A Closer Look
The S113BT is reasonably light in weight for its size and the construction is definately of high quality materials. The fairly thick rubber bumper serves as a shield from damage and gives an incredible grip to the speaker. The rubber has a very nice feeling to it. ARCTIC added some style and advertising finesse by imprinting their logo on top of the speaker. Rather than having a flat grill accross the front, ARCTIC added a little bit of flare and contouring to show the user exactly where the two internal speakers are located.
Near the center of the speaker are three buttons, each with their own unique function. The left button with the (-) symbol is used to control the decreasing of the speaker volume as well as skipping to the previous track. The center button with the square symbol is used to pair a device with the speaker as well as answering a phone call. Pausing playback of sound can also be accomplished via pressing the center button. The right button with the (+) symbol is used to control the increasing of the speaker volume as well as skipping to the next track, as you may have guessed. There is also an omni-directional microphone hidden behind the speaker grill towards the center as you can faintly see in the photograph.
On the right side of the speaker we find the “line in” audio port, USB charging port, and the on/off switch.
The backside of the speaker is completely grilled and vented behind the internal speakers.
No matter which way you decide to orient and situate the speaker, rest assured that the rubber bumber will keep it in place securely.
Performance
Pairing the device per the user manual is really straight forward; just be sure to enable bluetooth on your device accordingly. The option to connect with NFC worked flawlessly with both our Galaxy S III and Galaxy Note 2 phones. Connecting with NFC is a bit quicker and more convenient. Alternatively, if your device does not support Bluetooth, you may connect the speaker via the audio cable to your device’s headphone jack and use it that manner.
The sound for such a portable speaker was pretty imprressive to say the least. Do not let the specifications and size fool you. The two 3 watts speakers deliver much more power than even I expected! The clarity of the sound reminded me of some Bose systems I have heard in the past, even with default equalizer settings on the phones. The highs were crisp and some mids were solid. The low end was somewhat lacking, however I discovered that if you place the speaker within six or so inches of a wall; the low end sounds became much more prominent and actually impressed me further. The venting design behind the speakers are definately attributed to this increase in sound depth. This speaker enhances your mobile experience, whether it be with music, gaming, or movies!
Range is very good, even through walls, as we had no trouble playing music in a separate office adjacent to the room containing our phones. No glitches or hiccups, such as stuttering or static, were experienced during our testing period. ARCTIC used quality components to assemble this portable speaker as evident of our test findings.
Battery life is also excellent, thanks to the 1200mAh rechargeable Lithium Polymer battery. ARCTIC promises up to 8 hours of non-stop playback and delivered a product that actually exceeded that mark in our testing! Recharging the phone from complete discharge only took a couple of hours, similar to our smart phones.
A really nice feature of this speaker is the ability to use it as a speaker phone, when paired accordingly. When a phone call came in, the S113BT automatically paused our music playback and answered the call for us. The conversation that took place was loud and clear with no distortion and our other party had no trouble hearing our voice through the internal microphone. This is a wonderful feature that other portable speakers have trouble perfecting.
And there we have it readers, a solid offering from ARCTIC! Let us go over some points and final thoughts in the conclusion of our review.
