[section_title title=Testing]
Testing
Getting to grips with the ThumbsUp! Infinity Speaker was a fairly standard affair. I charged it using a USB port on my PC rather than a plug-in charger and the handy red LED indicator on the back told me that it was charging and also when it was full by turning off the LED.
Connecting to my Samsung Galaxy S5 via Bluetooth was also as straightforward as you would want it to be. Turn the speaker on and that LED indicator goes blue and the Infinity seeks a connection. Just visible through the cracks of the top control panel is a flashing blue light to tell you that the speaker is seeking a connection; it stops flashing once the Infinity has accepted the first device that attempts to connect to it. Take your device out of signal range and the speaker returns to seeking mode but go back into range and it will automatically handshake and connect again.
It would be all too easy to fail at something seeming simple like a Bluetooth handshake, here though everything went without a hitch. Almost so well that I forgot it was a step of the review I almost forgot and might have accidentally left out altogether.
The defining feature of this speaker is, of course, it’s LED light show. Designed to mimic a graphic equaliser it is simply activated by volume rather than any wizardry that decodes the audio stream itself; this means you get no show at low volume, almost all LEDs activated at maximum volume and the best effect depending on what ‘s being played somewhere at the top end. This gives away the audience it’s aimed at to some extent, as well as the target environment – I see it fitting in perfectly in a student house where loudish music is not out of place, or as an evening extra at a barbecue or camping trip.
The looks and feel of the product aside, the important part of any speaker is of course how well it reproduces sound. To test this, using Bluetooth from my phone as the main source, I went about playing a random selection of music and other audio over the next few days at a loud enough level to make the most of the LED effect.
Playing a lot of different audio through the ThumbsUp! Infinity I discovered a number of things:
- It’s really quite loud, certainly more than sufficient for a room or camping trip
- Rock, heavy metal and anything else with a strong beat sounds pretty terrible due to lack of bass
- Spoken word (audio books, Claro Read software) sound nice and clear
- Combining the two points above (Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds) sounds great, then terrible, then repeat…
- Most chart music is pretty good – at least as far as I could tolerate it (I’m not a Bieber fan)
- Acoustic / acapella music (Enya, Tracy Chapman) sounds brilliant
- Electronic music sounded a lot better than I expected, turning out rather well
With some tweaking to the photograph of that large side grill, it’s clear to see the reason for such a poor show in the audio department – almost all the grill area is blocked off and the grill is mostly for show. A handful of thin slits under the grill allow for sound to escape, and though we can’t see the size of the speakers themselves it certainly suggests that they are smaller than they first appear.
Battery life is perhaps the final piece of the puzzle, and the Infinity has a certain amount of stamina, lasting around 8 hours when used solidly as maximum volume.
Testing has come to an end, and so, onward to the conclusion…
