infoThink Star-Lord Bluetooth Speaker REVIEW

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I love Bluetooth speakers. They give you the power to carry music with you everywhere you go and share with others. This concept is the driving force behind Star-Lord, the main protagonist from Guardians of the Galaxy. You find out in the first movie that his mother dies and he is stolen from Earth by a band of space thieves. All he has with him is a Walkman and a cassette tape to remember his world and his mother by. He loves music and it’s really part of his being through both movies. During the movies, he shares his love of music with his friends and you even see in the second film where a tiny Groot continues to ask for music to be played. I love this about his character development and it’s one of the reasons I was so excited to discover this unique piece of movie merchandise — the Star-Lord Bluetooth Speaker by infoThink.

The speaker itself is designed to look exactly like a Walkman from the 80s. The speaker is the back of the device while the front is made to look like the window of a portable cassette player. The produce is officially licensed by Marvel and functions as a Bluetooth Speaker. You have the option to play music by connecting via Bluetooth or plugging in a USB drive. The speaker has a 600 mAh rechargeable battery and it’s very lightweight — not like the heavy metal cassette players that it mimics.

The speaker comes in a fairly standard cardboard box. It’s branded with the Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 ‘look’ and has some basic information about the device in a couple of difference languages. There are several misspellings on the packaging, but I’m willing to overlook that if the product is of good quality. I’m a little surprised that the quality control on this isn’t a little better though considering it’s an officially licensed product of Marvel.

There is an inner carton inside the box that sticks a bit. I had to pry it out and when it finally came loose, the speaker fell onto my desk because it wasn’t right side up. The speaker comes packaged with a charging cable that connects via USB, but it’s got a DC in. I’m not sure if this choice was made because of the retro nature of the design or simply because it was better for the speaker. The cord does stick out of the speaker just a bit, but it doesn’t seem to affect the charging ability of the cable. There is also a user manual included, but again, this has some misspellings. I’m fairly certain it’s because of a translation issue.

Once you pull the speaker out of its packaging, you will notice several things. First, it’s the exact size of the old cassette tape Walkmans. The design of this speaker is really very creative. Next, you will see that all the buttons are raised and click when you press them — just like the old Walkmans used to be. While this is a Bluetooth speaker, there is also a dual headphone jack so that more than one person can listen to music at the same time. I think my favorite feature of this speaker is the volume lever. Not only is it a slide lever, which is reminiscent of the old Walkman, but it’s also autonomous of the mobile device’s volume. This means that you can turn the volume up on your phone and then turn it up again on the speaker. It’s a bit of a rare feature these days as most speakers simply control the connected device’s volume.

Since it’s a Bluetooth speaker, you are probably wondering about the sound quality. Well, I would rate it as average. It amplifies sound well, but if you turn it up too loud, the sound starts getting gravely and static sounding. The bass comes through nicely. I played some 90s hip-hop to test that out and some Hall and Oates rang through the speaker as a general test. The speaker was easy to connect to and I didn’t lose a connection while I was listening to music. I like that there are different modes to it. In fact, you can connect a USB drive and plays tracks directly off of it. In fact, it was made to work with the infoThink Guardians of the Galaxy OTG Flash Drive, which I thought was a nice touch.

I think the Star-Lord Bluetooth Speaker is definitely a unique piece. While it’s a capable speaker with decent sound quality, I don’t know that I’ll use in on a daily basis. I will more than likely find a place for it in my curio cabinet full of collectibles.

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Originally published at macsources.com on June 14, 2017.