Quick take: A really excellent, powerful portable bluetooth/AirPlay speaker. The absolute best you can find under 8 lbs. Possibly the best portable at any weight. Clean accurate sound, including clean, accurate, staggeringly powerful bass. NOTE: After the May 8, 2024 firmware update, it sounds even better.
Weight 7.7 lbs (3.5 kg). Size: like a medium-big lunch box, easily back-packable. Price: $600. With tax + shipping, I paid $700. Yes, I'm a regular customer, bought the thing, own the thing, use the thing. There aren't many reviews online, so I thought I'd write one.
I wanted the smallest possible portable, battery-powered speaker that I could use for teaching dance classes in studios that don't have a built-in sound system, and for playing music outdoors. It needs to be powerful enough to fill a room of about 1200 sq ft (say, 30' x 40'; about 110 m2) with 16 to 40 people in class, and it needs to sound good and full outdoors. For the students, it needs to have massive bass. For my own enjoyment, it needs to have massive bass and clean accurate sound, not boomy, not plastic-y, not shrill — as close to the sound of my go-to headphones as possible. And it needs to be easily portable by bicycle or public transit, therefore as small and as light as possible — must fit in a backpack or messenger bag, and definitely under 10 lbs. Cost was not important to me (within reason); I recognize that small + top quality is always more expensive.
"Small" and "massive bass both indoors and outdoors" and "fills a large room full of people with loud good dance music" don't go together well. Is there an exception out there?
The main contenders that I tested by actually listening, mostly side by side:
• The well regarded tiny Minirig 3 (1.2 lbs)
• Several Bose models including my original-generation tiny Bose SoundLink Mini (1.5 lbs), the Bose SoundLink Revolve+ II (2 lbs), the Bose Portable Smart Speaker (2.4 lbs), and the Bose S1 Pro (16 lbs).
• Sony SRS-XB33 (2.5 lbs)
• JBL's family of tubular-ish portable bluetooth speakers: JBL Flip 6 (1.2 lbs), JBL Charge 5 (2 lbs), JBL Extreme 3 (5 lbs), JBL Boombox 3 (15 lbs).
• Sonos Move 2 (6.6 lbs)
• Brane X (7.7 lbs) from a new startup company that boasts of breakthrough bass ingenuity.
• A few random well-reviewed others (Soundcore, Anker, etc) but none of them were even close.
In all but 3 cases, I bought the units, did A/B comparisons at home at medium, loud, and super loud volumes, then returned the units that I didn't like. The 3 exceptions, I listen to regularly at social dances or I was lent them. In other words, I listened to all of them extensively.
The Brane X was the winner. Better and bigger bass, cleaner and more accurate sound overall, even at deafening volume.
The bass: The Brane X has staggeringly powerful, clean, crisp bass. It's so powerful it literally shakes the floor in my apartment — I can feel it in my feet. It's crisp and clean, not muddy or boomy. Acoustic double bass sounds great, which is never the case for portables. Bass heavy Pop music of every genre sounds great.
The rest of the sound is remarkably clean and accurate ... after you tweak the 5-slider equalizer a little. (See photo below.) I've kicked the bass slider up a notch or two, because I love that. I've pulled down the 4th slider (treble) somewhat, and the 5th slider (highest treble) a little. With that done, the Brane X sounds essentially identical to my headphones when, to play fair, I output the signal to both the Brane X and my headphones as mono. That's about as fair and excellent a test as I can think of. That said, on songs that have a careful stereo mix, there really is a nicely fuller, better sound from the Brane X when fed stereo sources as stereo vs mono. I tested this by switching my source between stereo and mono by changing my MacBook's and iPhone's Accessibility setting to "play stereo audio as mono".
Special sound quality note: When my Brane X arrived — it was among the Brane Audio startup company's early shipments — it sounded terrible apart from the great bass, as though the vocals were happening in a barrel that was 10 feet behind the instrumentalists. Then suddenly one day, while I was in correspondence with the company about the problem, it started sounding really excellent like it should. I have no idea if their January 29 firmware update fixed it (I didn't notice at the time that an update happened, so I don't know if the "fix" was a result), or if something that was physically stuck got itself un-stuck, but since then it has remained great sounding.
May 8, 2024 firmware update: After installing this, the Brane X sounds even better. Everything seems a little more crisp and clean, especially vocals. And there seems to be a slightly bigger stereo separation effect.
Off-axis sound quality. When you are directly in front of the Brane X, it sounds best. As you move farther towards the sides, the treble falls off somewhat and the sound becomes less crisp. This is true for any speaker system with forward-facing treble drivers, so it's worth noting but nothing major or surprising. The Brane X's midrange and treble drivers are angled outward a little, which helps the issue.
