Soundboks Go Australian review: Is the hefty price tag justified?

Soundboks promises to take portable sound to a whole new level, and a staggering new price tag. Its latest iteration, the Soundboks Go sells for just under $1100 in Australia. So is it worth the money?

Mark Furler

@furlernator

3 min read

April 27, 2022 - 3:21PM

Lifestyle

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Portable party speakers that pack plenty of punch can vary from the cheap and nasty to the superbly crafted, and expensive.

Companies like JBL, Sony, Sonos, Bose, Marshall and Sonitrek put out some great speakers ranging from just a couple of hundred dollars to several hundred dollars.

European company Soundboks promises to take portable sound to a whole new level, and a staggering new price tag.

Its latest iteration, the Soundboks Go, sells for just under $1100 in Australia.

It is promoted as offering concert-level sound, plenty of bass, great battery life and tough durability.

Soundboks Go portable speaker looks great from the outside.

Opening the box, it looks an incredible speaker.

It is good looking, super rugged and IP65 rated water resistant, meaning it’s ideal for everywhere from the skatepark to the beach.

Would you take an expensive speaker to your local skatepark?

It has a volume dial that goes to 11 but according to its makers, it’s not just about offering high volume but full sound.

Soundboks is an emerging young audio tech company.

It was designed in Denmark by a trio of passionate friends trying to find the perfect outdoor party speaker.

It’s designed to be carried around but weighs a pretty hefty 9kg.

Soundboks launched in 2015 and has been growing ever since, spreading to Copenhagen and Los Angeles.

The vision goes much beyond just making great speakers.

The company is trying to create a global community of users who appreciate great music – and have a passion for sharing it with one another, including through live music streaming of emerging artists on Direkt which is available on its app.

A TeamUP pairing feature also allows up to five Soundboks, either the new Go or Generation 3, to be connected.

The Soundboks Go is pretty rugged so can take it to the beach or strap it to your bike.

“Soundboks is building social music experiences that connect us in a powerful, more transformative way,” says co-founder Jesper Thiel Thomsen.

“The Soundboks Go provides a new level of sound performance that has not been seen in the current Bluetooth speaker market with a speaker of this size. We are redefining what it means to be together and how we can share musical experiences without being in the same room.”

The speaker, which weighs about 9 kgs, has two 72-watt continuous class D amplifiers. It has one 10 inch woofer and a silk dome tweeter.

It can deliver a sound pressure level of 121 Db in Bass+ mode and 119 Db in normal (outdoors) mode.

SO WHAT DOES IT SOUND LIKE?

We tested the Soundboks Go firstly indoors, cranking up the volume, playing a variety of music from rock to pop.

The sound came across as terribly muddy for a $1100 speaker.

So we dived into the app, changing the settings from bass+ to indoors to power mode.

Power mode seemed to improve it a little for my ears, while indoor just seem to flatten all the sound.

The Soundboks Go portable speaker is one of the best on the market for water resistance.

Other reviews have pointed out the speaker sounds better where it is meant to be used – in outdoor settings.

But we tested it in open spaces and again found the sound to be too muddy for our liking.

Some reviews have described it as unusually murky or stuffy while the bass was described as hollow.

For a company that has produced three generations of very good speakers, the Go has not been a winner in reviews so far.

I actually found listening to more melodic and vocal based music, at lower volumes, to be more satisfactory.

But this is not what the Go was made for.

CHANGING THE SOUND VIA THE APP

Jumping into the app, I played around with the equaliser to come up with my own custom settings in a bid to improve the sound.

You can change the sound settings via an app – including creating your own custom EQ settings.

To be honest, it only made things worse.

The Soundboks Go is being promoted as a punchy party speaker with big, concert-level sound.

From our experience, it doesn’t deliver and is certainly not worth the price tag on it.

If you’re looking for top of the range European quality, for a few more dollars, you would be far better to go for the Soundboks Gen 3 BT party speaker.

It has been well described as ‘refined’ brute of a speaker that frankly has no peer.

One review described it as ‘loud with heart-thumping bass (you can feel the bass), substantial mid and treble and acceptable total harmonic distortion. It is a sharp tool to amplify whatever music you throw at it.’