Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

It's a $20 speaker, so I should not expect the world. But I've had such great experiences with Amazon Basics that I wondered if this little speaker may be as good as some higher priced models. It's not. The speaker is not bad and it might be worth the $20. But there are speakers out there which are considerably better for $7 or $8 more. For example, the "Cambridge SoundWorks OontZ Angle 3" is a great speaker in terms of sound quality and volume for just a bit more money or the Anker SoundCore (a definite step up from the Amazon Basics for just $7 more). To me, I'd rather have a significantly better speaker for $28 than a mediocre speaker for $20. The sound quality is not terrible, but not great. The volume goes up pretty high (a Bluetooth speaker should be better quality than the speaker on my phone or else what's the point?), but distorts at the higher points. What I do really lilke is that it has a hard line, so you can connect the speaker the old fashioned way (with a cable!) if you ever need to. This is a wonderful feature that is actually not always found on these little Bluetooth speakers (the aforementioned Cambridge and Anker both have this feature, too). I decided to return Amazon Basics Bluetooth speaker, but then I was shocked to so that this "Prime" product would cost me $6.50 to return! So I'm keeping the speaker--more than a 25% hit to return an item...hard for me to swallow. This caught me off-guard. One reason I buy so much on Amazon is that the returns are so painless. So I was surprised that this Amazon-branded "Prime" product required me to pay the shipping for a return. Probably my fault, I did not read the fine print. I'm used to "Prime" being a safe and thoughtless purchase. In sum, this may work well for a kid with a cheap phone to connect, but I think most any adult will wish they had kicked in a few more bucks. It looks like Amazon Basics has a more expensive speaker, too. I have not tried that one. So, it fair for Amazon to attempt a cheaper Bluetooth speaker option and I'm not sure it's a failure, I just would kick on the extra $8 for a significantly better experience.