Sony - SRS-XB31 Portable Bluetooth Speaker - Blue

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The vast majority of our reviews come from verified purchases. Reviews from customers may include My Best Buy members, employees, and Tech Insider Network members (as tagged). Select reviewers may receive discounted products, promotional considerations or entries into drawings for honest, helpful reviews.

• Rated 5 out of 5 stars

  Excellent Bluetooth Speaker

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  • My Best Buy® Elite Plus Member
  • Verified Purchaser

  I bought the Sony SRS-XB31 Bluetooth Speaker mainly to use as a speaker for my laptop when I'm using it on my desktop at work. While I don't need Bluetooth, it's one less cable to connect and I like that a lot. I have also been using it to play music from my iPhone and Echo dot. The sound quality is excellent for such a small speaker. It will go louder than I need and the bass is rather good. The lighting is fun and the colors match well with my Razer Huntsman Elite keyboard. There are some basic controls on the back that provide the most common functions, but to have full access to all the capabilities of this speaker, you'll want to use the Sony Music Center app. I installed the app on my iPhone X and I have to say that I was very impressed with what is provided. There are a number of preprogrammed lighting modes and sound modes. There are also variable manual controls for bass/mid/treble arranged like a mini graphic equalizer. Very nice! The Bluetooth connectivity is flawless. It has no trouble staying connected to both my PC and iPhone X at the same time, and automatically switches between the two, depending on which I am using.

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  Posted 7 years ago by Seat4F

• Rated 5 out of 5 stars

  Sony Brings the Sound and the Lights to the Party!

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  • My Best Buy® Member
  • Top 100 Contributor

  The Sony SRS-XB31brings life to the party. It gets loud and is bass heavy. It wants to be part of the action. This speaker has attitude with its flashing strobe and mesmerizing light display. Turn up the volume and it can easily fill a medium size room. The speaker has excellent build quality and finish. Weighing in one ounce shy of two pounds, the speaker is wrapped in a high quality fabric mesh with protective rubber to seal off moisture and dust to give it an IP67 rating. Despite it's heft, it can easily be handled with one hand and carried in a backpack. Along the top of the speaker are the power/bluetooth pairing button, volume +/-, and a single play/pause/speakerphone button that also doubles as a skip forward and skip reverse button depend on the number of successive presses of the button. Housed at the rear of the speaker behind a rubber cover is the mico usb connection for charging, a usb port for charging a smartphone at 1 amp, battery indicator button that also turns on and off the speaker's light pattern, a button to wirelessly party chain up to a hundred SRS-XB41, XB31 and XB21 speakers, another button to add a speaker for left and right stereo separation, a recessed reset button, and finally a 3.5 mm audio jack. The 3.5 mm audio jack is a welcome feature as we all know it is close to extinction, but I am glad that Sony decided to include it for older audio devices without bluetooth and for greater audio fidelity. Let's get right to the point...The primary reason to consider the Sony SRS-XB31 is the extra bass feature, and boy does it pack a punch! Right out of the box, the extra bass is the default mode from the factory and the bass is powerful, punchy, in your face, bombastic, and unapologetic. This is heaven for bassheads. It's great for rap, hip-hop, and dance music with deep lows and low mids, but will make a mess out of any other music genres as the extra bass feature will pull down the upper mids and trebles in the sound spectrum, losing out on that crispness and sparkle that make some speakers stand out over others. If you're going to be listening to deep bassy music all of the time, then the extra bass is great. However, most people including myself have a broad audio taste. Sometimes we want the extra bass, sometimes we don't. Although the speaker is marketed as extra bass, the speaker is capable of delivering exceptionally crisp, clear audio allowing for a more tame and respectable balanced approach to the audio experience; But to get it, you'll need to install the Sony Music Center app which features controls for adjustments to the audio among other things. The app allows you to select from one of three audio modes: Standard, Extra Bass, and Live Sound. The Standard mode represents the most balanced and flat listening experience. In the Standard mode, bass is still well represented, but more controlled, and mids and trebles flow evenly. The second mode is Extra Bass mode and it is what comes pre-set from the factory and it offers amazing bass as I covered above. Finally, the Live Sound mode replicates the audio experience as if you were hearing it from a live venue. The best way I can describe Live Sound mode is that the audio from the speaker appears more enveloping and louder, with a wider sound stage offering greater separation between vocals the the music, and thereby creating a more three dimensional effect of the music. I thought the Live Sound mode works pretty good. It fooled my ears thinking that the audio was coming from different directions. To fine tune the audio even futher, the Sony Music Center app also offers a three band equalizer for bass, mids, and treble. Turning up the treble in the equalizer in Standard mode allowed me to get the crispness and sparkle that I was looking for while still delivering a strong bass response. Other things the Sony app will do is allow you to change the light pattern or turn the lights off altogether, check the speaker's battery level, and turn on and off the Party Booster feature. Party Booster is a unique feature where you can tap different parts of the speaker to make different sounds such as a snare, kick drum, cow bell, and cymbal. I didn't have any particular use for this feature and just left it off. I couldn't imagine forcefully tapping on an expensive speaker such as this one for fear of damaging it or causing an internal piece to come loose. The light and strobe feature is great for a party and the app allows you to select different patterns and colors, but it easily becomes distracting. Additionally, it will consume your battery faster. Better turn off the light display if you're not showing it off. Speaking of battery, the battery will take up to 5 hours to recharge from the fully discharged state and will last up to a phenomenal 24 hours on a full charge. The speakerphone function on the speaker works well. People on the other end of the phone said that my voice came through clearly. Would I recommend the Sony SRS-XB31? Yes, I would. It is packed full of features for the price, and it is a versatile speaker that gives you excellent low end bass, but can be adjusted and tuned to offer respectable crispness and sparkle.

