When it comes to Bluetooth speakers, you can spend as low as $20 and up to $400 or more. For example, the last Bluetooth speaker I reviewed was about $30, and the one before that was $299. Quite a difference in price. When it comes to the Rapoo A500, we’re looking at about $80 on Amazon. So let’s keep that in mind as we go through this review.
The Rapoo A500 is a small candy-bar like speaker. The one I have is gray, almost like a smoke gray, with silver trim. I think it looks pretty nice. Rapoo includes a 3.5mm cord for connecting your phone or laptop to the speaker directly. There’s also a micro USB cord for charging the thing up. They also include a nice carry bag for carrying the speaker around. Overall, the packaging is quite nice.
So what about setup? Well you can always turn on Bluetooth on your device and connect it the “old school way”. But Rapoo has given the A500 NFC on the top right side. So it’s super easy to connect. Just tap your phone on that side of the speaker and it’ll connect almost instantly. Still one of my favorite features on any speaker or set of headphones. Other than NFC, there’s nothing all that special about connecting to this speaker from Rapoo.
Onto the sound quality. Remember when I said earlier to keep the price in mind? Here’s why. The sound from this Rapoo A500 is quite good. But it’s not great. Because I use all types of speakers, I’m used to more expensive speakers that, obviously, have better sound. But for the price, I think it’s quite good. The bass is a little low though. Other than that I have no real complaints with the sound here.
Battery life is about average, Rapoo says you can get about 10 hours of playback from this one. I can usually get around 8-10. So they aren’t wrong, but again compared to others, it’s a little low. It’s still enough to get through the day. And if you’re keeping this on your desk, you can just keep it plugged in anyways.
