Brane X Speaker Review

The Brane X is a lunchbox-style speaker with a convenient silicone carry strap positioned on the top so you can easily carry it with one hand. It features a stiff metallic grille that protects the drivers, with the Brane X logo slightly above. The top surface is flat and smooth and houses the control interface: a series of icons where you can input basic commands. The speaker sits atop four soft, rubber feet that give it some stability on flat surfaces.

This speaker is remarkably portable. It weighs just under eight pounds (3.5kg), and it's easily carried in one hand thanks to the silicone carry handle. Its design is compact, so it takes up very little surface area on a desk or shelf, and it can run on both AC and battery power.

This speaker has an impressive build quality. It's made of a combination of dense, high-quality plastic and metal that gives it a premium feel. The metal grilles that protect the drivers are very strong and rigid, with very little flexibility. There are also sprung metal feet, coated in silicon, under the speaker that feature some kind of suspension mechanism, meaning the whole speaker vibrates at higher volumes. The speaker is rated IP57, so it's submersible in water and fully protected against dust damage. Despite this, there are no covers for any of the ports, which can leave them susceptible to dirt build-up over time.

The controls are disappointing. A few buttons on the top of the speaker allow you to control basic functions. While the controls are clearly labeled and easy to access, the lack of dedicated, elevated buttons makes it easy to accidentally press the wrong button. There's also no way to input important commands, like playing, pausing, or skipping tracks. There's a good amount of feedback with these controls, though, as the speaker will register chimes when you press a button while there's no audio playing. There are LED lights to indicate basic statuses like charging, Bluetooth pairing, and Wi-Fi mode. When powered on, the speaker will report the battery level and bass setting, too.

• Power button: Hold to turn on/off.
• Bluetooth button: Press once to enter pairing mode, or hold for five seconds to reset pairing parameters or hold for ten seconds to configure a Wi-Fi connection.
• Volume buttons: Press to adjust the volume.
• Microphone button: Press to toggle the microphone on/off.
• Alexa button: Press once to turn on Amazon Alexa.
• Bass button: Press to toggle through bass low/medium/high.

• Brane X speaker
• Review/marketing booklet
• Quick Start Guide

The Brane X's frequency response accuracy is good. It features Brane's proprietary Repel-Attract-Driver (RAD) technology in its subwoofer that uses magnets to cancel out air pressure within the speaker's enclosure to increase the bass range output. Upon powering up the speaker, you'll hear a whirring noise, indicating an air pump equalizes the internal air pressure. Speakers of this size, like the Sonos Move 2, usually struggle to reproduce these frequencies, but the Brane punches above its weight. After installing firmware update 1.3.1715212187, we found that the Brane speaker's bass extends quite a bit lower, and the dedicated sub lends boom and punch to kicks and basslines. This is especially evident when listening to club-ready techno and house tracks, as the bass will rumble whatever surface you place it on. You can adjust the bass with the press of a button, and you can see a comparison of the different presets here. The mid-range is well-balanced, rendering vocals and lead instruments with plenty of detail.

This speaker is let down by its veiled treble response, which lacks detail compared to competitors like the Sonos. Lead instruments lack high-end shimmer, and sibilants, like cymbals, sound a little muted. It also results in the upper harmonics of vocals losing some presence. It's possible to tailor the sound profile via the in-app EQ to your liking. However, no room correction feature is available to adjust the sound to the unique characteristics of your space.

This speaker has a decent soundstage performance. It can playback audio in stereo without downmixing to mono, so you can hear a clear separation between left and right channels. Its front-facing design means that its directivity isn't the best. Compared to 360-degree design speakers, audio won't sound as consistent when listening from different angles.

Considering its size, this speaker gets pretty loud and can easily fill a room with sound. We retested its dynamic range compression after installing firmware update 1.3.1715212187, resulting in a significantly worse score than the previous firmware. However, during subjective listening, we noticed that the speaker's output was missing the pumping artifacts we expected, given our test results. Simply put, the speaker's output doesn't sound as compressed in the bass range as our test results indicate. If you listen to less bass-heavy content, like podcasts, you'll experience pure audio reproduction, even at high volumes.

Before the update, the speaker struggled to reproduce low bass at lower volumes due to a volume scaling issue between the sub and the tweeters/cones. The update has ensured that changes in volume now affect the sub more proportionally than before, so increasing the overall volume increases the bass response in more steady increments. As a result, the baseline for our dynamics testing now reflects a far stronger bass response, which increases the disparity in sound profile between 76dB and 98dB (max volume).

The battery performance is mediocre. The manufacturer advertises 12 hours of battery life at 'moderate volume,' making it difficult to determine what settings were used to obtain this result. We ran multiple passes with the speaker output at 80dB using the default settings and achieved an average of 5.2 hours, which is much lower than advertised. A power-saving feature also switches off the speaker after 30 minutes of inactivity. The main determinant of the battery's longevity is subwoofer use, as the Brane speaker's R.A.D subwoofer represents the biggest drain on the battery. As a result, battery life will depend heavily on volume and audio content.

The Brane X has outstanding voice assistant capabilities thanks to its Amazon Alexa integration. To utilize this speaker's Alexa features, you'll need to connect the speaker via Wi-Fi and ensure you're connected to the companion app for configuration. That said, once set up, this speaker can accurately pick up your voice commands, regardless of how far away you are or how noisy the room is. There's no speakerphone function, so incoming calls will automatically be routed to your phone.

The Brane X app is very good. Via the app, you can adjust the sound with a 5-band EQ, as well as the intensity of the LED lights. You can also use it to pair with other Brane X speakers in various configurations, like a stereo wireless pair, and there are surround sound and multi-room options with up to eight speakers. It's also possible to see the battery status here and configure the Alexa and Wi-Fi settings. While this app is supposed to be offered in both iOS and Android versions, we were unable to download the Android app despite using multiple devices geo-located in the US and Canada. We're unsure of how widespread this issue is. If you can download the Android app (or can't), please let us know in the forums. You can see a video of the app here.

This speaker features an AUX input to connect your devices via a more traditional wired connection. No 3.5mm cable is included with the speaker, so you'll need to acquire one elsewhere.

This speaker has good Bluetooth connectivity and performance. It has low audiovisual synchronization error with Android devices, meaning you won't notice much in the way of lip-synching issues. However, it has significantly higher audiovisual synchronization error with iOS devices, so you'll likely see some lag between your video and audio if you use an iOS device to watch videos. Unfortunately, this speaker doesn't support multi-device pairing, so you can only connect devices one at a time.

This speaker is Wi-Fi enabled, and you'll need to use this connection method if you want to use its Alexa capabilities. It's also compatible with Apple AirPlay, and the audiovisual synchronization error falls within good limits, so you won't notice much of a delay between the visuals and audio when watching movies.