T&G 163 Wireless Bluetooth Speaker
This is the review of the TG-163 Wireless Bluetooth Speaker from T&G. It has some amazing specs for the price. But does it hold up to the name? Well, find out in this video. This speaker is easy to connect, it has stereo surround bass. You can enjoy the music anywhere with it. Portable size, easy and convenient to carry. It has TF card slot and USB drive slot. With FM functionality, you can search radio station broadcast automatically. With Hand free and built-in mic, you can receive calls.
Opening up the box, we have the micro USB cable, the wireless speaker itself, and the user manual, which you should most definitely, read.
Taking a closer look at this, you can see it all boxy. More like a cuboid. If you position it, using the name T&G as a reference, then it’s safe to say that this is the right way to place it on any surface.
It’s 135mm long, 60mm wide, and 80mm tall. It also weighs about 320g
Upfront is the T&G name and the front-facing speakers, kinda had to see through this mesh design. Then on both left and right sides are these bass-heavy sub-woofer design.
There’s nothing at the bottom and the back.
Then finally, up top are all your controls, power off/on, the mode, and the volume buttons. Then, opening up, opening up, hold on, one second. Opening up this compartment grants you assess to micro SD card slot, USB-type A port and the micro USB for charging. I have no idea what this R stands for. Oh OK, that’s the reset button, or just hold down the power button for 8 seconds to reset. See, I told you to read the manual.
And oh, you see these 2 tiny holes right here. There was a strap inserted through them, in case you want to hang this on your wrist or somewhere in your room. I took it off, cos I don’t like it dangling around.
Let’s talk about the buttons for a second. Every single button, with the exception of the mode button, does 2 things. So the 1st is the power off/on the button which also doubles as the pause/play button. The other for skipping songs and increasing or decreasing the volume respectively.
I just love the soft keys. They are not touch though, but they feel much comfortable as compared to pressing hard physical keys.
So for the specs, we are looking at
- 600mAh battery
- Bluetooth v4.2
- Max volume of 90db and over
- And support for FM radio, Micro SD card, and flash drive.
On that note, you might want to invest in a Micro SD card instead. Since flash drives will always stick out, it this thing fall whiles a drive is inserted, it might cause some damages.
I got a bit carried away and tried to use both a micro SD card and flash drive at the same time. It didn’t work.
Honestly, picking this up for the 1st time, I thought there were 2 separate sub-woofers in both sides to produce the bass sounds, but NO. All the sounds are produced by the speakers on the front and somehow distributed within the chasse to produce some bass-heavy sounds on the sides. Clever.
And yeah, I say speakers because it looks like there a speaker bar up top and a circular one in the middle. But honestly, I only hear the sound coming out of the circular one.
Sadly since you can’t really hear how loud it is, perhaps I can show you instead.
Here’s another test for you. This time comparing this to my dell N5050 laptop and my single room home theatre, sound system.
I hope that gives you a fair idea.
They claim is supports hands-free calling and even the product details say YES to the built-in microphone so my guess is, any one of these tiny holes could be it. But then again, I doubt anyone would be using this to make calls anytime soon, so I didn’t bother testing it out.
Another thing worth noting is, if you get a phone call while still connected, it dictates every single digit of the phone number. I don’t know if this is useful or not, but it’s there.
Connecting via Bluetooth is quite simple. Just turn on the device, press the MODE button several times till you hear ………….. I wonder which lady’s voice was used in producing all these Bluetooth speakers, she sounds amazing. Then search for new Bluetooth devices on your phone or laptop, and connect to TG-163. The same thing with most Bluetooth speakers, you can see the battery life only when you connect the device.
The Bluetooth is rated to work within a 10-meter range so I tried it out. With this test, I was really waiting to laugh out loud at them for claiming high specs on the device. But ….. I was put to shame.
We set the speaker with the camera so it could constantly pick the sound for you guys to hear. With a tape measure, I tried to find out for myself about 10m which is close to 33ft. and since the tape can only measure up to 16ft at once, we had to move just twice but kept moving and moving until I gave up.
Pros
It has support for FM radio, Micro SD card also called TF card, flash drive
It is small and portable
The battery on a normal volume will last for about 2 hours via Bluetooth.
It comes in a variety of colours. So there’s probably one for everyone. I would have preferred a red and black version, but that’s just me.
Cons
There’s no aux play. What this means is, you can’t connect an audio jack to this and play via that.
Although it plays audio, it only supports MP3. No aac, ogg, m4a, wma or any other weird audio formats
It takes too long to charge. About 2 to 3 hours
What I dislike though, is the LEDs the keep strobing. I would prefer they would stay off at night when I’m sleeping with music on, so they don’t distract me as much, but they won’t. There isn’t any way to disable it though, so you might want to keep it in mind.
I think the battery life would have lasted longer if the lights would stay off.
So why did I buy this in the 1st place?
Well, I love listening to music a lot. Like constantly. It helps me work and sleep when need be. And I recently realized in my previous photoshoot that as a photographer, having music with you when shooting helps the people you’re working with, feel a bit comfortable around you.
So should you buy one?
Well, most definitely. But, don’t buy it online. It costs roughly GHc 100 on AliEpxress with shipping and estimated delivery of about 2 months. When I got this for GHc 40 right there and then. And I wasn’t even bargaining.
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