
The Bluetooth is quite good and connected 100% of the times I tried and it’s not too slow considering it’s an older version. The connection is simple and very straight forward, this I believe is because the speaker is ready to pair as soon as you turn it on. The range of 10m is quite accurate and was only hampered when facing a wall or door. When you locate the speaker in another room the signal drops quite a lot and reduces the quality and stability of the music. However if you keep both devices together then you won’t have a problem.

The speaker is very portable measuring in at 146mm (L) x 56mm (H) x 56mm (D) and weighing only 250g. The speaker fits nicely in my hand but is too large to fit in your jeans pocket. However it will easily slip into a larger pocket of a jacket, coat or of a small bag. The weight and size mean it does score well in portability but only if you have a large coat pocket or a bag to put it in. The speaker is well built but is by no means a tough speaker but it should be enough to survive a few knocks and maybe a drop (don’t take my word for it as I haven’t tried dropping it).
Overall in use it’s not bad, the Bluetooth is great, the build is good and it has a decent battery life. On the overhand the NFC is patchy and the notification light is very annoying. So it’s like most products it has its plus points as well as bad ones.

Sound quality

Now to the all-important sound quality test, if you don’t know already I have done a video review of the speaker in which I have included a short sound test. But being one of the most important things of an audio product I will tell what it’s like.

The first thing I would like to mention is that to get the best possible sound from this speaker it needs to be placed on a very solid surface. I will explain. The speaker has a three speaker configuration with two firing forwards and one firing down. Now it’s the one firing down that is the issue. The passive radiator underneath causes the speaker to vibrate uncontrollably when you turn the volume up, so much so that if the surface isn’t completely solid it will vibrate it so much that it creates a background noise that effects the sound quality. 

The sound is actually overall quite disappointing. The bass is probably the highlight but even that can’t make up for the rest of the sound. The bass is fairly deep considering the speakers compact size, however it can quickly but over powering and overbearing. The bass in fact is so overwhelming it causes the horrible vibration I spoke of earlier. The bass isn’t overly detailed and sounds a bit too loose. The mid-range is again quite poorly produced, it has a really sharp edge and just makes it sounds overly harsh, that’s actually when you can hear it. Most of the time the bass overpowers the sound so much you only rarely get a glimpse of it and when you do it’s not good. The vocals are ok, they seem to be separated from the mid-range and they come through clearly enough, although nothing special it’s pretty much passable. The higher frequency is something that really is quite difficult to distinguish, its very laidback and very difficult to hear when tracks with deep bass or vocals are present. Overall I am not impressed with the sound and I think that the offerings from the Nude Audio S are better.

Specifications

- Bluetooth: Bluetooth2.1 ClassII support A2DP V1.2, AVRCP V1.4 protocol.
- Near Field Communication (NFC) enabled
- Transmission distance: up to 10 meters (transmission distance due to environmental factors and mobile phone Bluetooth devices vary)
- Maximum output power: 3W RMS X 2
- Dual channel speakers system
- Ports: Mini USB charging, 3.5" AUX, 3.5" audio out
- SNR≥ 80DB
- Frequency range: 180Hz-20KHz
- THD≤ 1% distortion
- Speaker driver: diameter: 40mm, magnetic, 4 ohms, 3W
- Dimensions: 146mm*56mm*32mm
- Charging voltage: 5V
- Rechargeable battery: 800Mah

 Package Contents
- Bluetooth Speaker
- USB cable (for charging)
- Audio cable
- User manual

Summary

Overall it has its good points and some quite bad ones to. I can’t really recommend you purchase this as there are a lot better rivals out there for the same sort of money. My advice would be to shop around and look elsewhere. For example I have just bought another speaker at the same price and so far it’s a lot more promising.

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