[Review] Gum Rock Speaker, A Little Speaker With A Lot Of Sound

Portable bluetooth speakers are rarely as small and good sounding as the Gum Rock speaker.

This cute little beastie pumps out tunes from just about anywhere.  Using a pretty strong suction cup mounted on the base of its rubber case, you can stick it to your phone, window, bathroom mirror, practically any smooth surface.  Just pair it with your phone or tablet, load up your music and start the party.

The sound quality for such a small device is amazing.  I tried out the Gum Rock in a variety of locations and couldn’t fault it.  Useful in the car, bathroom, chilling in the garden, and outdoors at work, this has got to be the most versatile and easy to transport speaker I have come across.

I threw my usual varied playlist at the Gum Rock speaker to get it to flex its muscles, and I was not disappointed.  This tiny little bluetooth speaker could handle everything, with some really good, rich sounding tunes coming out and absolutely no distortion.

The Gum Rock has a built in microphone so it can also be used as a hands free kit.  The mic was covered by the rubber casing on mine when it arrived, but after a little adjustment I soon managed to line the holes up correctly, and the person on the other end of the phone could hear me perfectly fine.  There is also a status light on the base of the unit, but on the black version it is totally invisible to the point of being redundant.

For the professionals among you who know what this stuff means; this speaker is packing a 40 mm, 4 ohm, 3 W driver. For the rest of us it has bluetooth 3.0, and a 4500 mAh Li-ion battery that charges over a standard micro USB cable.

The rubber controls are very simple: Volume Up, Volume Down, and Play/Pause.  Everything else is handled by your device (in my case a Samsung Galaxy S3), and realistically, what more do you need?

The Gum Rock is a small, simple speaker, done well.  Minimalist, but not lacking in vital features, a simple kind of design I really like.

Available from all good retailers of mobile accessories for $25.99 in the USA,  and £19.99 in the UK.