In this review, I’m taking a look at a portable Bluetooth speaker from BenQ, a name better known for monitors and projectors. Bluetooth speakers are a two a penny but this one is quite intriguing.
BenQ market the Trevolo S as the “smallest Bluetooth electrostatic speaker”. Electrostatic speakers are usually the reserve of high end, expensive audio systems but this speaker costs around £150 or $200. But is it any good?
First impressions
The speaker is available in white or black and comes well packaged. In the box there’s also a 2A micro-USB wall charger complete with a both a UK and a Euro adapter, and a branded soft pouch. It’s an attractive if unusual design and it’s well built with a solid, part metal construction, heavier than I was expecting at just over 1kg. It is compact, measuring only 96mm deep by 158mm tall and 63mm wide with the speaker panels shut. The bi-directional electrostatic speakers panels hinge out like wings, snapping open reassuringly, increasing the width to 213mm.
The speaker is available in white or black and comes well packaged. In the box there’s also a 2A micro-USB wall charger complete with a both a UK and a Euro adapter, and a branded soft pouch. It’s an attractive if unusual design and it’s well built with a solid, part metal construction, heavier than I was expecting at just over 1kg. It is compact, measuring only 96mm deep by 158mm tall and 63mm wide with the speaker panels shut. The bi-directional electrostatic speakers panels hinge out like wings, snapping open reassuringly, increasing the width to 213mm.
BenQ doesn’t claim any water resistance, and looking at its construction I wouldn’t want to get it wet, or drop it for that matter.
The branding is subtle, with the BenQ logo only appearing on the back, and TreVolo in small writing on the front.
Getting started and overview
The speaker is charged via the micro-USB charging port around the back, using the included 2A wall charger. But you could use any micro-USB cable and charger, including a portable power bank. If you connect the speaker via a micro-USB cable to a computer, you should get the best sound quality via the speaker’s internal DAC, especially playing lossless audio files. As a bonus it will also charge at the same time, although a cable is not provided.
The integrated 2200mAh lithium-ion battery, charges in around 2-3 hours from empty with the included wall charger. The red LED turns off when fully charged. Like most portable speakers, you could run this speaker whilst being charged, but it’s not recommended to do this all the time.
Next to the micro-USB port, there’s a standard stereo input for connecting your device via a 3.5mm audio cable, which again isn’t provided.
Unfortunately there’s no USB charging port to charge your gadgets, like on its bigger brother the Trevolo 2.
The power LED shows the status of the speaker’s charge, with green indicating over 81% charge, yellow, between 31% and 80% charge and red when there’s less than 30% of charge remaining.
The speaker turns on via an unnecessarily long press of the power button, and the first time it’s turned on the blue Bluetooth light flashes quickly to indicate it’s ready for pairing. Go into Bluetooth settings on your device and select treVolo S to connect. No passcode is required. There’s a satisfying sound and the blue light stays on to show the speaker is connected.
A long press of the power button switches the speaker off. When you turn it back on, it will automatically connect to the the last device connected almost immediately.
To connect to another device, press and hold the Bluetooth button for 3 seconds. The speaker can connect to 2 devices simultaneously, and can remember up to 5 devices. When connected to two devices at the same time you should be able to pause music on one device and then play on another, but I found this didn’t always work. You might still find that you need to disconnect from one device to then then play on the other paired device.
If you forget what Bluetooth devices you have connected, you can long press the Bluetooth button for around 12 seconds with the power on to reset all the connections. Both LEDs will flash and you can start again. If you do this, note that on iOS devices you’ll need to choose “Forget Device” before repairing otherwise you’ll get an “Connection Unsuccessful” message. The Android devices I tested this with didn’t have this issue.
The speaker also has NFC support for quick pairing with Android phones that support this.
If you connect the speaker to a computer or another device via the 3.5mm line-in port, this will take priority over any Bluetooth connection, and if you connect via micro-USB for USB audio this will take priority over everything else.
There is a rather basic free app that you can download to enable pairing of two Trevolo S’s in Duo mode. Unfortunately I don’t have two units to test this feature. The BenQ Audio app also shows the battery level as a percentage and can enable the 3D sound mode which I’ll discuss shortly.
As well as the power and Bluetooth buttons, there are volume buttons, which pressed together will mute the audio, and a play/pause button. Pressing the play/pause button together with the volume down and up will play previous and next track respectively. There’s also the Mode button which activates the 3D sound mode which is meant to enhance certain types of audio. It doesn’t have a dedicated LED so you’ll need to remember that the power LED flashes green when it’s turned on, and red when it’s turned off. You can also confirm the setting in the BenQ audio app.
I was disappointed that with both the iOS and the Android devices I tested, the volume is not sync’ed, meaning you have to adjust the volume separately on the speaker itself and the phone. Even budget speakers like the Anker Soundcore 2 I reviewed recently sync volume adjustment, on iOS at least. It’s not a big deal, it just means you’ll probably want to set the volume to maximum on the speaker which is indicated by a beep, then control the volume from your device. Unfortunately the speaker doesn’t appear to remember the volume you’ve set it at, so you’ll need to do this every time.
