Take Photo

Review: Bluetooth Minirig

Introduction and features

The Minirig is a very British creation and also one of the best portable speakers around. This latest version is also now rocking improved bass response and some robust wireless audio chops too.

PASCE Ltd. created the original Minirig as more of a hobby project than a serious manufacturing effort. The company's background is in professional audio, but some of its engineers started messing around with portable audio as a side-project.

Now it's become an entire brand in itself.

The Minirig has also developed a bit of a cult following in the South West, around its Bristol HQ, springing from the area's musical heritage and sound-system culture. If you've ever experienced the sensory explosion that is St. Paul's Carnival in the city you'll have an idea what I'm on about…

The Minirig is built on solid foundations of great sound, ease-of-use and long life.

That tight focus has enabled Minirig to produce a portable speaker that does only what you need it to do, but does it brilliantly.

The unassuming little device has a solitary 3-inch driver and a single button. That does make it a resolutely mono device on its own, but also means it has been able to pack in that large speaker for serious sound.

There are two analogue inputs too, for high and low-gain playback, and a power I/O for battery charging.

This 2015 Bluetooth Minirig, as the name suggests, also comes with Bluetooth connectivity. It's the top spec too, with Bluetooth 4.0 and aptX to allow for CD-quality playback from a compatible wirelessly connected device.

That's perfect for playing from a hi-res audio player or a streaming service like Tidal.

I've got to make special mention of the battery in this thing though. The Minirig isn't particularly big by portable audio standards, and it's not that heavy either, but this thing packs in a battery with a completely unprecedented maximum 50 hours battery life.

That's a full weekend of audio fun.

Link-ups

One of the things that's helped the Minirig gain popularity among the sound system crews is its ability to connect up to multiple versions of itself to boost sound. Daisy chain the analogue cables, if you find it a friend, and you can make with some big audio dynamite.

PASCE knows this and has made sure the new Bluetooth Minirig will talk with older versions too, making sure no-one gets left out.

As well as being able to link up a whole bunch of the little speakers themselves (Minirig fans are in fact attempting to create a world record with 100 of them to blow the ears off Bristol this Summer…) you can also boost the bass with a dedicated subwoofer too.

That's a fair bit larger than the main Minirig, and if you go for a 2.1 setup the portability thing does start to become a little trickier to manage.

Performance

The Bluetooth Minirig is a rather stunning piece of portable audio tech. The sound you get out of that 3-inch speaker is seriously impressive, being both very loud and clear too.

Even at its loudest - and boy, does it get loud - you don't fear distortion and with aptX offering CD-quality playback from Tidal you get great sound reproduction too. For such a small device it really does pack a lot of bass when needed, even without the separate subwoofer.

A brief touch of the power button, when the device is turned on, allows you to switch between high and low gain modes, which offers two levels of volume though that obviously does affect the battery life.

That solitary button is super smart too.

As well as powering on and switching modes, it also acts as a battery indicator via its multicoloured LED. When the device is off you can check the battery with a quick press - it then lights up five different colours to indicate how much juice is left in the tanks.

Pairing it with a Bluetooth device is as simple as can be - the Minirig just appears when you search and you can immediately connect and go.

Impressively it also uses TWS (true wireless stereo), if you have a pair of the Bluetooth Minirigs, so you can go completely wireless and still have both speakers playing the same audio from your Bluetooth device.

This was the only time I experienced any technical difficulties though.

Very, very occasionally I had the audio briefly drop for a fraction of a second. It was only when using the TWS setup though, which is down to the Bluetooth protocol and not the hardware. You can still wirelessly connect to one and have that wired into another for a completely flawless stereo effect.

PASCE has also created an Android app for the speakers which is in open beta at the moment.

Like the Minirig itself it's incredibly simple, with basic necessities like battery power and connection readouts. It's also here that you can switch between mono and stereo Bluetooth TWS playback with a pair of connected speakers.

I love the simple, but effective, approach the Minirig has taken. There's no plethora of buttons or features to complicate matters. It's all about great, loud sound and the ability to keep going for ages.

And that battery is amazing.

The 50 hours battery life is achievable if you're keeping to relatively low volumes, with it sat in your kitchen, for example. But during normal, outdoor use, you are looking more at around 30 hours.

Considering most Bluetooth speakers get super-excited about being able to offer ten hours that's still hugely impressive stuff.

I've taken the Bluetooth Minirig away for camping weekends and it's been an absolute star, powering chilled music throughout the afternoon and pounding bass away until the wee hours when jolly dancing needed to happen.

And when I got home the battery was still barely under 50%.

Verdict

The Minirig may not be the most well-known device around, but it really deserves a lot more recognition; it packs a whole lot of impressive portable audio tech into a small, great-sounding package.

Add in the Bluetooth aptX functionality, the seemingly endless link-up possibilities and capacious battery and you've got a quality little speaker.

We liked

First and foremost the audio quality is excellent. All the way up and down the volume slider the sound stays crisp and clear.

The connectivity is great too, offering both wired and wireless capabilities along with its daisy-chaining link-up lovin'.

I love the fact it's so simple too, which is great for ease-of-use, but also makes the Minirig a wonderfully subtle, unassuming thing aesthetically too.

And that battery, oh, that battey…being able to take it away for a full weekend without needing to charge is great - in fact you can even use it to charge your other devices via USB too.

We disliked

I've thought long and hard about this, but the only negative I can really say about it is that £140 is a fair chunk of cash. But considering what you get for that I'd say it's still money well spent.

The only techie niggle came from the TWS setup, and even that was very intermittent and hardly experience-destroying either.

Okay, there is also the fact it's only a mono speaker, which might be an issue if you're trying to create an audio soundscape for a movie, but for blasting out the tunes in the park not so much.

Verdict

I've been using the Bluetooth Minirig for a good while now and I can still barely find fault with it. Genuinely it's the best portable speaker I've used, in terms of both its volume, sound quality and battery life.

I dig the style, the simplicity and the sound - it's the wireless speaker that's always on in my kitchen and is always going to be in my bag when I travel.

I can totally see why it's got such a cult following.

from TechRadar: Technology reviews http://ift.tt/1TrEYVL