TDK Life on Record A33 Wireless Weatherproof Bluetooth Speaker (Certified Refurbished)

Good speaker good sound.It can get loud enough but not so much as people say. You'll be impressed with the loudness unless you read all the people talking about how loud it gets, then you'll be disappointed.A guy at work has an Auvio bluetooth speaker and it's much louder at max, but doesn't sound anywhere near as good as this TDK -- the Auvio has paper cone drivers, the drivers on the TDK are plastic; the Auvio sounds muddy whereas the TDK sounds very clear.Good bass, but again compared to the Auvio the TDK is better in the mid to upper. The Auvio's drivers are larger so has better natural bass.This is not an audiophile product by any means. Songs don't sound as good as from your home speakers. If you listen carefully the TDK sounds processed in some way, as if some frequency bands are being emphasized and some reduced. But all cheap speakers have stronger and weaker frequencies.For its intended purpose, a small portable speaker, it sounds good and very clear, maybe the best inexpensive portable you can get.Bluetooth, battery, work fine, but I got a 3.5mm male-to-male cord. Mine is used at work in the warehouse/fulfillment area, sounds just fine over the sounds of people talking and working.

It doesn't charge anymore. So I can not use this for camping.Sound is more better than x5 I think.

At $40 this would easily be a 5 star product if it was in good condition. Unfortunately, mine showed up with a battery that was more or less dead on arrival. It would hold a full charge for about 25 minutes at 35% volume and then it was done. This is a risk you run buying any refurbished product that has a rechargeable battery. When they're testing these you can bet they don't run them for a full 6 hours to make sure they hold a full charge. Turning on and briefly working is likely good enough to past quality control and get shipped out.Now battery aside, this thing was otherwise AWESOME. It's too heavy for hiking or going on walks, this is the unit you bring with when you're only walking from the parking lot to the beach or favorite picnic area in the park. It packs a ton of punch and sounds very clean even at high volumes. We had it sitting in the back of a truck bed on a beach and at half volume, we had to turn it down a bit for us to have a conversation while playing corn hole 20ft away. What really surprised me was how full it sounded. You could hear the lower frequencies and it didn't feel like you were missing out on half of the song like you do with so many other portable units.Just for kicks, I cranked it up to full volume in our living room/kitchen (~800sqft) and it was painful. You couldn't possible talk and just in order to do the test, we had to cover our ears. This would easily be enough for a large BBQ or small college party.Tips:1) There are two sub woofers on one side. Make sure you point them away from you and get them as close to a wall/truck bed/rock/etc as you can. This will cause the lower frequencies to bounce off that object and amplify, giving you a much fuller sound. If it's just sitting on a picnic table with nothing behind it those lower frequencies will just float off into the ether. The silver circle/ring you see in the picture is the front and should be pointed at you.2) There's a little stand that flips out on the bottom causing the speakers to point upward slightly. Use it. This will A) give you a bit of that bounce affect mentioned in #1 and B) prevent the sound coming out of the front speakers from bouncing off the ground in front of it. This will help give you a cleaner/crisper sound.

I have owned two of these which I bought new and the sound is incredible. Gave both to friends who fell in love with them. Then bought three of these "refurbished" units in a row, and guess what - two of the three do not work on battery mode (won't even turn on no matter how long they have been charging). They only turn on when plugged in. I can't imagine what the refurbisher is doing. Shouldn't they at least test the darn thing for its basic functions (like it turns on!) before calling it fixed? I am done trying my hand with another one of these.

So far so good but I need more time to give a fair and honest appraisal. Between the on/off switch and the Bluetooth coupling procedure I'm not sure if there is something wrong with the TDK or I need to become more familiar with it's proper operation. There seems to be some German influences in the design of the control functions which may run counter intuitive to my thinking as it seems it should be fairly simple but I'm not certain repeatedly pushing buttons or holding them is the actual intention. It sounds good so I think that's the most important quality and the price was good as well.

I'm very happy with the purchase. It had some very light scratches on the metal grill, and nothing more than would be there with a few weeks of general use. The speaker was shipped with no box or manufacturer manual. It was well packed by Amazon with no damage. Very good volume and good clarity. The bass is outstanding for it's size. There's only a couple of criticisms. Whenever the speaker is turned on for bluetooth, it will start up the last song/video/porn that was on your phone. Also it will cut off the first half a second of each song. This doesn't happen on the line in. The battery life is very low, but I wouldn't expect this speaker with such loud volume and bass to last very long on a battery charge. I've kept it plugged in and will take it outside on battery power if it's only a short time. Love the outside rubbery surface. Love that there's no annoying power on or power down alert beeps. I would definitely recommend this speaker unless your needing a long lasting battery.

Lets do the Pros and Con thingProsIt does connect via Bluetooth to my phoneConsBattery life is terrible, maybe 45 minutes at half volumeAUX jack has short, if not just right (with 3 different cables) you get staticIf you use it while it's charging you get a loud hum, tried moving cables around it still bleeds onto the musicSound quality is not good, I've heard a lot better, maybe that's what you get for this price