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  This review is from Sony - SRS-XB31 Portable Bluetooth Speaker - White

  Posted 7 years ago by lambda100

• Rated 5 out of 5 stars

  Love the bass on this thing. Very recommended!

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  • My Best Buy® Elite Plus Member

  Great, small, portable Bluetooth, and wired speaker. I was shocked at not only how loud this small speaker sounds, but how much bass it puts out. I wish it had shipped with it’s own charger, it does not come with one, it only comes with the speaker itself, and a micro-USB to full size USB cable (and a short one at that). You are expected to use your own phone’s charger. I have an old Samsung Galaxy Note 4 adpative fast charger (it puts out 2amps) it was a QuickCharge 2.0 charger. It took about 3 hours to charge the speaker up. There is a small amber light that goes on to tell you the speakers battery is charging, but no way to tell how much it is charged. I would have appreciated even a three bar status to tell you roughly how much of a charge you have. Ok, after I charged it up to full, the amber light goes off, I paired it to my phone via bluetooth. I have an android moto x pure, and setup was really easy. Turn on the speaker, then hold the power button down on it for a few seconds, go to your phone (or any other bluetooth device capable of outputting sound), and select the speaker from the list and it will connect and pair. Any audio you would normally hear from your phone will now come out of the speaker. YouTube, music apps, just about anything. You can control the volume from your phone itself as you normally would, or on the speaker itself. I listen tried playing music and wow, was really shocked how loud a small speaker like this could get, and how much bass it put out. Maybe even too much bass for some, but I like it alot personally. I listen to alot of audio books, and this worked great with that too. You can also make and receive phone calls with the speaker acting as a speaker to hear the other person, and also has a microphone on the speaker to pick up your voice too. I didn’t realize this speaker had this functionality. Another feature it has, NFC. If you have a NFC enabled phone, after setup, you literally tap your phone to the speaker “N” logo on top, and it will, A) - Turn on your speaker, and B)- Automatically turn on and select the speaker in your bluetooth devices. I always turn on and off the speaker when I am done, but this was a pretty cool feature. I had my wife also pair her phone, another android device, OnePlus 3T, and she had no issues with it at all. The speaker will take multiple bluetooth setups from various devices. However, this is where I found an issue for me. Once more than one device has received a Bluetooth pairing, and more than one bluetooth device is actively on, one person can basically, “take charge” of the speaker. So if I am playing music thru the speaker, and my wife’s phone then plays any kind of audio, it takes over the speaker. Ok, that was fine enough, but I noticed that once I would be playing audio on my device, music, audiobook, anything, if she was on twitter on her phone, and it happened to be scrolling thru, and an advertisement would should up in her twitter feed, the audio would get paused from my phone. It took me a while to figure out what was happening. I would be listening randomly to music, and it would just randomly pause. I wasn’t sure if it was loosing it’s bluetooth connection, as the phone was very close to the speaker, by the way, the distance from my phone to the speaker can go is at least 40 feet that I have noticed so far during my use. This kept happening I noticed whenever my wife was using her phone. Weird. Had her turn off bluetooth on her phone all together and the pausing of audio on mine just stopped, and all was good. She turned bluetooth back on her phone, this time left it on but not using it, no problem, my audio was not paused anymore randomly. She then went back to her phone, got on twitter, and she realized when she would scroll past a video advertisement, even though it was silent on her phone (the audio doesn’t play automatically), once the video started to load, it would pause whatever audio I had going to the speaker. It would not switch over to the audio from the silenced ad on her phone’s twitter feed, it just paused mine, and never unpaused my audio either. This was not really a big deal for me once I knew what was happening, but Sony is marketing this phone as a phone where multiple people would send their playlists or direct music thru, pool side, at the beach, etc.. So I figured I would just put this out there, incase people discovered this issue too. I primarily am going to use the phone for use in my home. Listening to audiobooks and music mostly while I am in my kitchen, but also take the speaker with me when I go into the bathroom to take a shower, etc.. I have yet to try taking it to a beach but the phone is waterproof, made of a washable fabric, and also dustproof, so long as you keep the charging panel closed. The speaker also has flashing lights on it while using it, and can even go with the beat of the audio, but for my more subtle use, luckily Sony has made a button to turn the lights off in the charging area of the speaker. The battery lasts approx 24 hours, and so far I am on my first full charge, using the phone probably 6 hours so far with no issues. I do wish it had a battery level indicator as previously mentioned. There is also the ability to charge your own phone via a separate USB port on the speaker, which is a great feature, especially if you are out on the beach away from an outlet. However, it does not output alot of power from that USB port, and would not charge my phone at full speed. You can also plug in your phone via a 3.5mm audio jack if your phone still has one, and save on battery power on both your phone, and the speaker itself. Overall, for my use, I do really like this speaker. It has some features I probably would not use often, but the bass is killer!! Love the bass on this thing. Very recommended with a few caveats.

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  This review is from Sony - SRS-XB31 Portable Bluetooth Speaker - White

  Posted 7 years ago by blah