Pure Voca review

The Pure Voca looks and feels a lot like the Cambridge Audio G2, which we gave a Best Buy award to last year. It has a similar metallic body and contoured shape that feels heavier than you would expect given its size. A small rubber platform on the bottom helps avoid scratches and absorbs some of the chassis reverberation, which is a welcome addition.

The dark silver of this Bluetooth speaker’s brushed metal finish occasionally looks slightly purple under certain lighting, but either way it looks classy – especially with a large speaker grille on the front that’s only interrupted by a subtle Pure logo in the corner.

All the controls are placed on the top and are easy to access. As well as power and volume controls, there are dedicated buttons for Bluetooth pairing and answering or rejecting phone calls from a paired smartphone. The buttons are all rubberised, creating a stark contrast with the metallic body, and the power and Bluetooth buttons are backlit to make them easy to find in the dark.

A 3.5mm auxiliary input on the back of the speaker lets you connect devices that lack Bluetooth. There’s also a DC charging jack, but we would have been happier if the Voca charged over Micro USB instead, as it would mean carrying around one less charger. There’s also no NFC pairing, although it was still easy enough to find the Voca and pair a Bluetooth device.

The built-in battery lasted for around 10 hours of continuous music playback, which is slightly above average for a speaker of this size. It would have been nice to have some form of battery life indicator beyond the beep that indicates you’ve reached a critically low percentage, however.

The Voca’s built-in microphone makes it ideal for use as a handsfree speaker. It was sensitive enough to comfortably pick up our voice from about a metre away, with some mild background noise.

Two full-range 1.5in speaker drivers are paired with dual passive radiators inside the Voca, which help produce a surprising amount of bass – so much so that you can physically feel the chassis reverberate during bass-heavy tracks. The rubber feet help to provide some dampening and thankfully the chassis itself doesn’t rattle under the force, so we didn’t detect any distortion.

The overall sound was surprisingly rich and well-rounded, with good representation across the full sound spectrum. You’ll want to be relatively straight on to the speakers, though, as it does begin to drop off slightly as you move away from the sweet spot directly in front of the unit. Our acoustic test tracks sounded pleasantly warm for a speaker of this size, making jazz a pleasure to listen to. Maximum volume was enough to fill a medium-sized room, without creating much in the way of distortion, although for comfortable listening two-thirds volume is plenty.

If you’re not looking to spend a lot on a Bluetooth speaker, the Pure Voca does sound great and looks good for the money. If you can stretch to it, however, we still prefer the Cambridge Audio G2, which has the edge over the Voca in both sound quality and presentation.