GOgroove SonaVERSE BX Wired Portable Speaker with USB Music Player – Cube Speaker with USB Flash Drive MP3 Input, 3.5mm AUX Port, Playback Buttons, Rechargeable 5 Hour Battery (Wired AUX Only)

I wanted an affordable, portable speaker with decent sound quality and no Bluetooth or WiFi, and this little speaker met me needs perfectly. The sound is really good for a speaker at this price point. It is simple to start using immediately–the controls are every intuitive except for the shuffle feature, but mine came with a sticker explaining how to turn that on or off–you just hold down the “play previous track” button for several seconds to toggle the feature. It is really hard to find a non-“smart” portable speaker these days. I’m so glad this one exists. I also bought the August FM Radio MP3 Alarm Clock. The sound quality is about the same, and for $15 more it has an alarm function, an FM radio, the ability to play SD cards as well as flash drives and auxiliary inputs, plus the August product lets you repeat one track, repeat all tracks, play all tracks once, or shuffle, and it lets you choose between different EQ settings like “live,” “rock,” and “classic.” Depending on what you want either of these are great picks for people who don’t want Bluetooth or WiFi in their electronics.

We wanted a small, portable speaker with a rechargeable battery, good sound quality, and 3.5 mm auxilliary connectivity. The GoGroove SonaVERSE delivers all of that! We are very happy with this powerful little beauty! It would be nice if the battery lasted a little longer but, again, for a small unit, this speaker provides great sound and reasonable battery life. For the price, this is a great value!

2013 May 31 Update: Raised my rating to 4 stars (like it) as over time I have grown to like this more, finding it very convenient and with decent sound volume and quality, such that I often grab it for situations where I use the audio cable for a quick hookup to a tablet or laptop for music and movies (when a Bluetooth unit is not available or handy). This is the "where it shines" use I mentioned in the original review below.

*** Original review ***

Since there are so many other reviews already posted, I will be brief and concentrate on what I see as the shortfalls of this system. First, let me acknowledge that the sound is pretty good. More bass than most small add on speakers for sure. But the sound also seems a bit less clean to me. And it audibly distorts at higher volumes (and this speaker can get amazingly loud.) Still the sound is good for a speaker of this type and I have no major complaints about the sound.

The size and overall all appearance are also good. Everything works fine. Price is fair. Even good compared to many. So where does it fall short? Well, the charging LED is an unbelievably small LED buried in a hole on the side and hard to see in daylight. Second the power on/off switch is a bit harder than many to use. But the biggest miss is that the 3.5 mm audio input is in the cheapest to manufacture, but worst location possible, on the front, right side. It should be in the back (IMHO). As it is, it completely destroys the nice design style they had going and you have this cable sticking out and just butt ugly. In the back, lower, or even on the side in the back would have looked much, much nicer. Now, this may not bother you, of course.

The other thing I would note is that although it supports SD cards and USB keys, you have very little control over how the songs are played. They basically play in the order they appear on the USB or card in the "top" location only (no folders). This greatly limits the usefulness of this feature. Still, better to have some capability than none, I guess.

So this is best suited as an outboard speaker for a device that controls the playing order and, ideally, also has some equalizer functions available to tweak the sound. In that situation, I think this speaker will sound good and shine (if you can ignore the ugly cord sticking out the top right of the speaker). I used it as an outboard speaker for my tablet while watching movies and it worked very well – this is an application where it shines as this use maximizes its strengths (strong bass) and the placement can be behind and out of sight (more or less). It’s 4 stars in this specific application, but I give it only 3 overall for the reasons mentioned above.

If you like loud, thumping bass, add another star, because it has that going (personally I like the more balanced, cleaner sound of some of my other speakers).

Almost all portable speakers on the market today either dock with an iPhone or require bluetooth streaming to function. But I don’t want to walk around with a $600 boom box (cost of phone + cost of speaker) and also don’t want to rely on two devices having a full charge (phone battery + speaker battery) to stream via bluetooth. So what is a consumer to do, but a portable CD player? Enter this GOgroove self-powered speaker.

Why Sony, Panasonic, et al, do not have a product like this is beyond me, it’s perfect for portable music and there are 1,200 Amazon reviews for this product in the past year alone, showing very strong consumer interest.

The GOgroove speaker is fantastic for portable music. The use of a standard-sized removable battery is fantastic, and it can use a Nokia BL-5C battery (which is smarter than Apple’s planned obsolescence permanent battery approach). The battery charges via the included USB adapter, and you can also bring along extra batteries to the beach for music all day long — try that with a bluetooth streaming device + phone. Extra batteries are fairly cheap.

Music plays off an SD card, or a USB memory stick. It plays MP3 files only, and the files must be located in the root folder (files in subdirectories are not read by the player). I believe the SD card limit is 32GB, but have used a 16GB without a problem.

The construction is very good, with an MDF (wood particle board) exterior on 5 sides and a 6th side with a volume knob and LED-lighted controls. When the unit is turned off, it will resume playing at the song at the same spot when you turn it on later; this is a great feature. The prior volume setting also resumes when the unit is switched back on.

As for sound quality, it meets my expectations for a battery-powered speaker. I have a home stereo system costing many thousands, and also high-end headphones, but this is a portable speaker system, and a portable speaker system at this price will not sound like a concert hall. But it does sound pretty good! There is no high frequency speaker (tweeter), just two small speakers (one on each side of the cube) so the high frequencies are a bit flat. The bass can sound a bit muddy, but overall, for what it is, the sound is very good, and it plays fairly loud. This is perfect for a picnic lunch, in the kitchen, or a day at the beach.

Note that the sound is greatly affected by where the unit is placed. If you place it near a wall, it will sound louder with more bass. In a corner, yet more bass (too much for my taste). The point is, experiment with placement, and also where you aim the speakers (face the wall, or at an angle to the wall, or parallel to the wall, etc). Experiment.

Overall, after one week of use, I’m very happy with the product and would purchase again. Will update this review if anything breaks.

This speaker delivers good playback sound from flash cards and drives… It has USB port, universal connector port. ( MP3)You can fast forward, pause as well with those options. Small and fits on end table nicely.