My smartphone forms a central part of my life. It helps manage and organise my time, it helps me communicate and is my main entertainment hub. This is why for me smartphones and music are synonymous. Whether you store your music on your device or choose to stream your media from an online service, you can take your audio with you and there are many ways for you to consume the music. Headphones are a natural choice if you want to keep your music to yourself, but if you want to share the experience or fill the room with sound then you need connect your mobile to a speaker.
Enter the KitSound Tilt Bluetooth Speaker which provides a portable option for music playback, albeit one substantial enough to be used at home.
The KitSound Tilt Bluetooth Speaker
A Portable Option
Whilst not the lightest speaker you will come across, measuring 15cm wide by 8cm tall by 6.5 cm deep the KitSound Tilt is small enough to be put into your bag and carried with you. As it has a rather solid industrial style build (complete with an aluminium grill), you won’t have to worry about it falling apart from normal wear and tear.
Battery management is an unwelcome necessity in modern life, and whilst the KitSound Tilt can be powered through it’s Micro USB Port, it can also be powered through its internal 1200 mAh battery which will provide 6 hours playback from a full 4 hour charge.
Sound Quality
For such a small framed speaker you may be expecting quite a ‘tinny’ sound from the KitSound Tilt but the reverse is true and you may be surprised with how ‘bassy’ the sound produced by the speaker is. In fact, if anything and if I’m being ultra critical, the Tilt sometimes sounds too ‘bassy’ and music can sound a little muffled from time to time, and not as clear as on the KitSound Glow Bluetooth Speaker.
Still if you like your music to be bass heavy (e.g. dance music) then you might appreciate the tone of the Tilt, and for those gamers out there I found that the extra bass made for a nice effect.
The Tilt is capable of providing an output of 6W, so volume won’t be a problem in relatively small rooms.
Connectivity
The Tilt comes with Bluetooth V3 with a 10 metre range, and you can connect your device to it by either finding it in your Bluetooth settings or by using NFC One touch pairing if your smartphone supports it.
Once connected over Bluetooth, the KitSound Tilt can also manage phone calls, allowing you to accept an incoming call by pressing the call accept button on the device. Your voice is automatically picked up and passed back to your phone by the internal microphone. The volume on Bluetooth connected devices is controlled from the handset rather than on the speaker itself.
For those who require a wired input, the Tilt includes a 3.5mm aux input. This increases the potential number of devices that can use the Tilt speaker, so as a test I connected my Xbox 360 to see how well the wired connection works. To activate the aux input mode you need to plug the jack into the Tilt whilst the device is switched on. It’s simple enough but proves to be a pain if you wish to leave the device permanently connected to a wired device.
I was relieved to hear that there was no signal leakage and interference that is sometimes apparent on aux inputs; for example on the ‘My Doodles Speaker‘, and there was no noticeable difference between connected and wireless quality.
For aux connected devices, volume can be controlled either by the speaker or the connected device, but if you have no option to control the volume on the original device then the minimum volume is still quite loud – certainly loud enough to disturb anyone else in the room.
Final Thoughts
The KitSound Tilt is a well-built portable speaker with decent sound quality and good battery life.
Yes, there are better sounding speakers available, but this doesn’t alter the fact that at £50 the Tilt represents good value for money, and with the option of connecting non-wireless devices makes it very versatile. If you are on the lookout for a robust portable speaker then you sound certainly consider the Tilt.
You can but the KitSound Tilt Bluetooth Speaker from Amazon
