Motorola ROKR 500

Sucker for Motorola products? Appreciate what Lenovorola are doing on Desktop and Mobile, particularly with Smart Connect? Run out of Moto stuff to get in to scratch the itch, allay the lust?! How about a dinky waterproof bedside/desktop/travel Bluetooth speaker/powerbank/wireless charger?

Let's face it, with 1001 other options out there and no real benefit here as a part of Motorola's ecosystem - you'd have to be as sold on Moto as I am to fall for this! Fortunately, it's cheap at £43 though I got it some months ago on an Amazon deal for less than half-price for £20 and I'd say that in that case, or even at full price, it's worth the punt! It's certainly very cute, attractive, a nice colour in this Jet Black and although not a patch on the output of my more expensive JBL Clip 5, it does have some advantages - with, for example, the light weight of the unit and built-in powerbank, enabling up to 10W Qi charging when travelling, depending on brick being used.

There are other colours if you buy it direct from Motorola - Titanium White, Lagoon Blue and my favourite, Coral Red. It's certainly compact and portable and will fit into (even) a jeans pocket (at a push)! Having said it's not up there with the more expensive JBL Clip 5, it ain't bad for volume and quality when hooked up to various devices via Bluetooth and, unlike the JBL, can be used for phone calls - as it has a microphone. I did test this and it seemed to work very well (with a Motorola Edge 50 Pro anyway)! Connection is solid, voices at both ends perfectly clear enough.

The waterproof/resistant certification is IPX/6 which makes it good for "powerful water jets from any angle" apparently. Depending on who you believe/read, IPX/6 rated protection is "extremely waterproof, impenetrable by weather, waterfalls and even a non-sustained total soaking". So take your pick! In real world use I'd guess that it's good for rain showers and bathroom splashes, but not to be submerged fully in water. At least, not for long! The X means no 'dust' protection, so perhaps not a beach-bound unit, more a desk/bedside/bathroom/travel one.

It's got a USB-C socket on one end under a weatherproof rubbery-feeling flap. It's not particularly quick to charge the 2,500mAh battery and Moto don't seem to quote what it should be, but it seems to be somewhere between 2 and 3 hours here on testing. When it's charged, and not being used as a wireless charger, it gives about 10 hours of playback on medium volume, so less on full. When charging a phone on the pad, it will clearly only give a maximum of 2,500mAh, so perhaps a mid-afternoon kick if your phone is running low, for example, for half of the now average phone's battery size.

It charges a phone very slowly on the pad of course - like about 10% in 30 minutes here, depending on phone, size of battery, state of depletion when attached and so forth. Your mileage will certainly vary! It will vary even more - like down to zero(!) - if the speaker is not being used at the time and it powers down, which it does after 15 minutes! So if you want a quick 10% boost for your phone and the ROKR 500 is not plugged in, that's probably as much as you'll get! Power it back on for another burst, I guess. Or hook it up to the phone and play music - though in this way will use the battery for doing that as well!

Probably best not to be relied on as a wireless charger when you don't have power plugged in - but the irony of that is clearly that you might as well then just plug the cable into the phone! Update I tested this with two Motorola phones (with 68W and 125W charging capability) and the charging was much better and faster. Again, I can't share specific data (we need a physicist!) but it charged those phones from about 80-100% very quickly indeed within the 15-minute window. Could it be a Moto thing, I wonder?!

The unit is very nicely made of hard plastic around the edges and back, anti-slip, rubbery grip feet on the bottom with a linen/cloth across the top where the Qi pad lies and speaker below. If you have a phone laying on it whilst listening, depending on the shape of the back of the phone, it does muffle it a bit but remains perfectly good for, say, listening to an audiobook on a timer when dropping off to sleep in a quiet room. 

There's a row of four buttons nicely embedded into the cloth at the front edge which you can get to with a phone laying on it, depending on size of the phone. The first is the power button, long-press to turn on/off, second volume down, then play/pause and finally, volume up. Short press for volume adjustments, press and hold for next/previous track. Play/pause to stop and start playback, obviously(!), but also to answer/end calls, disconnect the Bluetooth and even a double-press to invoke the Google Assistant, which then pops up on the phone. I've had no luck with Read Aloud Notifications, just this link to the Assistant.

You can also pair two of these speaker together if you want to, though I didn't have a second one to try. I can't find much data on this, so am assuming that it's playing the same audio source to both speakers, not that they can be used as a stereo pair.

The sound coming from the speaker is decent enough for a bedroom or office desk in a relatively quiet environment, but it's not going to be usable when ambient noise is present to any significant degree. It seems to be designed less for kids partying, more for someone stuck in a hotel room waiting for tomorrow's meeting(!) or, like me, a pretty quiet environment at home, in the kitchen or bathroom for sure.

Overall, the Motorola ROKR 500 is a decent device for anyone looking for a compact and portable Bluetooth speaker. It offers good-enough sound quality, with the above caveats, a stylish design and a range of convenient features. While it may not be the most powerful or feature-rich speaker on the market, at £20 it was a bit of a bargain, I reckon. At £43 maybe not quite so much, but it is cute. And has the Motorola name on it!