Sony SRS-XE200 Speaker Review

The Sony SRS-XE200 is a smaller version of the Sony SRS-XE300. It's a pentagonal speaker that you can place either vertically or horizontally. It has a sleek design that doesn't easily stand out. There's also a removable carrying strap to help you transport your favorite music, audiobooks, or podcasts along with you on the go. You can also find it in Blue, Orange, and Black.

The Sony SRS-XE200 is incredibly portable. It's small and lightweight, making it easy to carry in one hand. There's also a carrying strap to help transport it, so you can bring your favorite tunes wherever you go.

The Sony SRS-XE200 has excellent build quality. It feels solid overall, wrapped tightly with fabric and silicone. It's rated IP67 for dust and water resistance, meaning it's certified to be dust tight and immersible in up to a meter of water for up to 30 minutes, so you can bring it outside without worrying about it getting dusty or wet. While it doesn't come with an IK rating for impact resistance, the manufacturer claims the Sony XE200 can withstand a few drops, bumps, and scrapes. There's a solid rubber flap that protects its ports, and there's a carrying strap to help you bring it along with you on the go.

The Sony SRS-XE200 has a fantastic set of easy-to-use textured controls with their own indicator lights to inform you of your chosen settings. Its play/pause button has multiple functions. You can use it to answer and end calls, double-press it to skip your track, and triple-press it to backtrack. You can also press and hold it to activate the voice assistant from your paired smartphone. There's a hole near the play/pause button for the speaker's microphone, which you can also mute. When you mute the mic, its indicator light turns red.

You can press the Bluetooth button to pair the Sony XE200 to your devices. When it's in pairing mode, its Blue light flashes slowly and solidifies when it's paired. The speaker audibly informs you of your remaining battery life when you press the battery button. You can also long-press this button to enable 'Stamina' Mode, which cuts the speaker's bass to extend its battery life. The indicator light next to the power button lights green when the Sony XE200 is on and blinks three times when you reach its minimum or maximum volume levels. The indicator light beside the 'Charge' icon turns orange when you charge it.

• Sony SRS-XE200 speaker with carrying strap
• USB-C to USB-A charging cable
• Reference and Quick Start guides

The Sony SRS-XE200's frequency response accuracy isn't bad. There's a 'ClearAudio+' feature that's advertised to adjust the speaker's sound field according to what you're listening to. When placed horizontally and with its default ClearAudio+ feature enabled, it has a very boomy sound profile, so there's extra boom and punch in the mix. However, like other speakers its size, it lacks low-bass, so you can't feel the deep thump and rumble typically present in bass-heavy music. The underemphasis in the treble range also causes higher-pitched vocals and instruments to sound dull and veiled. That said, you can customize its sound to your liking thanks to the graphic EQ featured in its companion app. For a similar speaker that can produce a more extended low-bass, check out the Sony SRS-XE300.

The Sony SRS-XE200's soundstage performance is alright. It can play stereo content without downmixing it to mono, so instruments and sound effects in your audio localize to a pinpoint location. It means that if you play a song that normally has the drums on the left and the guitar on the right, it emits the drum sounds from the left side of the speaker and the guitar sounds from the right. However, because the speaker is on the smaller side, it's hard to notice these distinctions when passively listening to music. Still, this adds to the immersiveness of the speaker's soundstage.

On the other hand, it has disappointing directivity. Since the Sony XE200 only projects audio from one main direction, audio doesn't sound quite as clear when listening from different angles, like when listening from behind the speaker. As a result, you'll perceive its soundstage as narrow and directional.

Note: The Sony XE200 doesn't automatically switch from stereo to mono when you go from placing it horizontally to vertically. It causes the channel separation to be heard as coming from the top and bottom instead of from the left and right when listening to the speaker vertically. If you prefer having your audio in mono when placing the speaker vertically, you can make the switch from stereo to mono in its companion app.

The Sony SRS-XE200 has poor dynamics. It doesn't get very loud, meaning it won't fill larger spaces with sound. It gets loud enough to fill smaller rooms like your bedroom or office with sound, though. However, there's a lot of compression present at max volume that degrades the quality of your audio when the volume is maxed out, so it doesn't sound as clean and clear when listening at louder volumes.

The Sony SRS-XE200 has a fantastic battery performance. While it's advertised to last around 16 hours from a single charge, it could last over 14 hours in our tests, which is still outstanding. There's also a power-saving feature Sony calls 'Auto Standby' in its companion app. You can enable it to turn the Sony XE200 off following 15 minutes of inactivity.

Like other Sony speakers we've tested, the Sony SRS-XE200 is compatible with the voice assistants from your smartphone. However, unlike previous Sony speakers we've tested, it does an excellent job registering your commands when you're far away and in noisier environments. While there's a button to mute the Sony XE200's microphone, you only use it for phone calls.

The Sony SRS-XE200's Sony Music Center app is very good. It features a graphic EQ, meaning you can customize its sound profile to your liking. You can use the app to set the speaker to either mono or stereo mode and can also use it to create a stereo pair with another compatible speaker. You can connect the speaker to multiple other speakers when you want to amplify your audio across a larger area in party mode.

There's a 'Stamina' mode you can enable in the app, which cuts the bass in your audio to extend the speaker's battery life when it's running low. There's a 'Battery Care' feature that suppresses its charge amount to 90% when you charge it fully to protect and optimize the battery's performance in the long run. You can also enable its 'Auto Standby' mode that automatically turns the Sony XE200 off when it's left idle for 15 minutes.

Aside from its charging port, the Sony SRS-XE200 doesn't have wired inputs.

The Sony SRS-XE200 has fantastic Bluetooth connectivity. You can pair the speaker to two devices at once, making it easy to quickly and frequently switch between audio sources. It has outstanding range, so your paired devices remain connected to the speaker, even from far away. It also has low latency with iOS and Android devices, so there aren't any syncing issues between the audio you hear and the visuals you see on your screen when watching videos and movies. Some apps compensate for latency differently, and your experience may vary.