Sound quality: Sony's SRS-XB30 had fair overall sound quality. Bass has good impact but is prominent and somewhat boomy and deepest bass is lacking. Midrange is fairly even but is hazy, muffled and a bit grainy. Treble is smeared and upper treble is muted. Doesn't do a good job recovering room ambience, sounds somewhat congested and is lacking in detail. Bluetooth and wired sound quality are similar. Provides a decent volume level in a small to medium sized room. When two units are used as a stereo pair sound remains hazy and congested, it can get louder but since two separate speakers are used the sound stage can be made wider depending on placement and room ambience improves to decent, sound quality remains fair.
Ease of use: We found the Sony SRS-XB30 ease of use to be very good overall. Bluetooth pairing was excellent as the device is always in pairing mode when not paired. The volume controls are high contrast buttons (+/-) and has a max and min visual volume indicator. The line input has priority over Bluetooth when plugged in with slight or no delay. Unambiguous. Aux input label is low contrast. Note: The stereo pairing setup of two units is a tedious process which required a combination of button presses on both units and an unintuitive and slow configuration process in the Fiestable App.
