Kicker KPw2 Portable Waterproof Bluetooth Speaker

Product Details
Manufacturer: Kicker
Distributor: CELSUS
Website: link
Typical Selling price: £159.99
This is a very well developed technology these days, having been around a while. Bluetooth is now at last accepted as a way to get a proper ‘˜posh’ audio signal to playback equipment, as evidenced by my visit to the HiFi show recently, where even top end kit was being demoed with digital files. I am in a bit of despair about the state of the digital file playback scene right now. We have not just obscenely impossible-to-pick-a-winner choices of codecs and systems but also a variation of stock. For the different folks, be they Tidal or Spotify have different things available, with no one place being a spot for every single record label’s product.
But that is not the Kicker KPw2’s zoo, nor even her monkeys, for this is definitely a female item. I think the black one may be a geezer, mind, if you care about inanimate objects’ gender, like the French do. The KPw2’s gig is to have a good Bluetooth system and to play back tunes, even if she has to carry your telephone’s battery, with her one as the greater. She’s also got her own microphone, so acts as a full handsfree device, complete with a phone hangup/answer toggle and combined Bluetooth switch.
I can report that the device does all this very well indeed, with a few limitations

RATINGS
Overall 8.8

Sound Quality 9
Build Quality 10
Features 8
Wireless Performance 9
Value For Money 8
Talk Audio Recommended.

The Kicker KPw2’s internal battery, at 3,000mAh, is rated by most sellers who sell battery banks, as being enough to charge your smartphone twice. Meaning, it aughta have enough muscle onboard to be able to play tunes for a few hours at full chat, while the telephone sending the tunes can be used as long as the speaker will run. The crap ones go for a fiver, the posh ones, £30, so there is at least a £20 value in battery bank as part of this product. That makes this product already superior to the model of Scosche BoomBOTTLE I have here and inevitably compared it with. (2,300mAh, IPX4 rated for water resistance)
The form factor of a cylinder is cool, yet the IPX5-rated KPw2 has two sets of flanges that are clearly meant to be used as stands. For when the product is running and facing you, the grille is on-axis, and you get a Lilliputian stereo sound stage. It’s like HiFi for Gnomes. But play these gnomes dubstep and watch them do the quivery robot like a droid!! Because the sound quality is astonishing.
Unlike the bottle thing, this is designed to be listened to on a desk or nearby, rather than labelled as a ‘˜boom’ item with just three little holes of grille for the music to come out of, each end. No, the Kicker KPw2 is a true stereo device and I have checked with a chap at Celsus, the UK distributor, that he too, was lining the item up on-axis to where he was sat so as to hear it the better in stereo.
And the tiny wee speakers in here are bizarrely good. Being only small, they are profundity-limited. That means that Kicker have also fitted two passive bass radiators in the unit. Kicker are the best in this technology in all of mobile electronics. The deepest cunning of all home theatre subsonic systems use these. The extra brace of two inch diaphragms inside, are merely ‘˜suspended’ rather than driven with watts. However, as well as serving to seal the insides from the outsides versus a port to do the same acoustic job, they are also proven to allow a box to play ways deeper than any port will ‘˜tune’ to. In fact the limit of the drivers’ suspensions is the bass’ nemesis, rather than a tuned frequency. Even then, though, the unit only plays down to 180Hz and won’t shake the place. Putting it in a corner of the desk, with hard surfaces around it, will help boost it all.
The most clever thing is how rather than simply make as much (muffled, low detail) ‘˜boom’ as possible, like the other ‘˜bottle’ thing that now sounds like rubbish to me, the Kicker KPw2 is a worthy little mite that actually plays micro HiFi sound, with a tremendous clarity. And here is the really weird thing. Because it has just ONE driver on each side that handles everything, there are no crossover points, no phase issues. Thus, there is a degree of nuance and clarity that somehow boggles you a bit. It bears the most absurd ability to work as a micro-monitor. The small drivers soar all the way to 20kHz with no issues at all. I suspect they go a tiny bit higher.
I played Isao Tomita’s Planet Suite rendition, I played Madness, featuring Ian Dury and I popped a YouTube video or two through the thing. The more I played, the more I was impressed. The electronic synth music in particular was bloody amazing. This is truly a dynamic little unit, able to play light and shade. I enjoyed it a dozen times better than the other rubber thing mentioned above. It didn’t really dig the church organ I videoed at Salisbury cathedral but it loved the bonkers, very layered daftness of Tomita’s ‘˜Close Encounters of the Third Kind’ track. It is emulating the movie feel with some lines of question sounding like a person squawking on a two-way radio. Then it does the ARP synth talky thing that gets a bit large.. and swells and crescendoes. It was just hilarious. Like that bird called a wren, that sings a song about five times more amazingly loudly and clearly than it seems possible.
The Kicker KPw2 is a remarkable spud and if you need a unit for the hotel room or near your bonce on a nice clean beach towel, this is the one. The only thing I didn’t like is that I had a white one that will age. I know I would get it all grubby with bleeding Ambre Solaire on the beach. So mine would be in the black.
Full Specifications
Two 1.75in (44mm) full range drivers and two 2in (52m) passive bass radiators
Frequency Response: 180Hz to 20kHz
Inputs: Bluetooth (V3.0+EDR 10m/33ft range), 3.5mm Aux
Battery: 3.7V Lithium-iOn, 3,000mAh, 3.5hours charge time
Required Power Supply (USB) 5V 2.1A
Weight: 1.25lbs/0.57kG
Dimensions: 7.9in/201mm long, 2.7in/68mm diameter
IPX5 rating for water resistance
Durable build including rubber guides, reinforced plastic and metal grilles
Bluetooth wireless for connection to phones, tablets or notebooks
Compact design fits anywhere you can fit a water bottle
Speakerphone – answer calls/built-in microphone
Over 10 hours of continuous playback time
Dimensions: (WxHxD) x x 8 mm