Impressions: Jambox Mini

A while back there was a thread on Reddit recommending some cheap Chinese e-waste, and it was pushing this Bluetooth speaker: the Jambox mini.

I’d honestly never heard of this Jambox mini thing. I just saw the thread hyping it up with “can’t lose at this price” and “beats stuff at the 500 yuan tier,” so since it was cheap I figured I’d buy one and mess around with it.

This kind of thing always reminds me of back in the day when I’d read some idiot “poison-pen” post going on about how some earbuds only cost 49 or 99 and you can’t go wrong buying them, and in the end it turns out you really can’t go wrong — they just sit there gathering dust.

This time I couldn’t hold back and ordered one. And the seller, who seemed to be some kind of official Foxconn outlet, took nearly a week and a half to ship. But it did eventually arrive. The speaker is bare-bones: just the unit and a charger, that’s it.

Considering I checked out of the audiophile-mysticism scene a long time ago, I’ll keep this brief.

First, build quality — I can’t really find fault with it. It’s got real heft, the buttons feel solid, and the rubber-and-metal combo feels good in the hand without any sharp edges.

It charges via MicroUSB, next to a power button that doubles as a power indicator light, and there’s a genuinely decent AUX input, so you can run it over Bluetooth or wired.

Hold the power button to enter pairing mode, and once paired you’re good to go. You can also see this thing doesn’t support aptX — just regular Bluetooth transmission.

The speaker supports Live Audio, which basically means using one driver to fake left-right stereo. You hold “volume + and -” together to turn it on. After turning it on I felt… no difference whatsoever.

A lot of people on Reddit say you can update the firmware, but from what I can tell this “firmware update” is just flashing a different-language prompt sound. I never saw any actual firmware changelog. Some people claim it sounds better after the update. I’ll be damned if I can hear it — maybe my ears just haven’t been blessed by the Church of Miboy the way Wu Laoer’s have.

Last thing: sound quality. The bass on this thing really does hit. The funny part is that the “bass” seems to come from the whole chamber vibrating like crazy — meaning you’ll feel the thing shaking nonstop. That’s not really a problem, but beyond the shaking it’s just loud. The mids are way too forward, the highs are too quiet, and the lows are nothing but “shake”… it sounds a bit weird. Personally I don’t think it’s as good as the “Hive” I bought before, and that Hive cost about the same. Compared side by side, this thing isn’t even in the same league.

Oh right, the “Hive” supports aptX too.

So why does this thing feel like such a steal? Is it because it used to sell for a lot? I read some of the old paid puff pieces this brand put out overseas back in the day, and they hyped it to the skies. Combined with the high price back then, everyone seems to have assumed it was “pretty good” — until it stopped selling, the company went under, Foxconn cleared out the stock, and we got our hands on it and found it can’t even beat a 169-yuan Hive… awkward. Was that high price tag just an IQ tax the whole time?

But Wu Laoer has been raving about this speaker nonstop, climax after climax. Maybe Wu Laoer just has a special place in his heart for products that are basically IQ taxes.