Bluetooth Speakers

The pricing of Bluetooth speakers has become such a compelling reason to have many of them. I have one for my shower, another set that we grab for dance parties. I mentioned on the How It Started page that I wish I would have had the waterproof Bluetooth speakers back when I first started. The one thing I find is that the battery life can be a little underwhelming when your rocking the tunes. However, we have many battery packs that solve this concern.

If you already have a speaker of some kind that can play music, use it. As long as the kids can hear the music you're playing and you can connect your phone to it, it's likely good enough.

TL;DR

If you just want a recommendation. My go to speaker for family dance parties and just outdoor sound in general are two of these Kunodi Bluetooth Speakers. I started off with this earlier version and really like the upgraded version. It checks all the boxes I discuss below and has more than enough volume for a smaller group.

These are great for a few kids dancing. I've also used them for adding bit of music during shower time and music for running through the sprinklers. I have also used them when we play in the yard just to lay down a bit of music during hide and seek type games. They aren't going to cover a party with 20 people, but they do so much, I feel pretty safe saying start here.

Ease of Use

How quickly can you go from your kid asking "can we have a dance party" to music playing and kids dancing. Kids are super spur of the moment and if you need 15 minutes to get setup, they've already lost interest.

Stereo

What I'm really after here is the ability to pair two (or more) speakers together as a single system. This doubles the volume and also does create some effect for songs that have stereo that are in stereo.

The current price on the Kunodi speaker I mention above is about $20. At that price, buying two is a great value and gets you the stereo pairing. Looking through what I can get for $40, I also don't find any great values that make me want to jump to them. That starts to happen when I get to speakers like the Anker Soundcore Boom which supports their "Partycast" which is the ability to link up to 100 speakers.

100 speakers is a bit of a joke vs something practical. I can't see anyone actually buying 100 of those speakers. At $120 each, that would be $12,000 and for that much money, I would be going a very different direction. If we were regularly entertaining groups of 20-30 though, two of the Anker speakers would absolutely fill the yard where as the Kunodi speakers would fall slightly short.

Waterproof

So waterproof is relative, I'm not going to drop these down into a bucket of water, but if they are outside and get splashed on, it's not the end of the word. The original speakers I started with were all particle board.

That actually took down two different speakers. One got splashed and the other was left in the rain. In both cases the particle board expanded and the sound quality was destroyed. Your speakers can be waterproof and never need that protection but if they aren't waterproof to some degree, any moisture can quickly become an issue when you wrap up a dance party and rush the kids to bed forgetting about what is outside.

USB-C

What I'm really after is a consistent way to charge all my devices. Some of my early speakers had unique connectors (we're talking about 2018). This was a pain and loosing the connector meant no ability to charge the speakers. USB-C makes this simple, and with all my battery packs also being USB-C chargeable, this is just a piece of convenience that I really like.

Sound Quality

Sound quality at the end of the list? Yep. I'm not an audiophile and I'm sure many would would disagree with this, but this is absolutely a place where good enough is what we need. You're target audience is your kid.

The time to upgrade your speakers is when they aren't loud enough to cover the number of kids you've got dancing. Until then, focus on other areas of your dance parties. When it comes time to get setup, get music playing, then add your lights. Then have fun dancing with your kids.

Cover Photo by Michail Sapiton on Unsplash

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