The Xiaomi Sound Outdoor Speaker is the latest portable Bluetooth speaker from the brand. The speaker features 30W output, dual driver design, IP67 protection, and the ability to pair up to 100 speakers at a time.
The Sound Outdoors has a distinctive portable Bluetooth speaker design with a tubular shape. Almost the entire exterior is covered with a cloth and there is a rubber strip at the back which also forms a loop. The black model shown here has a contrasting orange loop but the red and blue models have matching red and blue loops.
The Sound Outdoor has two active drivers on the front, including a 20W woofer and a 10W mid-range driver. These are assisted by two passive radiators at either end of the tube, which work in conjunction with the woofer to passively boost the low frequencies.
There are three buttons on the back of the unit, which control power, pairing, and syncing with other speakers. A flap covers the USB-C connector used for charging. The Sound Outdoor does not have an audio jack for wired audio input and can only work with Bluetooth.
Talking about Bluetooth, Sound Outdoor supports Bluetooth 5.4 with SBC. There is no NFC so pairing will have to be done manually. The main party trick of this speaker is that it can connect with 99 other speakers of the same model to form a chain of 100 speakers playing simultaneously. Although I didn’t have 99 other speakers to test with, I did see a Xiaomi demo where they paired four speakers across the room, and they all played in perfect sync. You can also just pair two speakers to get stereo sound.
The sound works well as a party speaker for outdoor indoor use. The woofer and passive radiator can move surprising amounts of air, resulting in a powerful, punchy sound that can be loud enough even with just one unit. The sound does not distort even at maximum volume.
Outdoors, you don’t get the same thump and bass response and the sound is much more mellow as a result.
To listen critically, the speaker has some points to make. The unit needs to be placed carefully as bass response benefits from being placed near a wall or corner and placing the speaker a certain distance from the listener. However, the mids and highs are very directional and unless the speaker is directly facing you, you lose a lot of clarity in the sound. In general, the loudness is quite dull even when facing the speaker as there is no dedicated tweeter.
The speaker is also just mono, which shouldn’t be too much of a surprise, but there have been Bluetooth speakers in this form factor with stereo configurations in the past. The result of the mono configuration means that music can sometimes sound quieter than expected as the wider stereo imaging in the recording is condensed into a single channel. If stereo sound is important to you, you may want to consider investing in a second unit.
Sound Outdoor has good latency performance when tested with a single unit. The audio always remains in sync with the video content when tested with different sources. However, latency was not tested with multiple paired units, and video synchronization probably goes out the window when multiple speakers are paired.
Sound Outdoors also includes a microphone for calls. The microphone quality during testing was extremely poor, with sound barely audible even through the speakers, and sounding poor to boot. You should not use this speaker for voice calls at all.
Xiaomi claims 12 hours of battery life when playing Sound Outdoor at 50% volume, which is on par for devices of this size in this segment. The speaker charges in about 2.5 hours with a charger of 15W or more. Charging is only one-way and you can’t use the speaker as a power bank to charge other devices.
Overall, the Xiaomi Sound Outdoor Speaker offers good performance at an affordable price. At Rs 3,999, it costs half as much as competing products from brands like JBL and Sony, while being just as good. If you don’t care about NFC or Aux input, the Sound Outdoor is a great option.
