Sony's Bluetooth ball of sound Video

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Sony's Bluetooth ball of sound
Created: 03/19/2013
Video description: The NFC-packing SRS-BTV5 is a compact wireless speaker that sounds just OK for its size and price.

Sony's Bluetooth ball of sound Video Transcript

I'm David Carnoy, executive editor for cnet.com and I'm here with the Sony SRS-BTV5. This is a small Bluetooth speaker. It's a very quite Bluetooth speaker it's in a shape of a ball. There's a lot of them out there. However, this one claimed to fame. It also has a speakerphone built in as well as NFC pairing capabilities. NFC is available on a live new phones but not the iPhone just yet. This does come in a few different colors. I have the black and white models here. We'll see that it feels like a nicely built speaker. Some of these ball speakers are very light. This one has a little bit of half to it. However, it only sounds okay. The sound is pretty thin. There's a Philips small speaker like this that does sound better and has a little bit more base. This doesn't sound great. The one of the big issue I have with the speaker was while it is NFC compatible. I just couldn't get it to pair using NFC even using a Sony phone. You supposed to download a special app called NFC Easy Share. You read the instructions carefully and I tried to pair twice with both the Samsung phone as well as the Sony Xperia phone and I could not get the device to pair so there still are some kinks to be worked out with the NFC. In the end, I really thought that strength of this little speaker was its design. It is well-designed. However, it is a little bit pricey at $70 and [unk] at other mini bluetooth speakers in this size that have the speakerphone capability for less. So obviously this isn't a great deal. I would like to see that NFC pairing work. I assume will get it working but for now I wasn't able to get it working. It's also worth mention the Sony supposed to give another more catchy in the speaker but for now I will have to finish by saying. This is the Sony SRS-BTV5 Bluetooth speaker. Thanks for watching.

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Sony SRS-BTV5/WHT Review

The good: The Sony SRS-BTV5 is a sleek and compact ball-shaped wireless Bluetooth speaker that offers a good feature set, including a built-in rechargeable battery, speakerphone capabilities, an auxiliary input, and NFC one-touch tap-to-pair technology.

The bad: In terms of sound it fails to distinguish itself from the pack, and the NFC technology proved problematic.

The bottom line: The Sony SRS-BTV5 wireless Bluetooth speaker boasts speakerphone and (iffy) NFC capabilities, but it doesn't beat the competition for the price.

Read full review

Sony SRS-BTV5/WHT Specs

Manufacturer: Sony
Part number: SRS-BTV5/WHT

Product Specifications
  • Product Specifications

Read full specs