Performance and sound quality
Battery life is quoted as 18 hours but that will depend on the volume you listen at. It’s always difficult to test, but I have found battery life to be good. Over the last week with some fairly exhaustive testing it’s still running off its first charge.
The speaker supports the Bluetooth 4.2 standard and I could happily continue playing music in an adjacent room away from my iPhone X in my fairly standard 50s built house. I tested against a JBL Charge 2+, an Anker SoundCore 2 and the Amazon Echo and got a similar range with all three.
The treVolo S has 2, 40mm 12W woofers with metal grills, dual passive radiators for bass and of course the electrostatic panels themselves for the higher frequencies. The electrostatic panels work differently to standard speakers which use a electromagnet to push and pull a diaphragm producing sound. In an electrostatic speaker a thin diaphragm panel vibrates rapidly between two oppositely charged panels. The thin panel is very light weight and can therefore respond quickly to the audio signal, which should result in accurate sound reproduction. But it only moves a very small distance, so it’s not so good for lower frequency sounds hence the woofers and passive radiators.
So the big question is, how does it sound? Certain genres of music sound far better than you’d expect. Trebles and mids generally sound very detailed and I particularly noticed the clarity of vocals which also made spoken audio off podcasts and YouTube much easier to listen to. And there’s little delay which means lip-sync is generally good if you are watching YouTube or films.
Bass is not so impressive. The woofers and passive radiators do their best to help along the electrostatic speakers panels. But for general listening you’ll notice the sound doesn’t appear to have the range of other Bluetooth speakers at a similar price or cheaper for that matter. Turning on 3D Sound, which is meant to make the audio more immersive without altering the original soundwaves, does improves things slightly and I preferred having this mode on most of the time. You can improve the bass further by moving the Trevolo S closer to a wall. This is the case for most speakers, but the electrostatic panels are bi-directional exaggerating this somewhat. Even folding the panels back slightly improves the bass to some degree.
The sound is also very directional, so placement has a significant impact. The rubber base, as well as reducing any vibrations, angles the speaker slightly in an attempt to direct the sound to the listener, but it’s not really enough in most cases. The larger Trevolo 2 speaker has an optional stand that angles the speaker further, but this isn’t available for the Trevolo S.
The volume of the speaker is not as loud as speakers of a similar size or at the same price point, but is loud enough for most situations. There’s little distortion but it sounds best at around 80% volume or less.
Being able to connect the speaker via USB to a laptop is a welcome feature and with the Trevolo S’s internal DAC, it’s receiving a pure digital signal. I tried playing some high resolution audio tracks to take advantage of this, but if there are any differences in audio quality they are very subtle. There’s no aptX support for better quality audio over Bluetooth, you’ll have to step up to the bigger Trevolo 2 for that.
If you watch the video at the top of the page, you can hear a demonstration of the audio quality. Demonstrating the audio quality is always tricky, partly because copyright prevents me from using any licensed music, but mainly because it depends not only on how I record the sound, but how you listen to it. Headphones will give you a better feel and at least you might be able to hear the comparative differences between the 3 other speakers I’m testing it against; the budget Anker SoundCore 2 I reviewed recently, a similarly priced albeit mains powered Amazon Echo, and a Sonos Play:3, really as a benchmark since it’s more expensive and not portable. I’ll also demonstrate the 3D mode and just how directional those electrostatic panels are.
Conclusions
The Trevolo S is a rather unique Bluetooth speaker. It doesn’t look like any other Bluetooth speaker I’ve seen, it uses electrostatic speaker panels which do provide very accurate sound reproduction for some music types and it has a premium feel to it.
I feel it’s more aimed at someone who sits down specifically to listen to music in a relatively quiet room. And who’s willing to spend some time getting the placement just right. And even then it might depend on what music they like to listen to.
If you’re after an all-round portable Bluetooth speaker, there are better options, but it’s nice there’s an option out there for someone who prefers that clarity at the higher frequencies and is not interested in the often bass heavy sound signatures of other bluetooth speakers.
Pros
- Good treble and midrange clarity from electrostatic speaker panels
- Premium build quality
- USB audio with internal DAC
- Supports Duo mode when paired with another speaker
- Included 2A fast charger with UK and Euro adapters
- NFC support
- 18 hour battery life
- 3D sound does provide a “bigger” sound for a lot of audio
Cons
- No AptX support
- Quite expensive
- No USB-C, only micro-USB
- No USB port for charging other gadgets
- Limited bass
- Quite heavy for portable speaker
- No ruggedness or water resistance
- No microphone (not something I ever use – but might be important to some)
- No volume sync on iOS or Android
The speaker is available from Amazon: https://amzn.to/2WwBxE2
Purchasing using this link, or the link in the sidebar helps support the site, and costs you nothing.
Excellent review – so much detail to it. I feel like I’ve got a very thorough understanding of this speaker and how to use it from your review. I also like the way you edited it so impressively, and compared the speaker to a range of others. Great job.!!
Superdry males’s Germany Trophy Sequence t-shirt.