Freegene Bluetooth LED Dream Speaker w/Lightshow Review

Freegene Bluetooth LED Dream Speaker w/Lightshow Review

Buy it at Amazon: Freegene Bluetooth LED Dream Speaker w/Lightshow [Affiliate Link]

Takeaway: Good sound, nice visuals, but has a weird horizontal dark row near the top.

This speaker has good sound and puts on a decent light show. It comes with a 3.5mm male to male audio cable and microUSB cable that are both 3.5' in length. Although the manual says this comes with a fabric carrying bag, mine didn't include one and it's not listed in the description at Amazon either.

The speaker measures 9.25" tall with a 2.5" diameter. At 1 lb it's still light enough to travel with. The top and base have a soft-touch matte silicone coating and the body is wrapped in a square-stamped, metal speaker grill. All the controls and inputs are located around the bottom. A full charge for the device take about 6 hours and it can run for 8 hours continuously with the music playing at full volume with the LEDs on. The speaker connects wirelessly to other devices via Bluetooth, but also supports AUX in with the included audio cable and can play music loaded to a microSD card (MP3, WAV, FLAC, APE, WMA file formats).

The instructions aren't great but there are a bunch of nice features: take phone calls using the built-in microphone, skip/rewind tracks, independent volume control, the 3 mentioned input modes, and 6 different lighting modes (including 'off'). You can turn the lights on even when there is no music playing, but there is an automatic sleep timer that will shut the unit off after a period of extended inactivity.

For bluetooth, the device will be called Colorfull in the bluetooth menu. Pressing and holding the play/pause button with disconnect from the currently paired device. If you receive an incoming phone call while paired with a phone, you can answer it using the speaker by pressing the play/pause button. You can adjust the volume directly on the speakers using the '+' or '-' buttons, and there are 8 steps in the volume control. One thing I didn't like about this device is that the automatic recordings when switching modes and reaching the min/max volume always play at max volume.

When you insert a microSD card into the TF card slot, the speaker will switch to playing music from it automatically. Similarly, inserting an audio cable will switch it to AUX mode. The 'M' button allows you to change the mode for music input. Also, pressing the previous track button once will only restart the current track from the beginning; to go back one track you have to press it twice.

The five different animated light shows are fun and cool looking, but only two of them follow the beat and volume of the music. The other 3 are set animations. There's a dark row near the top that looks like a dead row of LEDs on my unit that appears in every mode. I counted the LEDs and it turns out only 80 of the 88 LEDs are working and the entire row of 8 is out. Just be aware this could just be my unit or indicative of a manufacturing defect. The sound on the speakers is clear, distortion free and enjoyable. On one or two occasions I experienced lag and/or speeding up of the music, which may have been caused by a poor signal/buffering. This only occurred via bluetooth and not with the other modes. Because the sound is nearly 360 (minus the strip that has the logo), you can hear it well from just about any direction. It has good mid and high ranges with some decent bass. It can get pretty loud and fill up a space without blowing out the sound (too much vibration) and it works well for parties and outdoor events.

Buy it at Amazon: Freegene Bluetooth LED Dream Speaker w/Lightshow [Affiliate Link]