Bluetooth speakers come in all shapes and sizes. There are ones that feature robust designs, with waterproof capabilities, while others that are built to be premium. One of the categories that really seems to have been picking up is the portable section. These speakers are generally small enough to fit in your pocket and make great companions for smartphones and laptops. Naturally, the rise in demand has resulted to a rise in competition. Adding to plethora of products, is the new Philips BT64, a light and compact Bluetooth speaker priced under Rs. 1,500. For that price, it doesn’t sound that bad for a portable speaker with Bluetooth and FM capability. Let’s give it a go and find out how well it performs.
Design and Build
The design of the BT64 isn’t different from most of its competition. The speaker poses a rectangular chassis, which makes it look a lot like a bar of soap. However, this also makes it possible to carry the speaker in a pant pocket easily. Its compact design and weight of just 145g makes you feel like it’s not even there.
The speaker might look tough, but it’s understandable to have doubts about it. Most of the build is plastic but it comes with a thick rubber coating on the top and the sides. However, the quality feels cheap and might get brushed easily, if you happen to keep it among other objects in a bag. The metal grill that covers the drivers at the front doesn’t look all that sturdy either. Overall, the BT64 isn’t built really well. We could see rough edges at the front where the rubber coating meets the grill. The rubber coating hasn’t been stuck perfectly at the bottom. Of course it’s not all that boring. Philips has still put in effort to pull it off as a peppy design. That’s brought out through the four colors that the speaker is available in. You can choose from white, blue, red and black. There are four buttons at the top embedded under the rubber coating. They include, volume controls, the Play/Pause button and the Power button.
All the ports are placed at the back. There is an LED at the front, which indicates the source selected through the colour it displays. There is a separate battery indicator LED. In the box, you get a carrying strap that can be attached to the side.
Features
Behind the grill, the Philips BT64 comes with two 15 mm drivers, with a total power of 3 Watts (RMS). It might not sound like a lot, but it’s enough power to deliver a loud output, considering the speaker size. Philips claims a frequency range of 70 Hz to 20 KHz, but we'll get a better idea of the output once we listen to it. Input options include Bluetooth 4.0, which means you can easily connect it to any smartphone or laptop wirelessly. Pairing is easy as well because the speaker starts scanning for devices automatically after you switch it on. Not being able to switch off the Bluetooth though, also has its disadvantage, as the speaker ends up consuming battery when on idle. Besides Bluetooth, the speaker also has a 3.5mm auxiliary input and a micro SD card slot, which can support an SD card of up to 32GB.
Like most speakers, the Philips BT64 also supports calls, with the help of a built-in mic. However, there is one additional features the BT64 has that we haven’t seen a lot of Bluetooth speakers have, and that's FM support. The Philips BT64 comes with built-in a digital FM radio. It's great to have it, because you don't need have to be dependent on an external device to play music. Better yet, you don't draw battery from your smartphone when you want to listen to the radio, which is great.
Now, having all the features is good, but that also means more impact on the battery. Philips hasn't disclosed the battery capacity, but given the size of the speaker, we don't expect it to be a lot. Compared to other speakers in its category, we're at least expecting a battery life of four to five hours. The speaker charges using a microUSB port at the back. A cable is provided in the box.
Performance
We started off with the Philips BT64, by playing some music from our phone, using Bluetooth. The output isn’t as loud as most portable speakers we’ve tested before, but it’s decent for listening to music indoors. However, the output is far louder when using a 3.5mm audio cable. The compact build of the Philips BT64 doesn’t handle bass-heavy tracks very well. The speaker shakes when played really loud. That’s not the biggest problem though. We didn’t like the output very much either. Bass in songs felt really suppressed. This was quite obvious with the track, Bad Kingdom, by Moderat. The speaker certainly didn’t do justice to the heavy grudgy start of the song. The output wasn’t sharp. The distortion overpowered the finer details in the song. The only thing clear were the lyrics.
We noticed a similar output with most bass-heavy songs. The lack of bass resulted in the song sounding flat and shallow. The output gets a little better when playing with the auxiliary cable, but not by much. However the output is still not loud enough. You always have to be at close proximity to the speaker, to get a good experience. It’s while playing Polyphia (a progressive metal band) Euphoria, we realized the extent of smaller details being lost in the backdrop. Guitars are certainly the high point of the song and the BT64 managed to handle them really well in the first two minutes. However, as soon as the song got heavier, the guitars started sounding gushy. Details got washed out and the drums were hardly audible. The experience isn’t all that bad. It’s just that the speaker doesn’t do very well with tracks that have a lot going on. For casual listening though, it works really well. It’s a good speaker for cleaning sounding music, and for listening to podcasts as well. Bluetooth connectivity was fine. There were a few glitches from time to time, but they weren’t a big problem. The speaker needs to be kept at a distance of under 3 to 4 feet to be used effectively while making voice calls. Anything beyond that distance, means you have to speak louder to get your voice heard, especially if there is background noise.
Verdict
The Philips BT64 might not be the best in its class, but on a tight budget, it’s worth considering. At this price, we’re just happy it can deliver a decent experience, while being pretty loud. However, if you’re willing to spend more money, then there are definitely better speakers you can get.
