Beacon Phoenix 2 Bluetooth Speaker, Ashen Black

OverviewI Wanted a Bluetooth speaker that was under 50$ that would provide me with decent quality sound enough to fill a medium sized room or my garage when I am doing woodworking in it. Also good enough to provide a decent ‘soundprint’ when my wife and I are cleaning house or she is sewing in her studio and wants to listen to music in the room. I didn’t have the money for a full stereo system with the wall mounted speakers and I wanted it to be easily mobile so I could take it room to room with no issue.Pros-Good sound quality across the spectrum for what I paid. No this isn’t equal to a BOSE set of headphones but unless you are an audiophile you will likely not notice a real difference the sound quality is passable both in Bluetooth and direct audio through the jack.-Good amplification especially with talk radio. The little subwoofer in it does add a good amount of depth to spoken voice giving the voice a quality that speakers in this same range would lack without that 40mm bass driver.-Big enough to be noticed but small enough not to be inconvenient. This speaker isn’t small measuring about as tall as a standard credit card standing up on end, but at the same time it isn’t so large that it becomes a hazard either. There are some Bluetooth ‘boom boxes’ that are larger than this and yes they have better sound quality but mobility with them becomes a hazard. This unit is a good compromise between this.-Bluetooth sound is great. There is as always a slight difference in the quality of sound especially when you start to approach the upper limits (25-30) of distance away from the unit. But honestly with the way I use it I’m really never more than 20 feet away from it anyway.-Holds charge well. Overall I am pleased with the micro USB makes it easy to charge being that almost everyone has a micro USB charger for something in their household just laying around.Cons-The buttons on the top aren’t completely intuitive and have some rather annoying ‘features’ that you figure out while messing with them. For instance the volume up and next track button are on the same key. You press and hold for volume up and tap for next track. If you forget this with the IHeart Radio App it will skip stations on your phone which can be annoying. Same goes for the volume down and previous track button.-The black version of this will show fingerprints easily which can be annoying at times. You can rectify this with a cloth or something of this nature. I haven’t tried a cleaning agent on it yet and likely will not being that the surface of the unit and buttons just wipes clean with minimal effort.Observations-I tried using this in my garage while I was doing some woodwork with my sander. I could barely make out the sound from the unit so it wasn’t loud enough to be used with a ton of ambient noise going on. And the fact that I was doing this in my garage with the door down likely didn’t help any either. I guess in use cases where I will be using power equipment that makes a lot of noise I am better off using my in ear Bluetooth headset instead of this speaker. But honestly power tools do put out a wicked amount of ambient noise so I should’ve expected this. However, losing this one use case didn’t bring into question the value of this speaker to me at all. It functioned perfectly everywhere else and honestly it is a good speaker that I will likely bring with me if I ever have the need of medium scale sound at a location.ConclusionThis speaker is a great alternative to some of the more expensive setups that most of us have no real need for. If there are times you just need enough sound to fill a medium sized room with low to medium ambient sound this is definitely the speaker for you. As other reviewers have stated the sound from this unit is incredible for its size and price point. The wireless Bluetooth capability isn’t horrible at all but if you want best clarity and or quality you are going to want to be close to the unit or use the aux jack on it. Overall great especially at 50$ I don’t see a reason why I would need a larger or more expensive unit for my use.

It just sounds very good, in fact, as good as or better than any similarly sized speaker I've found regardless of price. I've compared it to similar sized units from Bose, Beats, and Mini Jambox and it measures up at better than half the price. Easy to set up, sycs quickly. Looks pretty cool. Not much else to say.

I got this as a present and it did not work at the beginning so I try to replace it but amazon gave me the option to give my money back so I had to get it contact with the brand Beacon, and now that I have it works just fine! Great sound long life battery

Absolute garbage. Company gave me the shrugs when It first arrived and the light indication for charging didn't work, then 9 months later the audio in jack fell into the unit. Word on the street is that the company dissolved, so much for the 1000 day warranty. It's going to become one of the several "magnets on a string" that I use to pick up metal objects that fall behind heavy furniture. I highly recommend buying a cheaper magnet with which to tie a string to.

Its ok but not as much base as I thought

Works fine, not an improvement over the earlier model, though.

Nice little speaker, it does the job in one room.

NOT WHAT I CALLED A GOOD SPEAKER, I GIVE IT A 2, NOTHING BETTER. THIS IS NOT THAT GREAT OF A SPEAKER.