Battery. The Brane X is best at pretty loud levels. This means that the battery doesn't last as long as it would at modest volume, and modest volume is where the 11-12 hour rating comes from. I've never run the battery out, because I haven't tested it long enough on battery power alone, but I would rough guess about 5-6 hours at high volume. Keep in mind that high volume on the Brane X is VERY high volume, with staggeringly powerful bass. I carry the power block with me when I'm in doubt.
AirPlay (WiFi) vs Bluetooth: The Brane X is in the vanguard of portable speakers that can do Apple's AirPlay as well as Bluetooth. AirPlay sounds better. Period. Bluetooth sounds a little choppier, less smooth, less accurate, adds a little harshness to the music. (Some recent portables can also do WiFi from PCs/Android, but I don't know anything about them.)
AirPlay in general has a few advantages over Bluetooth: full uncompressed audio signal goes to the AirPlay speaker, and you can actually hear the higher sound quality; a 2 second buffer; and the ability to directly adjust the volume controls of the Brane X. (Saves battery, at least in theory.)
One challenge: For AirPlay, you need to have a separate WiFi box in between your Apple computer/iPhone and the Brane X. You cannot go directly from computer/iPhone to an AirPlay speaker. I've tried, testing every online hack. You can't. So for spots with no reliable WiFi, I bought an obsolete tiny WiFi-to-mobile-provider "portable hotspot" from Amazon for $23. I just use its WiFi skills, creating a tiny local WiFi network. It works great. If I were streaming music I would need an internet connection, but I have full copies of all my music on my MacBook computer and iPhone so I only need the WiFi.
The competition: JBL. The Brane X has a cleaner, more accurate, more satisfying sound than any of the JBLs. Compared to all the under-10-lbs JBLs (Flip 6, Charge 5, Extreme 3), the Brane X has much deeper, cleaner, better bass, and goes much louder. I even liked the Brane X better than the JBL Boombox 3, which I tested even though it is too large and too heavy (15 lbs) for my purposes. I personally think the Brane X's bass is better and cleaner than the JBL Boombox 3's, and the Brane X's overall sound spectrum is cleaner and more accurate — more pleasant and satisfying and less tiring to my ears, and definitely so when playing loud for an extended amount of time.
The competition: Bose. Nothing in the Bose lineup sounds as good as the Brane X. Even the top item, the 16 lb Bose S1 Pro, is less satisfying, with a somewhat plastic-y sound in the midrange and a less satisfying bass. And at 16 lbs it's too heavy for my purposes. The smaller (but still pretty expensive) Bose units all sounded a little boomy, a little muddy, to me. Surprisingly, my 20 year old original-generation tiny Bose Soundlink Mini had the cleanest, most accurate sound and most satisfying bass of all the Bose and JBL machines ... but only at low volumes befitting its tiny size; as soon as you get loud enough to run even a quiet dance class, its bass is effectively zero, although its mid and upper still sound quite good. So, strange to report, my tiny Bose Soundlink Mini became the reference standard while testing & comparing all the others: "Does ____ sound better than my Bose Soundlink Mini?" Only the Brane X could answer that with a definite "yes." Others had stronger bass than the Bose Soundlink Mini at louder volumes, of course, but their overall sound was not as clean, accurate, well balanced, and pleasant.
The competition: Sonos Move 2, Sony SRS-X33, Minirig 3, and others. Sonos Move 2 has the vocalists and centered instruments much too far forward, too prominent, and the bass was weak. I don't care for it, but you might. The Sony SRS-XB33 was just lightweight sounding all around. Minirig 3: Cute, tiny, loud. But not nearly enough bass, and a bit hollow or plastic-y sounding in the mid-range to my ears. Other brands and models with good ratings online: I tried some but only by listening to them in retail shops (not a direct A/B comparison at home). None came close.
Any negatives to the Brane X? A few small minor items. (1) A grumpy female voice announces the Brane X's settings whenever you turn it on, at whatever volume level you had when it was turned off. It cannot be disabled. This is insane. (The newer Bose units have a similar idiotic "feature.") You can quiet the voice by holding your finger on the "–" button while the Brane X is starting up, but that's just nuts. Please give us an option to turn the voice off. (2) It's not cheap. As a sound engineer friend put it, after admiring the sound, "Oh. That's real money." That's not a negative, really, but it's worth noting. I would happily have settled for a cheaper unit, but only the Brane X really satisfied my hopes and preferences.
