Sound quality: Brookstone's Big Blue Unplugged had fair sound quality overall. Bass has mediocre impact, is subdued and deep bass is lacking. Midrange is hazy, grainy and lacks body. Treble is extended, but prominent and sizzly. Doesn't do a good job of recovering room ambience and sounds congested and lacks detail. No significant difference between Bluetooth and wired sound quality. When two units are used as a stereo pair sound, quality remains the same, but since two separate speakers are used, the sound stage can be made wider depending on placement. It also recovers a little more room ambience, improving the speaker to mediocre. Can provide enough volume to be heard in a small- to medium-sized room. At elevated volumes, the unit may vibrate on surfaces.
Ease of use: We found the Brookstone Big Blue Unplugged ease of use to be very good overall. Connecting to Bluetooth is very easy. It shows a pairing mode indicator and indicates when pairing mode has occurred and never times out. It also has NFC, though the NFC tag is ambiguously labeled with a "circle symbol". The controls are low contrast but are in a prominent place. Switching between Bluetooth and Aux input sources is very easy, with no delay. But stereo pairing is a tedious process, which requires instructions to perform.
