For the last few weeks, I have been living with the Supertooth Disco, a Bluetooth speaker seemingly named after a singles night at a dentists’ convention. It’s a battery-powered stereo-speaker with a hefty subwoofer inside and, while it will never make its way onto an audiophiles shopping list, it’s a pretty impressive box for its size.
First, the specs. The speaker weighs in at 1,140-grams, or 2.5-pounds, and has two eight-watt drivers. Also in the case is that subwoofer, which blows its sound out through a rear-facing hole. Battery life is claimed to be 3-4 hours at high volume, up to 10 hours at medium volume. Standby is rated at an almost untestable 1,500 hours, or 62.5 days. The Bluetooth is A2DP and AVRCP, meaning you can beam straight from a phone, computer or iPad (where it shows up in the AirPlay menu) and also use the buttons clustered around the volume knob to play, pause and skip tracks remotely
The battery life is indeed impressive, lasting me for days of casual listening (I left the Supertooth in the kitchen and used it to play music and podcasts whenever I was in there). I couldn’t test the battery life at “high volume”, as I live in an apartment with neighbors stacked all around me, but in general use it’s long enough not to worry about, and you can always just plug the thing in (and it takes just three hours to charge from empty).
So how does it sound? That depends on what you’re listening to. Rock sounds pretty rushed and jangly, classical music – notoriously demanding on stereo equipment – is equally bad. But try some jazz, some spoken-word or anything warm and funky and it sounds very good indeed. I have been obsessed with Noël Akchoté’s So Lucky these past weeks, which is an album of instrumental acoustic guitar covers of Kylie Minogue’s hits (don’t laugh – it’s pretty awesome). The guitar and the squeaking of fingers on strings are projected into an impressively big sound by the Supertooth. Which brings us onto the subwoofer.
You can really crank this speaker. At full volume it distorts, but it’s loud enough to stop any conversations well before you get that far up the dial. Press the bass-boost button by the main dial and you’ll get mixed results. Sometimes it overpowers the music, other times it adds the right amount of warmth and kick. It’s not set-and-forget: You’ll be tweaking this on a per-album basis. The bass itself is big, though, and even with the volume less than halfway up you can feel the air punching out of the rear hole.
The Supertooth comes with a case, a spongy neoprene-type thing with a mesh hole for the bass-port and a Velcro-shut flap for the ports around back (power and line-in via jack). It seems perfect for keeping splashes off in the bathroom, or for taking the speaker out for a trip.
Would I buy the Supertooth (it costs $150)? Sure. It’s not as good as the sub’n’satellite speakers I have hooked up elsewhere, but considering its size the speaker sounds fantastic (just steer clear of the White Stripes) and the portability will be a huge bonus once my leg is no longer broken. And before I go, here’s one great extra use for the Supertooth. Because Bluetooth-streamed audio is in sync with any on-screen video from the same device, you can sit the Supertooth behind your iPad when watching movies and enjoy a pretty good mini-home-theater experience. Add in a pico-projector and… Well, that’s something coming in a future post.
Supertooth Disco product page [Supertooth]
Photo: Charlie Sorrel
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