Verdict
Does the BearBrick Audio 400 sound like £ 595 - worth of Bluetooth speaker unit ? It most certainly does not . But it might be the product that makes me grant ( for the first metre in my career , I might lend ) that audio operation commensurate with the asking price is not the be - all and end - all …
Pros
Cons
Key Features
Introduction
And now , as they used to say , for something completely different .
You do n’t see many unsmartBluetooth speakersthese days , and you see fewer still that are nearly base in a product that ’s a staple of design museums all over the Earth . And yet here we are . Is the BearBrick Audio 400 a thingumabob ? An unlikely audio hero ? Something in between ? allow ’s observe out , shall we ?
Availability
The BearBrick Audio 400 is on sale now , and in the United Kingdom the prescribed selling cost is £ 595 . In the United States it goes for $ 500 ( or , at least , it does on the prescribed BearBrick Audio web site ) , and in Australia you ’re looking at AU$975 or something quite like it .
Yes , that is undeniably high-priced by the standards of unsmart Bluetooth speakers . But you do n’t want me to order you the BearBrick Audio 400 is far from your stock unsmart Bluetooth talker .
Design
At the risk of state the obvious , I ’m going to express the obvious : the design of this speaker is dead faithful to the BearBrick 400 templet Medicom Toy ground quite a while ago .
The 400 % BearBrick design has long since been uncommitted in a huge number of close – the Medicom Toy website lists over 1500 fluctuation , from British Museum Rosetta Stone and Banksy Riot Cop to Daft Punk and René Magritte , and all points in between . And now there ’s this powered Bluetooth loudspeaker variant , which is yours in the unmortgaged ending of my follow-up sample , ‘ smoke ’ or matte Negro .
It ’s an authentic BearBrick 400 design inasmuch as the head , arms and legs all move – and when it ’s stick out upright , with its arms and legs direct , it ’s a desktop - friendly 280 x 132 x 70 mm . And while quite a few Bluetooth speakers , from the deeply low-cost Shenyun Skull type to the wildly expensive Louis Vuitton Horizon model , have attempt to make figure a big part of their appeal , I wonder if any are quite as striking as this .
Want a Bluetooth speaker as much for the originality of its aesthetic as for the speech sound it makes ? This could be the one for you …
Features
At coup d’oeil , the BearBrick Audio 400 might well bet like a victory of mode over gist or , worse still , a flippant and trivial design exercise . But the company has go to considerable lengths to give this speaker a level of audio credibility .
Most significantly , it ’s engaged the services of Ukraine ’s Rinaro Isodynamics , perhaps best know for supplying two-dimensional charismatic driver technology to the the like of Meze Audio for use in some wildly expensive headphones .
Rinaro is responsible for for the Quad 360 arrangement that ’s designed to offer omnidirectional audio from the four speaker drivers arrange in the speaker ’s nous – there are two 20 millimeter tweeter ( one in each ear ) and two 40 millimeter mid / bass drivers fire through the perforation on the back of the bear ’s pass . The raiment is tug by a total of 20 watts of Class D amplification and is secure for a frequency response of 90Hz – 20kHz .
Wireless connectivity is viaBluetooth 5.0and there ’s compatibility with SBC and AAC codecs . And if you so want , a duo of Audio 400 can wirelessly form a stereo pair .
The talker is fit with a 10.36Wh Li - ion barrage fire , which can be easily swapped out when the sentence comes . It ’s good for as much as six hour of playback from a undivided bursting charge ( provide you ’re not making your bear drama at top volume , of course ) , and can be fully charged from flat in around 90 minutes . There ’s a USB - C remark at the bear ’s allow heel for this determination , along with a single LED that glows green to indicate the barrage is 100 % charged , orange for 50 % or so , and flashes red if there ’s less than 5 % charge remaining .
Control is somewhat aboveboard – after all , this is a very aboveboard intersection . There ’s a single clitoris on the bear ’s depressed back ( in that arena where some folks wish to get tattooed ) that encompass power on / off and Bluetooth twin . The bear ’s veracious hand can be twist leave behind or right to increase or lessen volume , while its left paw can plough to skip forwards or backwards through the music .
Sound Quality
Given that the Audio 400 uses a fairly ordinary Bluetooth standard for wireless connectivity , and is compatible only with the most bog - standard codecs , there ’s no penury to seek out the highest - result content – the speaker system will give you pretty much everything it ’s get unless your content is super lo - res .
So it does n’t weigh if it ’s a Qobuz - derived 24 - bit/96kHz single file of David Bowie ’s All the Madmen , a CD - received 16 - bit/44.1kHz version of Motion Sickness by Phoebe Bridgers via TIDAL or a 256kbps facsimile of Why Why Why Why Why by Sault from Spotify – it ’s all the same to the bear .
In almost every circumstance , the Audio 400 pose plenty right . Its tonic equilibrium is nicely neutral , with no open coloration at any point – the top of the frequency compass is crisp and assertive , the midrange is capable and unmediated , and what sea bass presence it generates is solid and properly contain . Detail levels are high in every section , and the BearBrick merge the output of its four little drivers into a logical and convincing whole . rhythmical expression is impressive , and there ’s an depression of get-up-and-go to the speaker ’s display that reach for an entertaining and quite piquant listen .
It does n’t really emit profoundly enough to make in good order big volumes , but at least when you adjudicate to weave the output signal northwards it does n’t change its tonal characteristics – it plainly have a small louder . Listen at very low volume , though , and the output becomes a little lopsided – the top and the midsection of the frequency range come down forth more pronto than the bottom end , so when playing very quietly the Audio 400 is fundamentally all sea bass . And it ’s a little inhibit where dynamics are worry , too – recording are process up at a set point of intensity level from which the speaker is reluctant to depart all that far .
Rinaro Isodynamics has done sterling employment in pull a gravid , more enveloping sound from this unpromisingly form enclosing that seems possible . But the idea that the Audio 400 is an omnidirectional speaker is , in all silver dollar , a false alarm . There ’s a specific source - point of music , no matter what you ’re mind to or the level you ’re listening at – but nevertheless , the BearBrick represent a more expansive sound that you might be anticipate .
It ’s unyielding where wireless connectivity is concerned , too . It maintains a connection to the sourceSamsung S23 Ultrasmartphone much more unfalteringly than plenty of other speaker system I could observe , even if there walls between them or even if one is one a different floor of the theatre to the other .
Latest deals
Should you buy it?
If you want to be able-bodied to spill the beans about what your tunes look like as well as what they vocalize like , this bear ’s for you .
More , ahem , conventional Bluetooth loudspeaker system can supply a little more of everything where audio reproduction is concern .
Final Thoughts
plainly I wanted to hate the BearBrick Audio 400 . The replica of music is a serious business , after all , and this does n’t look much like a serious merchandise . But I must concede that ( while I would n’t buy one ) the Audio 400 has a great deal more credibility as a speaker system than I imagined would be probable .
Trusted Score
How we test
We examine every wireless speaker system we go over thoroughly over an extended period of time . We utilize industry standard trial run to compare features the right way . We ’ll always tell you what we find . We never , ever , take on money to go over a Cartesian product .
Find out more about how we screen in ourethics policy .
FAQs
you’re able to link two BearBrick 400 speakers together to make a two-channel sound .
