The portability of music is a market that continues to expand and evolve. As we're all focusing on our smart phoness as carriers of music, rather than traditional mp3 players or Walkmans, the market has adapted, creating the appropriate line of accessories. From headphoness to external speakers to wireless devices, our smartphoness are complemented well. The Phoenix Bluetooth Wireless Speaker by relative newcomer Beacon hopes to pull a good chunk of that market share with this speaker.

Beacon is a company that appears to be focused on the music first, as their products are following solid coverage of artists & the style surrounding them. They currently have two products for pre-order, The Phoenix speaker and the Orion Stereo Headphones. The speakers come in three adorable colors, red, blue and black. I don't have my crayons handy, so I can't tell you the exact shade of blue and black. I reviewed the black one, though in the end I don't think color really makes a difference.

If you are looking for total portability, The Phoenix falls a little short. You can't exactly stick a cube like this in your pocket and take it on the train with you. The target audience for this speaker is either college students, or people without a home audio system. It's perfect for long road trips, if you are driving in a 1972 Dodge Dart with an 8-track player. Right now, it's sitting next to me on my desk while I listen to tunes through my Dolby surround sound stereo system hooked up to my computer. So really, dorm rooms are perfect for this little speaker, which makes it a great graduation gift. At under $100, and generally square, it's easy to wrap too. Additionally, it's great for when you are in the kitchen cooking, or out by the grill or on the patio, where you might not have a stereo system hooked up. I know mine does not reach into the kitchen.

As for sound, I found that it of course sounded a tad better when hooked up to a non-Bluetooth device through the line-in, but that's to be expected. The sound through Bluetooth (at a maximum range of about 35 feet) was for the most part clean. There was a little distortion and lost audio on some of the finer parts of certain songs, but unless you are in a quiet room, you won't notice that. The bass carries well but isn't at deep as I would have liked, I missed some definite lows in Service Lab's "R2D2." When I jammed out to the reggae styling of Walk Off the Earth though, The Phoenix sounded a bit cleaner.

The place where The Phoenix really failed me was twofold. First, it's made in China. Well, that's more of a political issue than a product competency issue. The huge issue is the buttons. The buttons on the top are neat looking and you might think they are touch buttons (similar to some mp3 players) but they are not. They are push/click buttons. The volume buttons are paired with the track forward buttons, you have to hold down for volume. So often, you go to adjust the volume and the track skips ahead or back. The power button is paired with the pause/play button. While I never accidentally turned the thing off, it is a concern. For such a neat little device, not making the buttons a touch interface is a huge flaw for that price point. I would have easily paid an extra $20 for touch buttons, even though this type of device should never breach the $100 mark.

The positive is the volume, if you can get the buttons to click without flipping tracks. This thing does get quite loud for such a small speaker. If you've got a room full of your friends and everyone is talking about something inconsequential, they will be trying to talk over the music. This alone makes the price point worth it, as routinely you will find that many similar priced wired speakers don't get this loud. I know saying "loud" is a vague description of the speaker output, but that works better than just stating numbers that I don't have.

The Phoenix by Beacon is available for pre-order at their website as it doesn't officially come out until June. It is of course rechargeable, the lithium ion battery plugged in through a mini (not the current standard micro, another confusing physical attribute of the speaker) USB port. Overall, it's a nice little speaker with great sound for all its physical flaws (mostly the button interface). Assuming sales of this device go well for Beacon, I would like to see The Phoenix 2 come with a touch interface and micro USB.

The world of portable speakers, and especially Bluetooth capable ones, is advancing like the world of portable boomboxes and tape players in the 1980s. Where we went from giant boomboxes carried on the shoulder to compact ones with stereo sound, the same transition is happening with wireless technology. I think there are some technical flaws to work out though, and the perfect Bluetooth wireless audio device is still in a transitional period. The sound on The Phoenix is certainly a step in the right direction.