The Breakdown
You have surely noticed the Tribit company over the past months as creators of pretty good high-quality audio gadgets and their earbuds Xfree and X1 gathered some very favourable reviews. And they are certainly not novices in the speaker department either, after all we had our very positive review of their 360-degree speaker XBoom almost exactly a year ago. But this time we will be focusing on the smaller piece with the Tribit XSound Go model and a classical design. But i can tell you right off the bat, that this one didn’t disappoint and as for the budget speakers go it’s right up there with the best.
Let’s start with one of the great benefits of this speaker and that’s the portability. Tribit XSound Go dimensions are only 56x59x170 mm with 380 g of weight so it’s pretty easy to just pack it with you wherever you go. For convenience there is already a black lanyard strap to hook it to your bag or something, but can be easily detached if needed or if it would offend your sense of design.
In terms of design of the speaker itself there is not much to say, it’s pretty classical pill-shaped one with rounded back and speaker grille up front. On the bottom there are also tiny rubber “legs” so the speaker is not going to travel on the surface by itself when performing some loud music feats. Front speaker grille carries the Tribit logo and behind him we can find dual 40 mm drivers and one passive radiator. Controls are full on top with five buttons, each of them with a texture so you can even go for some blind controls if needed. And finally in the back is a waterproof silicone seal hiding the charging micro-USB port and the AUX 3.5 mm jack. There is no micro-SD slot though so you are limited to use it in connection to your Bluetooth device.
Speaking about waterproof, Tribit XSound Go proudly boasts the official IPX7 certification so it can be a perfect audio partner even to some pool party and whatnot. It should be fine even being submerged for a while, but in my testing i didn’t have the heart to just throw it into the water. But it endured providing music in a shower with flying colors, so i can clearly vouch for its waterproofing rugged capabilities.
But of course the most important question is, how does it sound ? The speaker can dish out total of 12W of power (2x6W), so it should be enough to cover small to mid-sized room with enough sound. I liked the very well rounded sound even in the lower frequencies and balanced structure with handling the vocals and guitars especially (which is not so common even in much more expensive range). Sound is pretty natural, even though don’t expect any real basses coming from the tiny speaker. What should be really commended is the minimal distortion even at very high sound levels, i can say that roughly up to 90% of the maximum volume there is still little to none distortion.
Wireless connection is handled by the Bluetooth 4.2 with official up to 66 feet range and in my testing the pairing has been smooth and fast with no dropping or any issues. The integrated microphone on top of the speaker works fine with good enough quality and supports the voice assistants like Google or Siri, eventually even Amazon Echo.
Another excellent feature is the battery life and the makers are boasting of full day of music on a charge. In my experience the advertised 24 hours of endurance is a bit too generous, but even my roughly tested 20 hours are fantastic considering the small size and portability. The only small issue is maybe the fact, that the charging of the 4400 mAh battery inside is a bit slow ithe 5V/1A and will take about 4 hours to complete.
And the cherry on the top comes with the price, because currently you can find it on Amazon for $28.99 including some in-house coupons. Or throw-in few more dollars for the blue version instead of the classical black. That’s fantastic value right there, because you are getting a waterproof compact speaker with well rounded sound and fantastic battery life for your money. Tribit XSound Go is definitely one of the best budget wireless speakers out there and you are not going to regret getting it.
