Hasta La Gadget!

Editor’s note: Ross Rubin is principal analyst at Reticle Research and blogs at Techspressive. Each column will look at crowdfunded products that have either met or missed their funding goals. Follow him on Twitter @rossrubin.

Whether you rocked your New Year’s Eve Gangnam Style, fed your Bieber fever, or just took in a traditional Auld Lang Syne, there was an opportunity to get that music out of your smartphone and share it with the rest of the party. And as long as that party wasn’t larger than, say, a half-dozen people, any number of the more than dozen Bluetooth speakers on the market could help you with that task.

Indeed, despite being a poor vehicle through which to demonstrate audio quality, Kickstarter did its part in 2012 to fund a few such products. These included the stylish Hidden Radio in January, which raised nearly $1 million; Carbon Audio’s silicone-encased, tablet-gripping Zooka in March; and the weather-resistant Turtle Shell from Outdoor Tech in  October. With 2013 barely underway, though, three more Bluetooth speakers have set out not only to amplify tunes but crowdfunding’s unceasing cry for financial support.

Backed: Boombot Rex. What happens when you take a bunch of hip San Francisco product designers and put them into a neon-lit studio from which they can call their tattoo-covered bros? Boombotix, a startuptopia where the world is nothing but tasty surfin’, solderin’ and spearphonin’. The hexagonal Boombox Rex has a similar perforated exterior to the Turtle Shell and is also ruggedized. But while some of the feedback on that earlier weather-resistant project have found its audio quality lacking, the Rex aims to achieve a rich sound by integrating two 36 mm drivers and a small woofer within its frame.

Deep bass requires deep pockets. The more than 1,100 backers eager to encourage the mostly healthy-living, product-development equivalent of The Real World — and perhaps pick up one of the $80 powerhouses — have contributed more than three times the compaign’s $27,000 goal. And that’s with about six days left in the campaign. The Rex is due in March; that is, assuming the team can tear itself away from the lives you wish you had.

Backed: CoverPlay Mojo. The rectangular CoverPlay Mojo may not have as creative a shape as the Rex, but it squarely beats it in at least one dimension: thickness. The 7 mm speaker is such a natural accessory for svelte tablets that CoverPlay has designed a case that can hold both as a $30 accessory. Offering something like it as a stretch goal would have been a nice bonus for the campaign, but the Mojo held on to its own mojo by a margin nearly as slim as the speaker itself, reaching its $30,000 funding goal with less than a grand to spare. Instead, the company introduced a mid-priced reward tier in its last 10 days ($95 as opposed to the $105 previously offered), which helped it get over the edge. Austin Powers may have been able to claim his mojo in less than two hours, but backers are slated to get their Mojos in March.

Whacked: XyloBeats. The last time someone offered something as cute, wooden, and capable of remote audio as the cylindrical Xylobeats was at the end of Terry Fator’s arm at The Mirage. The small “eco-friendly” XyloBeats are roughly as tall as their diameter and are available in six wood finishes. The top end of the rewards included a set of all six for $160.

But the campaign is in its final days with less than 20 percent of its goal reached. It’s difficult to see where the XyloBeats campaign went wrong. The goal was not outlandish at $10,000, and the reward prices were downright cheap – not only by Kickstarter standards but even in comparison to the overall market for Bluetooth speakers. People may have been turned off by needing to add a second unit to achieve stereo, but that was also true for the pricier and more powerful wooden 1Q that raised nearly $200,000 last summer.

There are plenty of Bluetooth speakers to choose from, which is exactly why I asked Boombotix co-founders Lief Storer and Chris McKleroy what made them think the market needed another one. But Boombot Rex, the company’s latest Bluetooth speaker (it previously made a few different models based on collectable vinyl toy designs) is a different beast, and one they think can win over even the jaded Kickstarter crowd, which has seen countless iterations of wireless mobile speakers.

“Where our speakers really stand out is that they’re all designed as wearable speakers,” Storer said in an interview. “For the first time, you have a piece that could be really used externally and actually replaces your phone, giving you that speakerphone/hands-free thing that other brick shaped units can’t provide.” While some devices like the Jambox are designed to be fairly comfortable both indoors and out, the Rex is made from the ground up to be a wearable external speaker that hits the bike trails or ski slopes with a user, stand up to significant abuse, and still sound terrific on your next trip. It features a number of external controls for controlling music playback and answering calls, as well as a noise-cancelling mic to make its speakerphone component more than just an afterthought.

The Rex has other benefits, too. Boombot claims it’s the smallest 2.1 sound system in the world, with two 36mm drivers and a bass woofer crammed into its 3.3mm wide, 1.8mm deep shell. It also boasts changeable front grills, which will eventually come in a variety of colors and designs, has survived drop testing at up to 2.5 meters, and boasts on-board Siri support via a dedicated button for those connecting it to an iPhone device. The rechargeable battery keeps the Rex going for up to six hours, which is less than the advertised run times of a lot of the competition, but it’s cheaper than most other speakers, too – estimated retail pricing is just $99, but backers can get it starting at a $75 pledge.

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The Rex isn’t Boombot’s first speaker, so unlike with many of those going to Kickstarter for funding, the company has plenty of experience with manufacturing partners, and with shipping devices to paying customers. They’re only looking for $27,000 in funding, too, and hope to ship by February, 2013. Storer explained why they’re targeting that specific amount, and why backers should trust that they can deliver.

“It’s a goal that’s just high enough for us to get a pilot run done,” he said. “We’ve raised some money from friends and family and we’ve made some investments to take this product really far, but our production facility is willing to do a small volume test run. We’ve had a number of mistakes when we built the original Boombots, and we’ve learned from those mistakes. Small hardware companies like ours can get just washed through one bad production run, so we want to take things slow with the initial order volume.”

Boombot Rex is a project with a lot of promise from a small hardware startup that has proven it can ship product. The San Francisco-based company may be taking on one of the most crowded smartphone accessory spaces out there, but it’s doing so in style with a twist on the concept that’s truly unique.