(Review) World's most POWERFUL wireless speaker... 😲
The Devialet Mania is a portable speaker from the realm of hi-end. Before we get into the specs it’s worth talking about about its sound quality.
What’s so special about it?
Portable speakers are meant to be placed anywhere you want it. The problem is, how does one get them to sound the same no matter whether it’s on the table, in the corner of your living room, or on a bookshelf? All of these places have different acoustics. So, on a table, the speaker may sound thin because there’s nothing around the speaker to reflect and amplify that sound. And on the bookshelf there may be too much reflection instead, so the speaker sounds muffled and too boomy. What the Mania can do is to automatically change its tuning depending on where you put the speaker. So if it’s on a bookshelf it cleans up the ‘bloaty-ness’, and if there are no reflective surfaces around it, it will boost the bass so that it doesn’t sound thin.
Devialet calls this Active Stereo Calibration (ASC), and the Mania accomplishes this with four microphones inside that’s always listening to itself, and adjusting its EQ accordingly. So it’s like a sound chameleon, so to speak.
This is not anything new, Sonos already has that with ‘automatic Trueplay Tuning’ on the Sonos Move and Sonos Roam portable speakers. But they need to be faced in a certain direction to get the best output, because these speakers face in one direction only. Yet the Mania, being a 360 degree speaker, can be placed anywhere and faced in any direction. I’ve placed it in multiple locations, rotated the speaker multiple times and it still sounds the same.
Sound Quality
It has four full-range speakers facing upwards and two push-pull woofers delivering what Devialet’s calling 360 stereo. That sounds like a contradiction, because stereo and 360 degree sound do not mix. When actually listening to this speaker, it really sounds like enhanced mono rather than anything stereo.
There is little perceivable soundstaging except that the mid and high frequency audio seems to float above the speaker. That makes the Mania sound much bigger than it looks, and sound the same from any direction which is what I’m guessing is Devialet’s endgame. It also puts out an impressive level of bass.
I’m not sure if it’s going as low as 30 hz like what Devialet’s saying in their marketing material, it might be struggling to put out any gain at that level of sub bass given the size of the Mania, but I seem to recall that even the Devialet Phantom Reactor didn’t have as much bass as the Mania.
The Mania also nailed the crispiness of the mids and highs. This is a very tight sounding speaker, and yes, you are going to get a lot of volume out of this. Big 1000 sqft apartment? No problem, even at 60% volume. You may listen to its binaural sound recordings here, but do listen with headphones to hear how big and bassy it sounds.
Specs
In terms of specs we’re looking at up to 10 hours of battery on a single charge, IPX4 water resistance. (Sounds like a potential speaker for the garden or for a bathroom.) Setting up the speaker is through the Devialet app and charging is via USB-C, although a charging dock is separately available. It does stream over Bluetooth 5.0 for that straightforward pair and play, and if you want better quality without needing to have your phone near the speaker all the time, you can also stream over WiFi via Spotify Connect or AirPlay 2.
Since it supports AirPlay 2, this also means you can join the Mania to other AirPlay-connected speakers for Multi Room streaming. The Mania’s on board controls are integrated into this rubber/plastic loop thing on both sides. They’re easy to press and operate but the controls do have a small learning curve. You seem these are not backlit. And the fact that the buttons are recessed makes it harder to tell which button is which under dim lighting. LED backlights would have solved this problem easily. But that would probably give Devialet another reason to jack up the price by, what, 500 bucks or something.
So this speaker sounds rather stunning given the size of it. But much of the problems I have with the speaker has to do with its design.
The Quirks…
Yes, it’s expensive, and very well made. But some of its design elements are kind of weird. For exaample, the indicator lights for the power button, bluetooth pairing button, and the battery indicator button are located on the opposite side. It’s like they’re trying to make this speaker less intuitive to use or something! It would have been better if the lights were on the same side as the buttons that they’re meant to represent, so that it’s easier to see.
The app is fine, it’s what you’d expect in terms of the polish of it, coming from such a premium brand. But I would have liked the EQ settings to be a bit more varied. Maybe instead of simply giving the option to customize bass and highs, they could add a few more bands to the graphic EQ for more granular tweaking.
Also I would have expected there to be more presets instead of just a voice preset. So that’s something that I hope Devialet would look at in a future version of the app. In terms of Bluetooth connection, it’s reliable, I could go around a few concrete walls and the signal’s still good. But for a product of this calibre, I would have expected it to have multipoint pairing.
Overall, the Devialet Mania is one of the best portable speakers if you’re purely looking at exceptional build quality and sound. Extremely powerful for the size. And the way it seems to auto-calibrate so easily, and so quickly in different situations - makes it a very interesting piece of tech.
For an eye-watering price.
But what do you think? Leave your comments below.
