BRAVEN - BRV-XXL Portable Bluetooth Speaker - Black,Titanium

The BRV-XXL is a substantial speaker with drivers on either side of the handle. It has internal batteries so you can play your music without a power plug close by and provides up to 500 mA of power for charging a cell phone or other device. The BRV-XXL supports NFC or traditional bluetooth pairing and has a small rubberized shelf with a small lip to keep your cell phone in place during use. Beside Bluetooth connectivity, you can use an input from a 1/8" stereo cable (not included) or an external microphone. Sound quality is extremely good. It passed all of my sound quality benchmarks ("Toccata" from Manheim Steamroller's "Fresh Aire III", "Beethoven's 9th" by Maazel, "Beautiful People" by Marilyn Manson, Bach's "Toccata and fugue in D minor" by Peter Hurford, "Death of a bachelor" by Panic! at the Disc, Brubeck's "Take Five" and Vivaldi's "Four Seasons, third movement". Ordinarily, a lot of speakers color the music to sound good with only some kinds of music, or have cheap speakers and an internal amplifier that distorts badly as volume increases. I played my benchmark music at a variety of levels and was quite pleased with the results. If you need to adjust the sound to your preferences, there are a set of controls for adjusting bass, treble and volume as well as a handy, dandy shoulder strap with an included bottle opener. Since the unit is rather hefty, the shoulder strap is a must. The speaker came with three additional power cables for non-USA use as well.

The Braven XXL Bluetooth speaker delivers great sound. It's big and pretty heavy, so for portability it's not so great even with the included carrying strap. Battery lasts a good average of 10 hours depending on how loud you use it. Bass is great, best I have heard from a Bluetooth speaker, but mids are lacking a bit. So its on the brighter side of sound. On the good side, there's no noticeable distortion, except if you crank the bass on high. Oh yeah, it has a built in EQ for bass and treble. It has NFC for easy and quick pairing, which works well. With my devices, it connects to the last one I used as soon as the unit itself turns on. Like, instantly. It also has a built in MIC input and AUX input. So far, only complaint may be with sound starts cutting off at around 15 - 20 feet of walking away from the speaker with your connected device. But I guess it makes up for it being splash proof, and the build quality. Its built like a tank. It has some rubber on some areas. Most of the speaker is hard plastic and screwed on metal speaker grilles. There's 4 drivers, 2 front plus 2 in the back, for your sound. With one woofer and 2 radiators on the bottom for bass. Sound is really good either indoors or outdoors. Despite how big and heavy this speaker is, I always end up taking this one with me to work from all of the different Bluetooth speakers in the house. I recommend this speaker highly based mostly on the build quality. Other speakers in this price may sound better to some or look better even, but probably won't take a beating like this one.

Let me start by saying I am a Bose Fan. I have purchased 3 Bose speakers in the last 3 years. I've lost them to my kids going to college including the last one. So I needed to replace my last "donation". My first thought was Bose of course but I thought I'd do some research. I spent a week researching on line and at electronics outlets listening to displays and reading reviews. I was very close to buying the Bose revolve plus until I stumbled upon the Braven xxl. I use my speakers primarily outdoors doing yard work. I have a large one acre yard. The Bose are great but not very loud. I needed loud but wanted to maintain sound quality. The Braven seemed to fit the bill based on all the reviews I read. What sealed the deal is Best Buy's price on the Braven - $195 which is 100 less than the Bose Revolve. So I bought the Braven very skeptical of what the sound quality would be. Fired it up when I got home and was blown away by the loudness, bass depth and sound quality. Took it outside and can now finally hear music at over 150 feet. If you are a Bose fan and need far reaching sound you have to buy the Brave XXL especially at the current offered price.

I have used my Braven XXL at many parties and the volume at full blast using bluetooth connectivity 5-8 hours on a full charge w/ bass and treble at the standard midway point. Full Volume w/ Bluetooth and bass and treble turned up you get around 4-6 Hours. AUX connection to your phone greatly reduces battery useage, on full volume you get about 8-10 hours. To utilize 14 hour play time the volume must be at 1-5 with bass and treble at the standard midway point and no bluetooth useage. I believe this is the most accurate description i can give based on my experience at parties with the speaker. You can play with the speaker plugged in and have no worries but as usual Using bluetooth drains battery fast and the higher the volume and setting the lower the battery

After returning a Fugoo XL, I picked up this unit for use in a very active pool area. You couldn't hear the music over kids or waterfalls. Braven fixed that. You can hear this...well! I'm still on my first charge so I'm worried about battery life. It's big but it'll drink that power up cranking out this full sound. I've docked it one star because the older blue tooth technology is already a bit sketchy. It's cut out twice in an hour and the 33 foot range they advertise seems generous. Use the included rubber stand to hold your phone. I think we'll keep this one because we need volume but be aware of obvious trade-offs.

This thing has some really big sound, especially outdoors. I'm a little biased because for bass quality nothing beats the old JVC Kaboom box, but it had no bluetooth. The sound quality of the Braven XXL is right in the neighborhood and it's a smaller package. The Braven is a bit on the heavy side, but it plays forever on a charge. It makes a TON of bass, even more when you set it on a solid surface and not carpet. If you're running a Macbook, here' s a tip. You will get twice as good sound quality if you install the Boom2 app and adjust the equalizer a bit. With about 10 minutes of adjusting the EQ you can enhance the sound of the Braven SIGNIFICANTLY. You can enhance the midrange of this speaker significantly with the EQ and practically double the bass output with minimal distortion. You MUST try this if you have a Mac.

Well I say portable but you better make sure you have the strap with you because it is on the hefty side. Now with it being hefty you get so much sound and incredible range. You might even have to turn it down if you are close to it and want to converse with people. Love how rugged it is with the rubber ends, and everything sealed. I take it on the boat, to pool parties, and just have it playing everywhere I want music. Not to mention the 15 hour battery. I would make sure you just have your phone charging cord with you because I bet your phone will die before this unit will. Plus it charges your phone. Last but not least and has a bottle opener right on the strap. Now how can you go wrong.

Well I had high expectations of this item but I should have known better purchasing something that DID NOT have a sample model at the store to test out... Oh well. While the sound is great, connectivity is HORRIBLE! It took forever to connect this to my MacBook Pro and once it did, the sound skipped and lost connection about every minute. This was at a distance of about 10 feet. Finally the unit dropped my computer altogether and I never was able to connect again - that's when I took it back to bb for a refund. I did call customer support and their software was not even up to date with El Capitan. Also the instruction booklet face directions that were no longer supported on the unit. So this was a colossal waste of my time.