Sony SRS-XE300 Wireless Portable Bluetooth Speaker (Open Box)

*Please note this is a review for the larger SRS-XE300.* I purchased this looking for a midsize travel speaker to use when carrying around my larger SRS-XG300 ("mini" boombox) isn't practical - ex. getting on a plane. Being so happy with that speaker, I decided to give the SRS-XE300 a try. But...I found myself a bit under-whelmed. PROS: - I was impressed with all the tinkering afforded by the application - my favorite feature in particular are the battery health features that limit charging to 90%: the first and last 10% of discharging/charging a lithium battery are where most of the wear occurs. Since Bluetooth speakers are hard to repair, ensuring battery longevity is important to me. But it does a great job offering lots of other controls over other sound features: stereo vs. mono mode, EQ, etc. - The bass was quite impressive for the size. - I didn't experience much distortion even when cranking it to higher volume levels. CONS - - It seems like this iteration of Sony speaker put a diffuser to help "direct" sound out of one side of the speaker - and I found that this significantly degraded treble performance off-axis. I have hearing difficulties, and even after fiddling with the EQ and volume, I was never happy with the clarity of vocals especially if I wasn't standing directly in-line with that opening. Increasing the volume would make it uncomfortably loud. Perhaps it wouldn't have been as big of an issue had I purchased *two* XE300's to make a very directional stereo pair, but at that point the space savings over the XG300 would be moot--not to mention the increase in cost.. I ended up returning this for the JBL Flip 6 and that design seems to work better for me, though the bass response is nowhere near as impressive as this nor is the app's feature set. Overall: I think this is worth a try, but personally, if a small size is not a factor, I would HIGHLY recommend making the jump up to the SRS-XG300 - now THAT is a kickass speaker.