Performance
I had heard from a few friends that this speaker was pretty good, but I wasn’t expecting anywhere near the level of performance it delivered. I’ve used a few wireless speakers like this over the years, my favourite is the A.M.P. SP1, it’s about the same size as the Mercury box, albeit a good bit thicker and offered thumping bass. What impressed me about the Mercury box is how it’s slimmer and offers a gorgeous metal chassis design compared to its often plastic and rubber-coated rivals, but also how it blows them all out of the water in terms of performance.
The bass is really good, not just for a tiny speaker, but good in general. Listening to death metal or dance music on little speakers can often leave you with washy sounding trebles and distortion in the bass tone, but that’s not the case here. The sound is big, punchy and clear and that’s pretty much what you want. It’s also, to coin a phrase “bloody loud!”, to the point where I raised the attention of a few people within shouting distance when I tested it at the park. If you’re sitting with a few friends having a BBQ or hanging out at the beach with a bit of background noise, it’s got enough punch to cut through. The added bonus is that it’s waterproof, so like all English visits to the beach or BBQ’s, it’ll withstand the inevitable rain.
The built-in microphone is good, it’s not amazing, but it gets the job done and with it sat on my desktop, I found it perfectly capable of making good quality hands free calls. The microphone doesn’t do well at range though, but that’s hardly a shocking revelation.
The AUX port is handy too, as it’s ideal for hooking up MP3 players and any other none-Bluetooth device.
