Review: Tronsmart MEGA 40W speaker

Sent in for review, I'm always happy when I hear decent bass from an audio accessory. It's not that I'm into house music or drum'n'bass, it's just that I like to hear both the bottom and top frequencies in my music.

In this case, there's certainly plenty of bottom end, pumped out by the twin 20W speakers and some bass reflex out the back of the wrapped metal grilles. The middle frequencies are a bit muddled and the top end is mushed in somewhat.

But I'm being a bit picky, since you wouldn't buy this for absolute audio fidelity. You'd buy it for the super-futuristic LED-illuminated touch controls on the top, and for the NFC functions.

The first looks terrific in a dark room (perhaps a party), just slide your finger along the touch bar to adjust volume, plus there's 'Mode' if you want to start loading songs in via microSD or via someone's phone via a (supplied) 3.5mm jack.

The second is a feature that speakers often had a decade ago but which had fallen out of fashion. But NFC's back and works brilliantly. Just tap your smartphone to the 'N' spot on the top of the Tronsmart speaker and you're paired and connected.

When you're at a small event and there are several people wanting to take turns at controlling music, NFC will save a lot of (possibly drunken) stabbing in and out of Settings on the various phones. Nice one.

If you have two of these (I didn't), it's apparently compatible with TWS (True Wireless Stereo), a system which hooks up multiple Bluetooth speakers to form left/right pairs. Which is cool, but I've never been able to try this!

The MEGA 40W is all black, with the main body being tough plastic covered in grippy rubber. It feels terrific and there are rubber feet on the bottom to stop the speaker vibrating off a flat surface.

Tronsmart quotes 15 hours playing time, but in my tests it was more like 10 hours, though at least this charges quickly, at a full 10W, so its 6600mAh internal battery is fully recharged in three hours tops.

At £43 on Amazon UK (or via its own product home page), the MEGA 40W is decent value for a modern Bluetooth speaker with all the bells and whistles. It's fine for pop music, just don't expect the very top fidelity for anything more ambitious.*

* For that, consider the AUKEY SK-S1, which I also have. This isn't quite as loud or bassy, but does have much crisper top end and thus clarity, away from 'dance' volumes.