Sony SRSBTM30 Bluetooth Wireless Speaker

First of all, I had a hard time getting it to work with my HP laptop (that I bought in July, 2009). After about an hour of clicking/browsing around, I narrowed the problem down to the “BlueTooth Settings” – “Audio” tab, wherein I would select the bluetooth speakers and click the “connect” button, after which Vista would say it was “connecting”. But after 5 seconds, it would fail. After another hour, it finally started to magically work. The last thing I tried before it started working was going into the “Device Manager” (which you can select from the “control panel”) and then I disabled the bluetooth devices and then re-enabled them again. Also, from the “Device Manager”, I tried to update the driver, but Vista said it had the latest drivers and thus no update occurred. But then when I went back to the “Audio” tab, I found that the speaker was now magically connected. I’m really not sure what I did to get it to work, but I’ll accept it.

See larger image Sony SRSBTM30 Bluetooth Wireless Speaker for iPod and MP3 Players (Electronics) List Price: $149.99 USD New From: $39.98 In Stock Used from: $58.99 In Stock

The sound quality is OK, but it is a little muddy for songs with a significant amount of bass. I have an old, small boombox that I’ve been connecting to my laptop and that sound is significantly better.

The range is pretty good. I live in an apartment with a lot of WiFi signals and I still got pretty good sound about 25 feet away and through one wall. But when the speakers are far away from my laptop, I notice that the sound cuts out whenever I move/click my bluetooth mouse. If the speakers are right next to my laptop, then I can use the bluetooth mouse without the sound cutting out.

I had already read about all of these problems, but I was just hoping I would be one of the lucky ones. Still, I think it’s a pretty good speaker. One of the reasons I got these speakers is that my HP laptop speakers are not loud enough for when I’m in the kitchen. These speakers are loud enough to be heard over the kitchen sounds.

I like the fact that it takes just 3 AA batteries, so I don’t have to buy a lot of rechargeable batteries to keep it running. In addition, it has backup wired solutions for power (i.e., an AC power adaptor) and audio connection (i.e., an audio input jack).

One issue (which is due to Vista) is that it’s not easy to re-connect to the speakers when you want to use them again. You have to go back to the “Audio” tab and click the connect button again. I was hoping that I could just select them as my default speakers and Vista would automatically connect whenever I turn the speakers on. Also, if you’re watching a YouTube video and then you want to switch to the wireless speakers, you’ve got to shutdown the browser and start a new browser. It’s not as easy to switch to the wireless speakers as it is to switch to speakers connected to the headset jack.