It’s rare for any sector of our industry to trigger a bout of despair within me, but Bluetooth speakers are the exception. Airport tech outlets filled up with hundreds of the things: brands from the old world of hi-fi and tech struggled to distinguish why their particular speaker was better than all the rest, and the poor old user was left bewildered. They also got yet another device to charge and another micro-USB port to snap free of its motherboard. I hated them.
At least, I hated them until we hit an era when being able to sit comfortably for hours on video calls became a vital part of business. Just because you can do Zoom entirely on your laptop mic and speakers doesn’t make that the ideal environment. Suddenly there was a business case for these things, and out of post-Christmas boredom two years ago, I ordered in a pile of randomly chosen speakers as customer presents.
Well, not entirely random. I have always had an eye for a bargain and a bolshy design, which is why I fell under the spell of JCB’s £20 Bluetooth speakers. Yes, JCB, the maker of tools and monster excavators.
It was a cute little thing, with a few buttons but with most control being exercised on your phone rather than on the device. After all, what control do you actually get on a speaker? In this case, the whole top of the cylinder is the on-hook/off-hook button. The design positively encourages disrespectful slaps to
