Today, we’re taking a look at another Bluetooth wireless speaker. Now this one may look a lot like the Supertooth Disco Twins speakers I reviewed earlier this year, but they are from two separate companies. This one has a rather strange name, the ARS60BK. Acoustic Research is currently selling this one for about $100 from their site, but it’s also available on Amazon, and it may be slightly cheaper there. Acoustic Research is boasting that the ARS60BK can last about 10 hours of playback, before needing to be plugged in. Well I’ve been using the ARS60BK for about 2-3 weeks now and I can say that it definitely lasts 10 hours, maybe even more than that. As far as the size goes, it’s a little bit taller than the Galaxy Note 3. It’s pretty light-weight so you can take it with you if you want.
As far as a hardware tour goes on the front you’ve got the speaker and an Acoustic Research logo on the front, nothing really on the sides, and on the back there’s the AC plug, 3.5mm headphone jack and a light which indicates if the speaker is connected to your phone, tablet or laptop. Of course up on top is where all the controls are. You have the power, volume up and down, play/pause and your next and previous buttons. If you’re looking to pair it with a new device, you’ll need to turn it on and continue to press the power button until you hear the little Bluetooth searching sound. Which will sound familiar if you’ve used other Bluetooth speakers before.
I’ve used the ARS60BK with the Acer C720 Chromebook (review coming soon), the Galaxy Note 3, Google Nexus 5, and the HTC One Max. It worked great with each device. The sound quality coming out of this speaker was pretty good, I won’t say it’s the best, but it definitely was good. It can get pretty loud too, but it is not waterproof or water resistant like some others I’ve reviewed in the past. It comes in both black and red, of course I’ve got the red “Salsa” version here, and I think the red actually looks really nice.
