A few weeks ago, Sony sent across its massive Bluetooth speaker called SRS-XV800. As we are headed towards the festive season, it’s a speaker that can differentiate your party from the one thrown by your neighbour.

The lights on the speaker can brighten up any room

This speaker is obviously massive and heavy. But I didn’t have a problem carrying it around because there are two handles on the top — one on the back and one on the front. If none of those present a good option, there are two wheels on the back. The small plastic wheels are just about okay for rolling around on hardwood or cement floors but if you’re dragging it through grass, you’re going to be doing more dragging than rolling. I wish the wheels were slightly bigger but that’s more like a quibble.

Ports have you covered

On the front, there are lights on the bottom and top. There are four colour-changing LEDs on the inside of the handle that shine down onto a little face and they change colours based on the song, based on the beat and you can change this in the settings as well. There’s also a button on top to turn off the lights for those who want to a vanilla look and feel. Except for the power button, the others are touch-sensitive options; All of them work well.

The Fiestable app is where all the party magic happens

Next to it we have several input options. Rather than tapping one menu option, like mode, a bunch of times, it’s convenient that you can tap optical-in, audio-in and USB; it’s easy to switch between controls. On the top, there is a Mega Bass button. It’s obviously a fun thing to have for a party. There is also a slot on the top, which is ideal for keeping your phone or a small iPad (try the iPad Mini) because the device has audio inputs from microphones and guitars. You can use this as a karaoke machine.

On the back are a number of ports. There is a little flap and it’s IPX4 water-resistant (when placed vertically; IPX2 when placed horizontally), so you can use this by the pool or if it’s drizzling. You don’t have to worry about your relatively expensive speaker getting damaged.

There is an excellent selection of ports on the back. On the top left there’s a battery button. Press it and it will give you info about battery level. The battery lasts 25 hours under normal usage and if you want to get a quick charge out of this when it’s dead, 10 minutes of charging gives you three hours of listening which is more than impressive.

The Sony Music Centre app takes care of the sound profile of the speaker

There are some key controls, so you can go flat or sharp, a lot of speakers don’t have that. There are echo and a guitar buttons, related to the two quarter-inch ports on the bottom — you can plug in a microphone for karaoke and you can plug in a guitar. There are dials to control the levels of each input. If you have vocals and guitar, you can choose the levels of both of them. Then there is the 3.5mm port for a typical headphone cable. If you want to plug in a laptop, go ahead. There is a USB Type-A port for what is called play and charge; you can place your phone in the slot on the top and charge it while simultaneously playing through the speaker without using Bluetooth. Next, optical-in for a TV sound booster: Set this machine next to your TV and you can use an optical cable.

Perfect sound

There are two apps that work the speaker — Sony Music Centre and the other is Fiestable. We will come to that in a bit. There are two 6.7-by-6.7 inch woofers… tons of bass on this. I am not getting into Watts rating, which can also be misleading. Next, there are two 1.7-inch rear tweeters on the back and there are three 2.4-inch front tweeters.

There is no distortion at all and it projects sound well. What I like about the speaker is that it sounds consistent, wherever you are in a room or anywhere in the house… I got the perfect sound. It’s a speaker that’s perfect for outdoors. In case you are having a pool party, take this one along. The sound you get at home is the sound you get on the outside.

Also, even if you stand next to the speaker, your ears are not going to get blown off while someone at the back of the room will get the bass as well as the entire soundscape, which is because of the placement of the tweeters. While exercising, turn on Mega Bass to get that extra boom. Being made by Sony, there is support for LDAC for higher quality listening. The speaker represents music perfectly.

There are two apps that work with the speaker — Sony Music Centre and Fiestable. The speaker connects pretty well with Android as well as iOS. There is something called Party Connect, so when you use the app you can connect up to 100 compatible speakers with this. In settings, you can customise sound effect, DJ effect, TV sound booster and so on. Under illumination, you can change between several lighting modes. In Fiestable, there is DJ Control, illumination style, karaoke styles and so on.

Should you buy it?

Though big and heavy, the speaker has wheels at the back

The speaker is the jack of all trades. It’s big and does its job well at parties. Frankly, given the number of features, the pricing is not off the mark. Should you need a speaker for house parties, Sony SRS-XV800 is a great choice.

At a glance

Device: Sony SRS-XV800

Price: Rs 49,990

High notes

Consistent sound

Water resistance

Good battery life

Great app support

Muffled note

The wheels on the base could have been bigger