Everything manufactured these days seems to be crafted for the sole purpose of making your life more portable. However, audio companies, Jawbone and Dr. Dre Beats have stepped up to make sure you never have to rely on your laptop or smartphone speakers again.
The Jawbone Jambox and the Beats Audio Pill’s emphasis on affordability, design and quality have made both of them very student friendly and they deserve a deeper look.
We’ll start with their respective qualities. While their sound does have plenty of restrictions that must be kept in mind before purchasing, they are great for personal use and for providing background music at small gatherings.
This may sound restrictive, but power is one of the first things you give up when something becomes portable. The most common complaint users have about the The Pill is that it has lost the bass that Beats audio is known for.
That said, each device has its redeeming qualities. Although both speakers have Bluetooth connections that allow you to connect from a smartphone to a laptop, The Pill has near field communication (NFC) capabilities. What this means is that there are no settings and preferences windows to deal with.
Still, the device you are connecting to needs to have NFC capabilities as well for this to work properly. Don’t worry though, ,this technology is becoming more and more common as time passes.
Jambox doesn’t have the NFC capabilities, but it does have live audio, which is a setting that tricks the ears into believing the sound is coming from all around and not a single point.
This effect is similar to having surround sound in your entertainment system. This setting does seem to decrease the volume, so if you want to go louder you can just turn the setting off.
Similar to The Pill, the Jambox does come with complaints–mainly connectivity. The Bluetooth capabilities seemed to waver and not connect at all at times.
They are both fully capable of conference calls and both of them have built-in mics. This feature allows users to sync them to computers, phones and tablets in order to talk to friends and family from far away or simply for the purpose of a business meeting.
When it comes to design, they still both stand on their own. The Pill, as the name suggests, is shaped as a capsule with a multitude of solid colors to choose from. It also comes with a hard carrying case with a carabiner attached at the end.
The Jambox opted for corners over curves. It also shares a solid color lineup, but for $30 more, you can customize the colors so that the center is one color and the top and bottom are another.
Although $30 seems expensive for a little color-scheming, it is still under the base price of The Pill, so it might be worth considering if you are looking to personalize your speakers.
When it comes to price, the Jambox is tagged at $152 and The Pill at $199 on Amazon. The price doesn’t change much on their respective websites, with the exception that the Jambox is more expensive at Jawbone.com
Ultimately, both speakers need to be sampled personally. The NFC capability might be a commodity worth having for a technically savvy person. On the other hand, an audiophile might appreciate the value of sound quality that comes from the live audio feature. The most important thing to remember, however, is that both can be taken just about anywhere. If you are tired of depending on your phone or laptop’s built-in speakers, then these are both definitely more than viable options to consider.
Jaime Quesada may be reached at [email protected].
