I am not a technician, I am just a guy interested in PA systems, HiFi speakers who loves to listen to well recorded music. In general the build quality of the housing itself is convincing considering the price for that speaker. It is made of plastic with a perforated metal sheet in the front to protect the speaker. You can place it even on a stand, there is mounting for a pole on the bottom of the speaker. Also you could use it as a monitor sideways with an angle of 45 degrees on the ground. The only concern I have are the small control knobs on the back of the speaker. They are a bit wobbly and I have doubts if they gonna resits a small collision with an other object, which is likely to happen on the road.
I would describe the sound as warm, going more in the direction of HiFi then PA. A similar experience I already had with the EV ZLX 12P. For my use of listening to music out of the box via bluetooth its doing the job, people who are searching for a linear or neutral sound should maybe go of an other system. I feet the Speaker via bluetooth and also via cable to the XLR ports. The XLR line in's have a an EQ and reverb, the bluetooth input unfortunately does not allow any adjustment at the speaker itself. Behringer is relying here on the fact that the most portable devices have a built in EQ. The genres which are working the best are acoustic songs to in general music without a lot of deep frequencies. For electronic music there is an subwoofer support needed since the speaker has just an 6,5’’ build in woofer which is responding up to 3kHz. I do not know what kind of driver is used for the 6,5’’ woofer, if its neodym or not but in this price range I am expecting a normal ferret driver. Since I am still in the warranty period, I am not going to open the speaker. The tweeter is also doing its job quite well, by pushing the speaker to the limits (clipping indicator LED activated) I did not have the impression the tweeter is screaming or distorting that much. Its more that the woofer reaching its limit and the hole housing starts to get noisy. For the size, I am quite happy with the performance and for my use its doing the job great. I for the moment I mainly use it to listen to music while working in a workshop but in the future I am thinking about getting a second speaker and an battery powered subwoofer to listen to music with some friends outdoors in the nature. A negativ point for me is the all present background noise while listening on a lower volume level. This is important to know if you are thinking about using the speaker at home in a calm environment. The DPS is cutting the noise when there is no signal at all, but if there is a lower signal incoming via bluetooth or the line in, the noise is clearly recognisable. A lot of the lower budget PA systems have these issue, so I would consider this as a part of the game. But it’s good to know. The performance of the battery is not exceptional good, if you listen to electronic music without the reduction of deep frequencies on a higher volume level the speaker will quit battery powered operation after 3-4 hours. With acoustic music from the 60/70s I was able to listen up to 8 hours on a higher level since there are not that much energy consuming frequencies in the songs. If you are a street musician and you want to play for a longer time you should definitely think about an external power backup or invest more and go for a Bose L1 with exchangeable batteries. The speaker comes with a 1,5m power cable, thats it. I transformed a 10m 3x1mm2 patching cable to a normal power cable to be more flexible when the speaker needs to be connected with a power outlet. I also ordered the protection hull from Thomann to transport the speaker, especially to protect the control pad on the back with the small pots a protection while transporting the speaker I would highly recommend. I can recommend the speaker and its sound in general for this price. It is interesting for people who are just need speakers for a mid volume music playback or just speech. In this price range you should definitely not expect a professional system for the every day use on road. For the the use every now and then in a non professional environment it should do the job. For electronic music an external sub is needed and for street musicians who want to play for a longer time, an external power source also recommended.
