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The Bluetooth Minirig is a rather stunning piece of portable audio tech. The sound you get out of that 3-inch speaker is seriously impressive, being both very loud and clear too.
Even at its loudest - and boy, does it get loud - you don't fear distortion and with aptX offering CD-quality playback from Tidal you get great sound reproduction too. For such a small device it really does pack a lot of bass when needed, even without the separate subwoofer.
A brief touch of the power button, when the device is turned on, allows you to switch between high and low gain modes, which offers two levels of volume though that obviously does affect the battery life.
That solitary button is super smart too.
As well as powering on and switching modes, it also acts as a battery indicator via its multicoloured LED. When the device is off you can check the battery with a quick press - it then lights up five different colours to indicate how much juice is left in the tanks.
Pairing it with a Bluetooth device is as simple as can be - the Minirig just appears when you search and you can immediately connect and go.
Impressively it also uses TWS (true wireless stereo), if you have a pair of the Bluetooth Minirigs, so you can go completely wireless and still have both speakers playing the same audio from your Bluetooth device.
This was the only time I experienced any technical difficulties though.
Very, very occasionally I had the audio briefly drop for a fraction of a second. It was only when using the TWS setup though, which is down to the Bluetooth protocol and not the hardware. You can still wirelessly connect to one and have that wired into another for a completely flawless stereo effect.
PASCE has also created an Android app for the speakers which is in open beta at the moment.
Like the Minirig itself it's incredibly simple, with basic necessities like battery power and connection readouts. It's also here that you can switch between mono and stereo Bluetooth TWS playback with a pair of connected speakers.
I love the simple, but effective, approach the Minirig has taken. There's no plethora of buttons or features to complicate matters. It's all about great, loud sound and the ability to keep going for ages.
And that battery is amazing.
The 50 hours battery life is achievable if you're keeping to relatively low volumes, with it sat in your kitchen, for example. But during normal, outdoor use, you are looking more at around 30 hours.
Considering most Bluetooth speakers get super-excited about being able to offer ten hours that's still hugely impressive stuff.
I've taken the Bluetooth Minirig away for camping weekends and it's been an absolute star, powering chilled music throughout the afternoon and pounding bass away until the wee hours when jolly dancing needed to happen.
And when I got home the battery was still barely under 50%.