Summary: It's great. Killer bass, great clean sound. Small-ish backpackable size, light-ish weight. It's great.
Weight 7.7 lbs (3.5 kg). Size: like a medium-big lunch box, easily back-packable. Price: $600. With tax + shipping, I paid $700. Yes, I'm a regular customer, bought the thing, own the thing, use the thing. There aren't many reviews online, so I thought I'd write one.
I wanted the smallest possible portable, battery-powered speaker that I could use for teaching dance classes in studios that don't have a built-in sound system, and for playing music outdoors. It needs to be powerful enough to fill a room of about 1200 sq ft (say, 30' x 40'; about 110 m2) with 16 to 40 people in class, and it needs to sound good and full outdoors. For the students, it needs to have massive bass. For my own enjoyment, it needs to have massive bass and clean accurate sound, not boomy, not plastic-y, not shrill — as close to the sound of my go-to headphones as possible. And it needs to be easily portable by bicycle or public transit, therefore as small and as light as possible — must fit in a backpack or messenger bag, and definitely under 10 lbs. Cost was not important to me (within reason); I recognize that small + top quality is always more expensive.
"Small" and "massive bass both indoors and outdoors" and "fills a large room full of people with loud good dance music" don't go together well. Is there an exception out there?
The main contenders that I tested by actually listening, mostly side by side:
• The well regarded tiny Minirig 3 (1.2 lbs)
• Several Bose models including my original-generation tiny Bose SoundLink Mini (1.5 lbs), the Bose SoundLink Revolve+ II (2 lbs), the Bose Portable Smart Speaker (2.4 lbs), and the Bose S1 Pro (16 lbs).
• Sony SRS-XB33 (2.5 lbs)
• JBL's family of tubular-ish portable bluetooth speakers: JBL Flip 6 (1.2 lbs), JBL Charge 5 (2 lbs), JBL Extreme 3 (5 lbs), JBL Boombox 3 (15 lbs).
• Sonos Move 2 (6.6 lbs)
• Brane X (7.7 lbs) from a new startup company that boasts of breakthrough bass ingenuity.
• A few random well-reviewed others (Soundcore, Anker, etc) but none of them were even close.
In all but 3 cases, I bought the units, did A/B comparisons at home at medium, loud, and super loud volumes, then returned the units that I didn't like. The 3 exceptions, I listen to regularly at social dances or I was lent them. In other words, I listened to all of them extensively.
The Brane X was the winner. Better and bigger bass, cleaner and more accurate sound overall, even at deafening volume.
The bass: The Brane X has staggeringly powerful, clean, crisp bass. It's so powerful it literally shakes the floor in my apartment — I can feel it in my feet. It's crisp and clean, not muddy or boomy. Acoustic double bass sounds great, which is never the case for portables. Bass heavy Pop music of every genre sounds great.
The rest of the sound is remarkably clean and accurate ... after you tweak the 5-slider equalizer a little. (See photo below.) I've kicked the bass slider up a notch or two, because I love that. I've pulled down the 4th slider (treble) somewhat, and the 5th slider (highest treble) a little. With that done, the Brane X sounds essentially identical to my headphones when, to play fair, I output the signal to both the Brane X and my headphones as mono. That's about as fair and excellent a test as I can think of. That said, on songs that have a careful stereo mix, there really is a nicely fuller, better sound from the Brane X when fed stereo sources as stereo vs mono. I tested this by switching my source between stereo and mono by changing my MacBook's and iPhone's Accessibility setting to "play stereo audio as mono".
Special sound quality note: When my Brane X arrived — it was among the Brane Audio startup company's early shipments — it sounded terrible apart from the great bass, as though the vocals were happening in a barrel that was 10 feet behind the instrumentalists. Then suddenly one day, while I was in correspondence with the company about the problem, it started sounding really excellent like it should. I have no idea if their January 29 firmware update fixed it (I didn't notice at the time that an update happened, so I don't know if the "fix" was a result), or if something that was physically stuck got itself un-stuck, but since then it has remained great sounding.
May 8, 2024 firmware update: After installing this, the Brane X sounds even better. Everything seems a little more crisp and clean, especially vocals. And there seems to be a slightly bigger stereo separation effect.
Off-axis sound quality. When you are directly in front of the Brane X, it sounds best. As you move farther towards the sides, the treble falls off somewhat and the sound becomes less crisp. This is true for any speaker system with forward-facing treble drivers, so it's worth noting but nothing major or surprising. The Brane X's midrange and treble drivers are angled outward a little, which helps the issue.
