REVIEW – I don’t know about the rest of the gadgeteers but I am always trying to improve but also streamline my EDC and my travel gadgets. Lots of times this involves finding a device that performs more than one job. That’s why I was excited to review the Outdoor Tech Bolt Bluetooth speaker. It can also charge a device in a pinch!
What is it?
The Outdoor Tech Bolt is a Bluetooth speaker with a few nifty features
What’s included?
- Outdoor Tech Bolt
- A USB C cable
- Directions
Features and performance
The Outdoor Tech Bolt Bluetooth speaker is a waterproof speaker (IPX 6) that is relatively lightweight at 1 lb and has an unusual shape. It’s flat on the back and rounded on the front. On the Bolt webpage, it shows it fitting in a cupholder, and it fits in my car’s cupholder at three inches wide. The flat part is rubbery and conceals a magnet so you can stick the Bolt to your car bumper for tailgating. It also has a silicone strap so you can also hang it up if that works better for you. The build quality feels great and I think it can really take anything you can throw at it short of driving over it.
The reason I was attracted to the Outdoor Tech Bolt was that you can also use the speaker as a power bank, so if you often travel or camp with a speaker, you can plug in and charge your phone. That double duty feature makes it stand apart from others on the market. I struggled to find how big the battery capacity on the Bolt is on their website, though, so I reached out to their customer service and they said the capacity is 3.7V/2600mAh. Since my phone has about 3600mAh, I guess this really is a battery for emergencies only! I did test that functionality out and it did charge my phone.
Other interesting features of the Outdoor Tech Bolt speaker include the fact that if you have two of them, you can pair to both and have a stereo effect, and it has functionality as a speaker phone with a built in mic.
As for sound quality, I am not an expert at these things, but I found the tone on the Outdoor Tech Bolt a bit tinny and the bass muddy at higher volumes. I was not a huge fan. I handed it off to my son to give it a workout since I didn’t know if I was being too particular with the sound quality, and he agreed with me. However, most of the time I don’t listen at high volumes and it sounds perfectly fine then. I used it (among other things) for the music at an outdoor poker game I hosted and everyone thought it was great. I don’t know how long the Bolt battery lasts, but I didn’t run out of battery over the course of the evening. It would be nice if the battery had an indicator of how much battery is left, and it it would be really cool if Outdoor Tech had any real specs available for this product on their website. Hard facts are hard to come by on there, but the speaker certainly looks cool!
What I like about the Outdoor Tech Bolt speaker
- Has a lot of functionality packed in to a small and lightweight package
- Can be mounted to things with the magnet and hang from things with the strap
What needs to be improved?
- The sound quality could be better
- How about some specs on the website?
Final thoughts
The Outdoor Tech Bolt Bluetooth speaker does a nice job of playing music at medium volume and it has some bells and whistles, but at this price point, I think there are probably better speakers out there if you like to blast your tunes.
Price: $79.95
Where to buy: Outdoor Tech and Amazon
Source: The sample of this product was provided for free by Outdoor Tech. Outdoor Tech did not have a final say on the review and did not preview the review before it was published.
