July 26, 2012 at 10:58Nokia Play 360 °
Disclaimer: The post was not written by a Nokia employee, not a fierce fan, not a leading analyst, or even commissioned.
In this article, I want to talk about my experience using the Nokia Play 360 ° wireless speaker, distinguished primarily by the fact that it uses NFC technology to communicate with smartphones. Since at the moment NFC is used only in Nokia N9, the latest smartphones on Nokia Belle OS and in a number of Androids (Nokia’s NFC-enabled WP-devices are expected this fall), a standard Nokia 360 360 connection is provided for connecting all other devices 3.5 mm mini jack TRS and Bluetooth.
The device comes in a fairly compact box with a nice texture.
The delivery set includes the speaker itself, a charger, a cover, a warranty and a short instruction.
The speaker housing is a cube with rounded side edges, carved (in fact, not) from a single piece of aluminum.
On this very upper part, near the front side of the speaker, the inscription NFC is displayed. She explicitly alludes to the fact that this is where the NFC module for pairing a smartphone with a speaker is located, and this is true! - Connect the phone on the other side of the speaker will not succeed.
I had a chance to check the NFC connection using the Nokia 700 baby on the Nokia Belle OS, and it passed literally in a second. Technically, the connection is via Bluetooth (Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR), and NFC saves the user from unnecessary access to the settings, turning on Bluetooth, searching for a speaker and entering a pin code for paring - it’s nice that by simply touching the devices you can avoid wandering around the menu.
To connect to the speaker of a smartphone / computer / tablet without NFC, you already have to spend precious 30-40 seconds of time. However, you can connect via a mini-jack.
If you have two Nokia Play 360 ° speakers, you can combine them into one wireless stereo system. To carry out such magic, you must simultaneously hold down the power buttons for five seconds on two devices, after which the speakers begin to speak in female voices: one broadcasts the “Left channel” and the other picks it up — the “Right channel”. Moreover, the left speaker Nokia Play 360 ° becomes the main - only through it you can make an NFC connection. To make it easier to distinguish between the speakers, on the left Play 360 °, the indication around the Bluetooth button glows in deep blue, and on the right - light blue.
In addition to the mini-jack, on the back of the speaker there is a micro-USB connector for charging the device, as well as a power button - it would, of course, have the place on the front side, but oh well, I attribute it to the “matter of taste”, since the device is small and get the button is quite simple.
Instead, on the front side there is a large Bluetooth power button, an indicator of its operation (and battery level), as well as two buttons for controlling the volume (however, you can adjust the speaker volume through a smartphone, since the Play 360 ° supports the A / V Remote Control specification Profile v1.0).
A brief instruction is placed on the bottom of the cube
Now about the sound. Nokia Play 360 ° is equipped with a high-quality 2.5-inch wide-range speaker with a neodymium magnet. The diffuser in the device is directed upwards, so that the sound spreads in all directions, that is, to those same 360 °. Thanks to the bass reflex located on the right side of the device, Nokia Play 360 ° has excellent bass and low power consumption. The speaker also has no problems with reproducing high frequencies. According to the documentation, Nokia Play 360 ° is capable of reproducing sound in frequencies from 20 to 20,000 Hz. The output level is 2.1 watts, so the speaker is quite enough for a small room. The signal-to-noise ratio is 81 dB at a distance of one meter, and the total harmonic distortion is less than 2% with an input signal of 20 mV.
If we discard all numbers and talk about impressions, then we have a loud and clear sound. When playing songs with a normal bitrate (for me it is ≥256 kbit / s), the speaker behaves extremely well, but when it is reduced, compression flaws become noticeable - which, in fact, once again speaks about the quality of the Play 360 °. Music lovers will certainly be delighted with the support of apt-X technology, with which CD-quality music can be transmitted via Bluetooth. The undoubted advantages include the fact that at maximum volume the speaker does not begin to rattle. But the most important advantages of the Nokia Play 360 °, which for me played a paramount role in choosing this speaker, are Nokia’s traditional long battery life and the cost of the device. Nokia Play 360 ° costs 5,990 rubles; for comparison a similar Jawbone Jambox wireless speaker costs exactly two thousand more. As for battery life, Nokia’s speaker allows you to play music for more than 20 hours on a single battery, which is twice as much as the speaker from Jawbone. The device runs on the standard for many Nokia phones lithium-ion polymer battery Nokia Battery BL-5C 1020 mAh.
I could find only one minus in this accessory: despite the fact that Nokia Play 360 ° directs the sound 360 °, here we use one speaker that looks up, if you put something on the top of the speaker, Play 360 ° immediately lose ground.
To summarize: for me, the Nokia Play 360 'speakers were an ideal solution because of the optimal price-quality ratio - at the moment, no competitor is able to offer such a high-tech device at such a price. One of the significant advantages was the ability to use speakers with all possible devices (tested on Nokia 700, Nokia Lumia 800, iPhone 4 and iPod classic player), even analog ones. Moreover, these speakers are a vivid example of the fact that it is possible and even necessary to produce high-quality accessories compatible with devices of various manufacturers, not only your own.
Advantages:
+ sound quality
+ ease of connection (thanks, NFC!)
+ Apt-X support
+ battery life
+ price (5990 rubles perofficial store )
Minuses:
- speaker location
- inconvenient location of the power button
