Divoom Voombox Ongo review

Divoom impressed us with the Voombox Outdoor thanks to its ability to output a massive sound from such a small Bluetooth speaker, even if it was at the expense of bass presence to emphasise mid-range tones – which are typically easier to hear when outdoors. The Voombox Ongo can be considered its smaller sibling, but disappointingly it’s not quite as loud.

This is a shame, as it comes with a bike handlebar mount and tripod accessory that encourages users to take it on the move. Unfortunately, it’s not quite loud enough to hear over the exertion of cycling or the movement of the wind if you’re pedalling at even a moderate speed, which somewhat negates its usefulness.

The Ongo has a similar design to the Outdoor, with the same rubberised exterior and bright choice of colours. It’s available in red, green, blue and orange, plus a more subdued black. All of them have a black bezel around the speaker grille with exposed screws that give the speaker a slight industrial feel. The Ongo also has a loop built into one end, meaning you can easily attach a carabineer clip and attach it to a rucksack. The rubber finish is thick enough to absorb light impacts, but we wouldn’t recommend throwing it around. It’s also rated IPX44 water resistant, so will survive being splashed with water but you can’t submerge it.

We were pleased to see a microUSB port for charging, meaning your smartphone charger can perform double duties, and you get around eight hours of battery life off a single charge – exactly what we would expect for a speaker of this size. A 3.5mm auxiliary input is hidden away along with the microUSB port behind a rubberised flap on the side, while volume, power and a play/pause button can be found on the top.

You can also use the play button to answer and reject incoming phone calls using the built-in microphone, although it only has average sensitivity so you’ll need to be pretty close to the speaker unless you want to shout to be heard.

The Ongo supports Bluetooth 4.0, but not the less-lossy aptX codec, although this isn’t something we would expect at this price, or indeed necessary given the meagre 7W power output from the two full-range 1.5in speaker drivers. In contrast, the Voombox Outdoor could pump out a combined 15w. Even with a passive radiator on the back of the speaker, sound quality was merely respectable. It wasn’t quite as tinny-sounding as the Outdoor, with more presence in the lower frequencies, but certainly not enough to blow us away.

Our main disappointment was that the Ongo couldn’t reach the loud volumes necessary for outdoor use in order to get the most out of the bike mount. Given the choice of the two, the Voombox Outdoor is the better choice, even if you can’t strap it to your handlebars.