Bayan Audio Soundbook X3 review

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.