Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I love the Klipsch KMC-3. You can look for my fawning review of that thing on Amazon. In my pound-for-pound-sound it sits at #2 in my all-time-best after buying and testing over two dozen bluetooth speakers of various sizes and prices. I like it so much that I actually bought a second one after they discontinued it, to do nothing but sit on my shelf and wait until the first one dies. There are other speakers in the same general range of portability that were good enough to keep (Marshall Kilburn, B&O Beolit 15) but, completely regardless of the fact that the Klipsch was priced below both of those (well below the B&O) I consider it to have the dominant sound quality. So I figured I could rely on Klipsch to put forward a credible competitor to the #1 all-time pound-for-pound-sound reigning champ, the Bose Soundlink Mini (I have the original and Mini II, identical sound quality). Size, weight, power, driver layout, all made the Groove seem like it was designed to do just that. I won't belabor the point. It failed. Badly. Despite having a larger (and singular) main driver and two passive radiators, The sound is as thin as you'd expect it to be from a thing that size - if not more so. One review claims that this can clearly articulate bass down to around 60Hz, and doesn't clip the low-end - so it goes ahead and tries to attack lower tones, albeit with a lot of drop-off and of course, running the risk of distortion of higher tones playing through the same driver. I believed that because the KMC-3 does exactly that - it's (relatively) small but feisty and doesn't back down from ANY kind of bass. It can not only reproduce, but actually project, surprisingly deep notes, well into the 45Hz range, out of what I believe is only a 3 or 4" woofer, in a way that makes it sound like it could almost be an 8" driver in a ported enclosure. This one does nothing of the sort. While with careful positioning, a good deal of burn-in, and just the right music, you might be able to pick out some of those deeper notes, right out of the box this sounds... frankly, pretty pathetic. Despite all my optimism, it actually sounds below-average for its size, both in terms of the treble "sparkle" (a 3" driver may have trouble making anything over, 10-12kHz) and of course, the bass. Exactly as you'd expect a 3" driver to be... this is a speaker built entirely around a monaural midrange driver. And it sounds like it. Net net, this is no competition for the Soundlink Mini. Not even close. The Mini may be twice the price, but I'll argue the sound quality is worth all of that and more, relative to this speaker. Why didn't I give it only 1 star? It seems to be solid, well-made. I'm sure the battery life is good. I'm sure the other functions work well. And, because it's made by Klipsch, who also made the absolutely brilliant KMC-3 (love fest continues unabated), so there's a few tenths of a star just due to the reflected glory of that other speaker. Is this speaker good enough to match or best the other featherweight world champ, though? No. Not even close. And is it worth its price? No. Sadly, I don't think so. There are a whole lot of less expensive ultra-portable speakers from brand names known and unknown that will do adequate work of the same quality. I'll still continue the search for something around the same size as the Bose, that is as good as or better than the Bose, but despite quite a few attempts in that category, nothing has yet come close, including this speaker. When they pull out two stand-alone 0.5" or 0.75" dome tweeters and make the 3" driver's surround a whole lot softer and wider (make the woofer longer-throw), and soften up the passive radiator surrounds, and tune it all to make audible, controlled sound well under 100Hz that you can actually hear and enjoy... I'll try again! For now, this is going back.