Battery. The Brane X is best at pretty loud levels. This means that the battery doesn't last as long as it would at modest volume, and modest volume is where the 11-12 hour rating comes from. I've never run the battery out, because I haven't tested it long enough on battery power alone, but I would rough guess about 5-6 hours at high volume. Keep in mind that high volume on the Brane X is VERY high volume, with staggeringly powerful bass. I carry the power block with me when I'm in doubt.
AirPlay (WiFi) vs Bluetooth: The Brane X is in the vanguard of portable speakers that can do Apple's AirPlay as well as Bluetooth. AirPlay sounds better. Period. Bluetooth sounds a little choppier, less smooth, less accurate, adds a little harshness to the music. (Some recent portables can also do WiFi from PCs/Android, but I don't know anything about them.)
AirPlay in general has a few advantages over Bluetooth: full uncompressed audio signal goes to the AirPlay speaker, and you can actually hear the higher sound quality; a 2 second buffer; and the ability to directly adjust the volume controls of the Brane X. (Saves battery, at least in theory.)
One challenge: For AirPlay, you need to have a separate WiFi box in between your Apple computer/iPhone and the Brane X. You cannot go directly from computer/iPhone to an AirPlay speaker. I've tried, testing every online hack. You can't. So for spots with no reliable WiFi, I bought an obsolete tiny WiFi-to-mobile-provider "portable hotspot" from Amazon for $23. I just use its WiFi skills, creating a tiny local WiFi network. It works great. If I were streaming music I would need an internet connection, but I have full copies of all my music on my MacBook computer and iPhone so I only need the WiFi.
The competition: JBL. The Brane X has a cleaner, more accurate, more satisfying sound than any of the JBLs. Compared to all the under-10-lbs JBLs (Flip 6, Charge 5, Extreme 3), the Brane X has much deeper, cleaner, better bass, and goes much louder. I even liked the Brane X better than the JBL Boombox 3, which I tested even though it is too large and too heavy (15 lbs) for my purposes. I personally think the Brane X's bass is better and cleaner than the JBL Boombox 3's, and the Brane X's overall sound spectrum is cleaner and more accurate — more pleasant and satisfying and less tiring to my ears, and definitely so when playing loud for an extended amount of time.
The competition: Bose. Nothing in the Bose lineup sounds as good as the Brane X. Even the top item, the 16 lb Bose S1 Pro, is less satisfying, with a somewhat plastic-y sound in the midrange and a less satisfying bass. And at 16 lbs it's too heavy for my purposes. The smaller (but still pretty expensive) Bose units all sounded a little boomy, a little muddy, to me. Surprisingly, my 20 year old original-generation tiny Bose Soundlink Mini had the cleanest, most accurate sound and most satisfying bass of all the Bose and JBL machines ... but only at low volumes befitting its tiny size; as soon as you get loud enough to run even a quiet dance class, its bass is effectively zero, although its mid and upper still sound quite good. So, strange to report, my tiny Bose Soundlink Mini became the reference standard while testing & comparing all the others: "Does ____ sound better than my Bose Soundlink Mini?" Only the Brane X could answer that with a definite "yes." Others had stronger bass than the Bose Soundlink Mini at louder volumes, of course, but their overall sound was not as clean, accurate, well balanced, and pleasant.
The competition: Sonos Move 2, Sony SRS-X33, Minirig 3, and others. Sonos Move 2 has the vocalists and centered instruments much too far forward, too prominent, and the bass was weak. I don't care for it, but you might. The Sony SRS-XB33 was just lightweight sounding all around. Minirig 3: Cute, tiny, loud. But not nearly enough bass, and a bit hollow or plastic-y sounding in the mid-range to my ears. Other brands and models with good ratings online: I tried some but only by listening to them in retail shops (not a direct A/B comparison at home). None came close.
Any negatives to the Brane X? A few small minor items. (1) A grumpy female voice announces the Brane X's settings whenever you turn it on, at whatever volume level you had when it was turned off. It cannot be disabled. This is insane. (The newer Bose units have a similar idiotic "feature.") You can quiet the voice by holding your finger on the "–" button while the Brane X is starting up, but that's just nuts. Please give us an option to turn the voice off. (2) It's not cheap. As a sound engineer friend put it, after admiring the sound, "Oh. That's real money." That's not a negative, really, but it's worth noting. I would happily have settled for a cheaper unit, but only the Brane X really satisfied my hopes and preferences.
Summary: It's great. Killer bass, great clean sound. Small-ish backpackable size, light-ish weight. It's great.
My Brane X EQ settings, set in the Brane app for iOS.