Luxa2 GroovyW Bluetooth Speaker Review – A Speaker & Wireless Charging Station!

One of the popular devices found within the iDevice section of CES 2015 this year was bluetooth speakers. Unfortunately, bluetooth speakers have gotten a bad-rap for being exactly what you pay for. Turns out, the only way for a company to truly flourish in this busy and competitive market is to revolutionize it: a high quality product with a low price tag. Well, that is exactly what Luxa2 has done with the Luxa2 GroovyW Bluetooth Speaker.

Not only has the Thermaltake division created a quality bluetooth speaker, but has done so with class by introducing an inconspicuous wireless charging station too!

APPEARANCE & DESIGN

To start, we find that the packaging of a product is really just a preview of what sort of design you can expect from whatever it holds. So looking over the box we expected to see a compact and sleek device.

Our first impression was that it had a nice weight to it, perhaps a bit heavy for its size, but it felt sturdy and durable with the added weight. The speaker and charging base come in at 788g total. One of the additional items it comes with is a nice, faux leather pouch that fits both the speaker and the wireless charging station. Besides that, you also get an added auxiliary cable which you can use to connect audio devices to the speaker in case you don’t have bluetooth or NFC capabilities, and a double headed USB to micro USB cable (allows you to charge either USB or Micro USB devices using the charging pad, which has a USB out).

Most of the device is a hard metal mesh housing the actual speaker components. The mesh wraps around the device and is bordered on the top and bottom by a shiny, metallic plastic strip. On the bottom strip, you can find the Luxa2 logo on the front, and directly on the rear of that is the power button for the speaker, mini-usb port and aux input. The underside of the GroovyW speaker has a rubbery padding that gives it a good grip on any surface. In the center of this rubber is a circular plastic ring which seems to be how the charging stand detects when the speaker is placed on it. Then, on the topside of the speaker we have all the controls, as well as a few other informative icons. You have volume up, volume down, play/pause/accept call, and bluetooth “refresh” for pushable buttons. Then you have a microphone graphic next to what is most likely the microphone on the speaker, battery display, and finally the NFC graphic. Whenever the speaker is on, the bluetooth and controls are lit up in a deep blue color, with the battery display only turning on when you press the power button, at which point the device’s remaining battery life will be shown.

The charging pad is made out of plastic much like the speaker, except instead of shiny, glossy plastic it’s a black matte one. Having the speaker on the charging stand gives it a bit of asymmetry (considering that it’s slightly bigger and extends past the speaker’s edges) that overall makes it quite pleasing to look at. The charging pad also has a circular ring, what fits into the beveled one of the speaker to complete the connection for charging it. The Luxa2 logo is again on the front of the charging pad, pushed all the way to the side instead of centered like it is on the speaker.

The underside has four rubber legs to both give itself grip when alone or both when the speaker’s mounted onto it. On one side of the pad you have two ports, a USB output and a micro USB input, as well as a battery meter. As a whole, the Luxa2 GroovyW looks and feels great! The plastic build feels sturdily built, and is nice to look at!

FEATURES

The GroovyW definitely isn’t short on features. To start this speaker not only does its best to make sure the majority of devices can connect to it in some way, but goes above and beyond to bring in some newer technology to allow devices to pair with it. You can connect via bluetooth, auxiliary cable, and NFC. The last one is especially neat, since it’s so quick and easy to connect any device to the speaker! You could even swap devices rather painlessly, in case your friend wants a turn at playing some tunes through your speaker. However, we found all of them to work great, and really enjoyed the variety in options!