The SACKit WOOFit Jam speaker is an interesting one. Its aims are ambitious. It doesn't just want to sit in the sea of ‘good’ portable wireless speakers, it wants to make a demonstration of big and better battery life, sound and a helpful design, to make it something you always want to use. So we went off to test the €99 WOOFit Jam speaker, playing our music, movies, games and Neflix through it, to find out if it really is something special or just another ‘good’ portable speaker.

Design

Built like a brick is a phrase that is too often thrown around to describe a product's build quality, but in this instance it seems the pin precise definition for SACKit WOOFit Jam. The weighty rigidity of the speaker makes it feel like you could build houses out of them. But WOOFit haven't forgotten to keep it a stylish affair too. This Danish design sports an all matt black rubberised plastic encompassing all of the rectangular body. We’ve noticed that because of the colour and finish it doesn’t get noticeably dirty from being lugged around and used outdoors. Our favourite point of attention in the design though, are the stylishly visible speaker drivers available in midnight black, copper and copper matt.

On the back of the speaker are the usual affair of inputs and outputs, with one aux-in and one aux-out port. To the left of these is the power button and on the right is the micro-USB charging port.

Controls & Features

Two rows of buttons are found on top of the speaker, allowing control of the playback functions of the device paired; like volume, pausing/playing and skipping/forwarding of songs. The speaker knows when it’s in dark and dimly lit environments too, due to a built in light sensor, so it helpfully backlights all the buttons via LEDs for unhindered use in such circumstances. An inbuilt voice echo cancelling microphone and another button that functions to answer and hang up phone calls is also present, transforming the speaker into a handy device for reasonably responsive and clear conference calls.

Battery Life

We think the inbuilt 4400 mAh battery this speaker boasts, is the largest within any portable speaker within this category that we’ve ever had the pleasure of using. It powered an admirable 15 hours of playback with volume averaging at around 60%. Listening to the WOOFit Jam for 3-4 hours a week, meant we didn’t need to charge it for a month of what we felt to be regular usage. And if you’re like us and forget to turn the speaker off after a session of Spotify, it will do so itself automatically to preserve the battery life.

Bluetooth & NFC

Connecting to the WOOFit Jam via NFC is as simple as ever; all that's required is a touch of your device onto the top of the speaker. Bluetooth, as expected, was an easy and straightforward setup, repairing is snappy and the range is credible at a max of 12 metres from our testing, although this is short of the ambitious 20 metre claim from SACKit.

Sound

The left and right drivers have a considerable amount of space between them. What this renders is dynamically diverse stereo performance, that truly contests the likes of the similarly lengthy Jabra Solemate and Creative MUVO mini speakers. The spread of sound married with the open back design of the speaker, which enables bass to travel through it, is refreshingly distinct and manages to embrace an escalated soundstage. Instrumental elements and vocals are allowed an atmosphere to show off individually and it makes music more exciting. However, it can get even better, as we’re lucky enough to have two SACKit WOOFit Jam speakers in our studio, and one of their unique abilities is that they can be conjoined for a stunningly loud and true stereo performance.

The bass is fierce and grasps a depth in power that we’ve previously not heard from a wireless portable speaker of its size. We assume this is why it’s named ‘Jam’. If you like bass, you’ll love the WOOFit Jam, as it’s the backbone of its signature sound style! It would appear that the weighty body and rubber feet are the platforms for this. The WOOFit Jam didn’t jump around or reverberate when the bass was hustling in a song like ‘Never Let it Die’ by ‘Watsky’. Its unafraid boldness benefits from good volume too (10W), and the Jam can easily fill an average home room with sound that is challenging to talk over. Importantly, though, when we turn the volume down, the definition of sound doesn’t dissipate.

The scope of the mid range is not bad at all. Considering how raw the bass is, we’d expect the mid range to be swallowed up by it, but it’s breadth was principally full and rarely sounded squashed even with heavy bass songs. The highs too are elevated and whispery most of the time. A particularly vocally high performance of ‘Toxic’ performed by ‘Yael Naim’ exhibits these qualities radiantly. Her voice projects the intended raspy airy whisperings and the simple bass drum thumps without upsetting the vocals in any way. Only when playing songs with all the ranges competing for indulgent exposure did we notice the highs can crumble slightly from the strain. Generally this speaker treats the ears to immense clarity of the frequencies, and with the volume to boot. It’s a world away from a simple leg-up from an inbuilt smartphone, tablet or notebook speaker.

Value

At €129 this is a reasonably expensive portable wireless speaker, but we don’t feel it’s being cheeky to ask this amount of money. The design and features we’ve already discussed are a solid foundation for a good and functional product, but the sound quality is many notches above the similarly priced speaker competition like the Jabra Solemate. When we faced the two against one another it was like removing a cloak every time we switched back to the SACKit WOOFit Jam.

Overall

We’re always searching for the best portable wireless speaker and occasionally one comes into our studio that treats our ears to a new level of quality and creates a new base bar for assessing other similar speakers against. The wireless portable SACKit WOOFit Jam speaker is one of these, with its enjoyably energetically rich sound and a sizeable 15 hour battery life. We’ve not heard better from the dimensions of anything similar and we’ve reviewed a lot of portable speakers!