Speedlink Gantry Portable Bluetooth Speaker Review
Peter Donnell / 10 years ago
Performance
Pairing up the Speedlink Gantry was a very simple task, just tap my phone to the side of it and it paired up automatically in seconds. It was then simply a case of loading up some music on my phone and enjoying it via the Gantry’s powerful stereo speakers.
Once powered on and paired, you can see a small LED light behind the front panel mesh of the speaker; this let’s you know that the device is active. It flashes when the battery gets low and lights up red when you’re charging the device.
Initial impressions of the Gantry were very good. In fact, my initial impression was “OMG THIS THING IS FREAKING LOUD” and that’s simply because I underestimated its power. This thing isn’t very big, but it packs some serious punch. It’s incredibly loud and clear. Even at 50% volume I found the unit to be uncomfortably loud, or at least too loud for the office, but you’ll likely be grateful for the volume when you’re in a noisier environment.
Bass response may not be on par with a set of powerful desktop or Hi-Fi speakers, but for something of this size, it does sound impressive. The downward firing bass ports do add some extra depth to your music. The speaker is remarkably clear at high volumes, I was expecting a lot more distortion when I pushed it harder, but it holds up pretty well to punishing death metal and extreme volumes. Sure there is a little distortion at max dependant on what you’re playing, but that’s to be expected and it’s only at unreasonable volume levels.
AUX connection is good for legacy devices such as MP3 players, but obviously you can’t use the built-in volume controls on the Gantry. You’ll need to rely on your media players controls for this. The call button works pretty great too, giving a nice boost to hands free audio should you need it.
Speedlink says you can get up to 5 hours use out of this unit and I don’t doubt that. Personally I got a little over 3 hours from it, but I was pushing the volume levels pretty hard and constantly playing with the buttons for testing.
