Today I want to take a look at the Halo Wireless Speaker from Five Below. This little guy is from the ever present Bass Jaxx brand, and it’s actually quite interesting.
This first thing you’ll notice right off the bat is that this little guy actually isn’t all that little. It comes in at around twice the size of most of the speakers that I’ve covered from Five Below, though it’s nowhere near the largest Bluetooth speaker that I’ve seen in the store. The good news is that the size increase isn’t just for show, since it’s sporting a 52mm audio driver as opposed to the 40mm driver seen in the bulk of the Bluetooth speakers Five Below offers.
As for the overall design of the speaker, it seems reminiscent of a subwoofer that you would see in a home stereo setup. The large dome has an air intake at the top, and the speaker itself is situated at the bottom of the unit. Thanks to the design of the housing, as well as the larger driver, this speaker has a much better audio quality when compared to the other Bluetooth speakers from Five Below that I’ve reviewed. Heck, it even comes close to the audio quality of some of the $20 Bluetooth speakers I have.
Now let’s talk about the negatives. First up is the fact that this speaker seems to only have a 1-2 hour battery life. It’s a little on the short side, though that does seem to be the trend when it comes to Five Below’s offerings recently. You can get a bit more than two hours out of it if you’re lucky, but I’ve gotten close to 3 hours out of other speakers. That may be the doing of the larger driver.
My other issue with this speaker is one that I have with most of the recent Bluetooth speakers from Five Below. That is the fact that I’m not a big fan of the lighting effect. I know it’s a silly gripe, but after seeing the glory that is the smooth 16 color transition from the Blast cube and the LED light strip (both from Five Below), I just can’t get excited by an alternating pattern of monochromatic red, green, and blue LEDs.
My aesthetic sense aside, this is actually a pretty decent speaker, and for $5 you can’t go wrong. It also seems that I’m not alone in my verdict, since these speakers are currently sold out on the Five Below website and the stores appear to only be getting a limited quantity in. Of course, that doesn’t mean that they’re out of stock in the stores just yet, so good luck on your hunt if this speaker is something that you’re interested in.
Hi and thanks for the reviews.
On the LEDLight Strip from 5 below – can you elaborate on how to connect 2 together so it only use one connection and only one remote..
Between each LED, as well as on the ends of the strip, you should see four copper pads. The four pins that plug into the USB power/IR control unit are also soldered to the same type of pads. Carefully scrape the silicone off of the pads at the ends, lay the strips end to end facing the same direction, and then solder a connection between the appropriately labeled pads (+ to +, G to G, etc.). Since you want to join two whole strips together you could just solder the pins from one strip to the pads on the back end of the other strip. Assuming that the 5V 2A output of a standard USB port is enough to drive two strips of LEDs you’ll be all set.
Good luck. 😀