Bayan Audio Soundbook X3 review

The Bayan Audio Soundbook X3 is a portable speaker with a textured cover that protects it when it’s being carried in a bag or left lying around the house.

Conveniently, the Bluetooth speaker turns on as soon as it’s opened. The cover also folds backwards to become a stand that props the Soundbook X3 upright.

There are holes cut into the back of the case to expose the grille covering a passive bass radiator that lets the drivers shift more air and improve low frequency emphasis. At the back, there’s a 3.5mm line input, coloured blue, for auxiliary audio sources and a green 3.5mm output that allows you to connect the Soundbook to an external speaker system or pair of headphones. You can use the 3.5mm output to connect the Soundbook X3 to your home hi-fi so that you can stream music to it from your phone or tablet. Also on the back, you’ll find a power input and a USB port which you can use to charge devices. Sadly, you can’t use the USB port to play music from your phone or tablet.

When you first power up the Soundbook X3, it’ll start in Bluetooth pairing mode. It’ll automatically connect with the last device to which it was paired, and it can remember up to four different Bluetooth sources. Once paired with a device, you have to disconnect that device before you can pair the speaker with another. As well as standard Bluetooth pairing, the X3 supports at-a-touch pairing with near-field communication (NFC), assuming the phone or tablet you’re using supports the standard.

At the top of the Soundbook is an illuminated volume indicator and volume buttons, as well as a power button that, somewhat unusually, doubles as an input switch. You can choose between three different inputs: Bluetooth, auxiliary and an FM radio. A pair of buttons allows you to tune the radio frequency and LEDs on the face of the speaker flash to show you which mode or frequency you’re using. The Soundbook X3 has a tiny built-in microphone, too. The microphone picked up our voice clearly, but it sounded a bit faint to those calling us, even when we were as close as a couple of feet away from the unit. The speaker automatically goes into hands-free mode when you answer a call on a phone currently connected to it.

The speaker is very loud and emits a lot of bass for its size, but we weren’t impressed by the Soundbook X3’s overall sound quality. There’s a lot of bass emphasis, which sounds unbalanced against both treble and mid-tones. Lots of treble detail was missing, and brass instruments in particular sounded unduly harsh, while mid-tones sounded dull and lifeless.

If you just want to turn up the volume and listen to your favourite pop, dance and rock tracks while chatting with friends, this speaker is ideal, and it’s good at reproducing spoken word audio. However, the Soundbook X3’s sound quality is a little disappointing if you listen to your music intently.

The Soundbook X3 supports the less lossy aptX audio codec, which doesn’t make much difference when listening through the device’s own speaker but is of greater benefit when you’re using it as a Bluetooth receiver for a more sophisticated speaker system.

Happily, the Soundbook X3 lasted an astounding 41 hours and 33 minutes in our battery run-down test at half volume. If you need a portable speaker with a long-lasting battery, the Soundbook X3 is it.

At £250, the Soundbook X3 is typically priced for its class of portable speaker. It has a number of noteworthy features, including aptX support, its FM radio and its ability to output audio to another device. The latter, in particular, is tremendously useful, but the speaker itself simply doesn’t sound that good. We’d rather spend the money on the innovative Spaced360, which provides much better audio quality for the same price.