Have you ever considered picking up a $7 / £8.99 Bluetooth speaker? I’ll admit I never have – partly because it never even occurred to me that such a thing even exists.
But, blow me down, I recently found that Amazon does offer exactly that, in the form of the super-budget WGO Bluetooth Speaker (although it’s temporarily unavailable on the US site). So I couldn’t resist the temptation to pick one up and see how it compared to the competition: surely a speaker this cheap couldn’t sound any good?
To be honest with you, I really was hoping I’d hate the WGO Bluetooth Speaker. In part, that’s because I’m a journalist, and we’re never happier than when we’re trotting out sardonic hot takes over lukewarm coffee. But the much bigger factor is that, as an audiophile, one of my core beliefs is that if you want your music to sound good, you need to be prepared to put your money where your ears are – and if it turns out that you can get adequate sound quality from bargain-basement prices, it would upset my fragile worldview.
So I was a little put out when I discovered that the WGO Bluetooth Speaker is… you know, fine.
Don’t get me wrong: it has clear sonic weaknesses that I absolutely wouldn’t tolerate from any of the best Bluetooth speakers. But it costs just $7: I spend basically that much on my morning bagel. For that price, I was expecting it to sound overdriven or even blown. I was expecting constant dropouts. I was expecting the frequencies to be about as balanced as a tightrope walker with acute labyrinthitis. Instead, it was merely forgettable – faint praise that really isn’t all that damning given the price point.
Stuck in the middle with the WGO Bluetooth Speaker
When I first fired up the WGO, I’ll admit I did wince a little. The bass doesn’t so much pull its punches as curl up into a ball and wait for the referee to count it out. Listening to Music Matters (Axwell Remix) by Faithless, the usually punchy kickdrum sounded like someone swatting a squash ball against the wall – the low end seems to hurtle off a cliff more sheer than El Capitan. At the other end of the spectrum, hats also lack bite and clarity, although the shortfall wasn’t quite as extreme as it was in the low end.
Admittedly, this sounds less than stellar. So why am I giving it such a charitable treatment? Because in the mid-range it somewhat redeems itself. Firing up Cirrus by Bonobo, so much of the track’s definition sits in the mid-range with which the WGO seems most comfortable – the looping thumb pianos that drive a lot of the track felt crisp and forward, while the percussion still had room to shine.
Playing some of TechRadar’s go-to testing tracks, I found the same is true of vocal-heavy mixes. For example, listening to Paul Simon’s Diamonds On the Soles of Her Shoes, his voice soared clear of the mix, while the African percussion still punched through with sufficient precision. Yes, the bass guitar feels very indistinct, coming from far away like it’s emanating from the bottom of a well but it’s not entirely lacking in dynamism.
While the WGO Bluetooth Speaker’s sound isn’t as rough as I was expecting, its design absolutely lived down to my expectations. It definitely feels like $7 worth of materials. Its grille is at least fashioned out of metal – although it’s hardly the toughest I’ve ever encountered – but the rest of its body is the kind of flimsy plastic I associate more with kids’ toys than audio equipment. To the eye though, it looks a lot like the Anker Soundcore 2, so if you don’t mind the lesser build quality, this is a good way to get that look for a lot less
Honestly, if you remotely care about quality, you’re not going to buy the WGO. While it’s cheaper than anything else on the market by some margin, you can get so much more for not much extra investment. For example, the Tribit Xsound Plus 2 costs just $59.99 / £59.99 and yet offers a broader frequency spread. Alternatively, if you’re wanting the kind of bass thump the WGO just can’t manage, the $79.95 / £49.99 JBL Clip 5 is more likely to deliver the goods.
But there is a space in the market for a device like this, and it’s not aimed at people like me. I remember being in my early teens – just about – and my two criteria in terms of speakers were A: portable and B: affordable with the £15 / $12 I happened to have in my pocket. I wasn’t worried about audio quality because I couldn’t afford it; what I needed was sound that wasn’t actively offensive but that I could pick up with my limited resources.
That’s absolutely where the WGO Bluetooth Speaker sits. And I’m kinda glad it’s there for those that need it.
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josh.russell@futurenet.com (Josh Russell)
