QDOS Q-BOPZ review

The QDOS Q-BOPZ is the smallest Bluetooth speaker we’ve seen, resembling nothing so much as a brightly coloured doorknob. It comes in a variety of shades, including green, blue, red and orange as well as the usual white and black. At the base of the speaker is a suction cup.

This lets you stick the speaker to the back of your smartphone to stand the phone upright on flat surfaces, to help when watching a video. You can also stick this dinky Bluetooth speaker to other smooth surfaces such as a car dashboard.

A rubberised finish helps to make the speaker splash-proof, which is great if you want to use it in the bathroom, in the garden or on a picnic. One side of the speaker has three control buttons for volume and Bluetooth pairing. Nearby is a tiny hole for the speaker’s built-in microphone, allowing you to use it to make hands-free phone calls.

On the other side of the Q-BOPZ is a micro-USB port and a power switch, protected from the elements by a rubber flap. An LED at the bottom of the speaker shines through the suction cup to show you when the speaker is in pairing mode or charging.

Unsurprisingly for a £30 speaker that fits in the palm of your hand, the Q-BOPZ doesn’t have a lot of extra features. If you’re after stereo sound, bass ports, NFC, aptX, multi-speaker daisy-chaining and other bells and whistles you should look elsewhere. If you’re after something very small, very portable and very convenient, it’s ideal.

Despite its small size, the speaker’s rechargeable battery lasted 12 hours and seven minutes in our test. If you set both the speaker’s volume and your Bluetooth source’s volume up to maximum, then you’ll burn through the battery a lot faster, but for indoor listening at comfortable levels you’ll be able to squeeze plenty of listening time out of the Q-BOPZ.

The speaker’s sound quality is impressive considering its small size and single driver. There’s not much bass to speak of and the slightly brittle treble becomes harsh once you push it past three quarters of its maximum volume, but the sound is generally clear and even. It does best with simple, punchy genres like speed punk and house music. It also copes well with soft classical, folk and ambient tracks, while its failings become more apparent on bombastic orchestral pieces, bassy dubstep and fast, complex metal tracks.

Its small size, low price and good battery life make the Q-BOPZ a worthwhile buy if you’re after a simple and highly portable speaker. However, unless you really need something this tiny, the same money will buy you the NudeAudio Move M, which sounds better and has longer battery life.