Philips SBA3000
Portable speaker
James Heffield | Tuesday, March 30 2010Unless you know a singer who regularly travels with a guitar you are unlikely to have shared a lot of music with friends during your most recent camping trip.
That is, unless you brought along a portable speaker like the Philips SBA3000. It’s one thing to be able to listen to your favourite song through your iPod headphones, but sharing that beautiful noise with others while you down a beer and cook a steak on the BBQ is quite another.
The SBA3000 runs on four AA batteries and has a 3.5mm jack that allows you to hook it up to your iPhone, iPod or most other MP3 players. Its curvy appearance is snazzy enough and the limited controls – power, volume and ‘dynamic bass boost’ – make it so simple that even your grandmother could use it.
Where it stumbles badly is sound quality (a rather bad stumble for speakers). It’s more than capable of playing sound loud enough for a big group to hear but its limited frequency range of 150Hz to 16,000Hz won’t do all of your music justice.
The unit we tested sounded tinny in rock songs like Shihad’s Pacifier and, despite the bass boost, suffered more vibration than a bad girl’s dream when we unleashed a bass-heavy tune like Pit Bull’s I know you want me. That might be acceptable if it was a $40 or $50 job, but at $130 (RRP), you should expect a little more quality.
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