BALMUDAThe Speaker | Portable Bluetooth Speaker | 3D Crystal Sound & LED Light Show | Rechargeable | USB-C | 3 Light Modes: Candle, Ambient, & Beat | 7-Hour Playtime for Live Concert Feel at Home

It’s a really cool speaker that sounds great. The light features are really awesome. It’s def not a party speaker, it’s more of an aesthetic piece to have in a room but you can def entertain guests with it. It’s really expensive, but if you’re into stuff like this it’s a cool item to pick up.

I was curious about the sound quality after reading many of the Amazon reviews of people who were given this for free, some folks were thrilled with the audio quality.The speaker sounds like an inexpensive ‘tweeter’, zero bass, close to zero mid-range.Sounds like a 1960’s portable transistor radio, and I’m being generous with that comparison. Audio technology advancements over 6 decades are not present in this speaker.While this boasts nice sounding vocals, it’s hit or miss, mostly miss. I was going to compare this to a Marshall Middleton but there really is no comparison, however, If you are looking for a real nice sounding portable unit with warm bass, nice treble controls, decent sound stage, triple the battery life, an impressive overall sound experience for $299, check out the Marshall Middleton.Back to The Speaker, instrumentals sound ok at mid volume. Going through dozens of music samples, giving several genres a try it was painstakingly futile. Surprisingly, some EDM sounded ok at low to mid volume and created a cute 'light show'.Will this fill an average size room with sound? No, not really. Background music in a medium size room, yes.This unit is a novelty at best. If they remove the speaker and replaced it with longer light tubes, I'd pay $100.It really is a nice ‘thing’ to ‘look at’, that’s about it, certainly not 'The' speaker, totally misses the mark.Going to pack it up and send it back. I really wanted to like this but its a flop sonically.

This is a nice, convenient and accessible sound machine for our kitchen. The lights are cool too!

TL;DR: At the time I got it, this speaker was listed for $400, but it performs as well or worse than speakers I've tried that cost literally 1/10th that.After unpacking this speaker and charging it, I was delighted to find that it turns on with a single quick push of the power button, instead of having to hold it for 3-4 seconds like some other speakers. To be honest, that was the last thing about this speaker that delighted me.I've heard that the best song for testing a speaker is Tracy Chapman's 'Fast Car.' Personally, I prefer the Across the Universe version of 'Dear Prudence.' Each of the four singers tests a different range, and the steady, thrumming bass pulse below it all shows how well your speaker can handle multiple ranges at a time. So that's what I used to try this out.The first thing you hear is the bass. It was a bit thin, but OK. From a couple feet away you could almost feel the pulse, but with another couple steps it thinned away to almost nothing. The lead guitar came in with a noticeable hiss that isn't there on my other speakers. Then came Dana Fuch's smokey, sultry voice, very clear and loud, with what felt like a bit more crackle than I'm used to. Good? Bad? Nervous, but still withholding judgment.Then comes Jim Sturgess' tenor. On a good speaker, his voice is crisp enough to put on a sandwich. Here, it seemed...wilted. There was no body to it, no depth. Evan Rachel Wood's voice should layer and harmonize together with him, but instead the highs were so heavily emphasized that she almost overpowered him. By the time Joe Anderson's baritone came in, the song already felt like a muddled mess. He basically disappeared under the sound of the bass, almost invisible in a chorus that he should've been the heart of.We usually pick something from a musical for our second test song to hear something that's more vocally driven. In this case, we chose "The Greatest Show." The initial "Who-o-oa" from the crowd was...barely intelligible. It sounded more like a weird instrument than voices. On the other hand, Hugh Jackman's voice came out clean at first, if a bit higher than I'm used to. As the song went on though, his sibilants started to hiss and crackle. Think "Ladiesss and gentssxs, thisxs isxx the moment..." We actually didn't hear Zendaya's voice in the song at all until we backed the track up and specifically listened for it. My wife observed that the speaker (sorry, The Speaker) seems like it picks a voice to emphasize and amplify, and then sort of buries the rest.Since I'm close to turning this review into a novella, I'll cut it short and say that this was how almost every song came out: middling mid-tones; hissing, crackling highs and lows that disappeared if you walked more than a few feet away. The sound field barely covers our 900-ish square foot downstairs at full volume, and having it that high amplifies the sound distortion.I can't even tell you anything about the light show, because without a worthwhile speaker underneath, there's just no point in watching it. There were lights. They did things. I didn't care, because the sound was just not good. I have a $45 shower speaker that performs circles around this thing. Save your money.

There are things that I like about this speaker:- The design is beautiful and elegant.- The lights give an impression of old vacuum tubes.- The construction is actually quite impressive and it feels very high quality.However, the absurdly high price eliminates what could otherwise be a 5-star review.- The sound quality is average at best. We did a side-by-side comparison with our Echo Show 8 and the Echo Show blew it away.- The volume doesn't get very high, though it's probably sufficient for a space like a kitchen or modest living room.- I rarely have to change the equalizer settings on my iPhone to get better sound out of a portable speaker, but I had to change it to "Small Speakers" to come close to something acceptable.The bottom line is I have speakers that cost a fraction of the asking price ($399 USD as of this writing) that are far better given their price. They also have the feel of being more durable (likely due to the absence of a glass enclosure) and I'd be more comfortable traveling with them.