Putting a Bluetooth speaker on the end table is a bad idea, actually

Clipping gadgets to furniture isn’t necessary, but gosh darn it, it’s fun. That’s why IKEA has speaker lights and airy side tables.

But just because putting gadgets on furniture is fun doesn’t mean it’s right. Figuring out how to combine technology and furniture comes with a Difficult Proportion Law. You have to tell the air that cleans well in someone’s apartment, but also … Acting as a tasty place for a glass of orange juice? They are silly and stable challenges, but when they come together well, they are great. And when they don’t? Well, we’ll get into that in a second…

The last final table?

My most recent foray into smart furniture was the decortech Bluetooth Speameoth end table, which is what it sounds like; An end table that doubles as a Bluetooth speaker. The design is nothing special (there is nothing like the Scandinavian attention to scandinavia like here), but it is beautiful enough to be a combination in many living rooms without looking put together. Out of context, you’d think it’s an electric drum or something, but next to the bed, the picture comes together.

When a table masquerades as just a banal piece of furniture (no pun intended) that’s when you take a gander at it. Here, you will see a dark area with many buttons, including the power button, the FM scan button, and the play/pause button, as well as the volume up and volume buttons. These, as you may already know, exist not in standard tables.

I’ll be honest, I was surprised by the selection of buttons, and while the volume up / down at the hardware level is not necessary, since most people will use their phones to control the volume, it’s still nice to have. Even the beauty of the radio installation, in my opinion. Call me an old man (not too much, please; It’s past my bedtime), but I love listening to the radio, and planning from listening to the radio, and planning from my phone just doesn’t feel the same. A Bluetooth End table, though? That it somehow feels right on the spectrum of anti-gadgets I’ve considered acceptable to have a radio inside.

If there’s one bad downside to the whole FM Radio thing, say the Decortech Bluetooth Speaker End Table features an FM Antenna extension, it’s actually a long cable that pulls back. I think it would be useful if you need to put an antenna for a better signal, but I’m not sure how to do that. Is it on the wall? Run it under the rug? Stuck in a window with a bubble gum section? The selection is weird, and the distorted vibe it brings to the table is great.

Another surprising inclusion in this table is a wireless charger, indicated by a molded symbol in the middle of the table. There is not much to say about wireless charging this time, but it works, and if you like to be on your phone all the time like I do just slap it and (very little at 10w) charged. If wireless isn’t your thing, you can also charge wired with the built-in USB – port. No USB-C here, sorry, everyone.

All of this, of course, is just what the real star of the show delivers: Bluetooth Audio. This is a speaker table after all, and if you’re buying one of these (or thinking about it), you’re going to want it to sound incredible. And luckily, if the Speaker’s end table is at the top of your priority list, I have good news. The Decortech Bluetooth Speaker keeps the table sounding pretty good, but it has one key feature that I’ll get into.

The speakers, while not exactly hi-fi, do a much better job than I expected from a $115 desk that can be ordered from Walmart. I played music through Spotify on my phone, including some jazz tunes, and we handled the songs accordingly. In Folky Singer-Songwriter-Y y Tracks from MJ Lenderman, I was impressed, as the vocals took very little place in the crowd, but powerful music where things felt good, well forced with lows.

Inside, there is a 6.5-inch subwoofer and a 2-inch speaker, so there is no loud noise, but it may be more than what you expected from the mouth and it is a speaker, a wireless charger, and a radio. You won’t get the same quality sound as you would be able to offer with a dedicated Bluetooth mode from bose or a good soundbar from sonos or a second sound type, but maybe plan on using it sometimes, it’s still respected. That is, if you can hear well…

Let’s break that idea down

Now, remember at the beginning of this review when I talked about the problems of putting gadgets on other gadgets? Well, it turns out that the Decortech Bluetooth Speaket End turle is a perfect example. Speakers, as we all know, need to be well placed, because sound is a very simple thing. That’s why, in general, most of the advanced systems of people’s theaters or hi-fi audio systems put a lot of sound in front of the listener. Sure, you might have loud speakers around you as you watch something, but those don’t create heavy distractions. You can probably see where this is going to happen.

A Final table (say it with me now) at the end. That means that the sound, if you put the decortech Bluetooth Speaker on the table next to your bed, like most people, they come from the side as you listen. There is nothing fair about that placement, and while it may not bother everyone, it will bother people who want to hear their speaker well. When you listen to the speaker from both positions (I sit on the side and I sit in front), I can tell you that there is definitely a difference in the clarity of the sound you get. I suppose you could always put a speaker in front of your bed, of course, but that’s not entirely ideal.

In some cases, this end table is an end table, in the word high, high, which means that it is intended to sit at a suitable level relative to the arm of the bed, like a phone or that cup of tea that you will accidentally forget about until it gets cold. Because of the height, putting the speaker in front of your bed looks strange, and that can’t take into account that it is a bad job to hide the power cable, which, as we all know, is bad for decoration.

The worst part is, there is really no way to find out this fact, what a summer to drill a hole in every end table that has a speaker on it from the first place. The truth is, if you buy a Speaker / End table, you will have to be well prepared and well made sound. That being said, if you have the kind of setup in your home where you think you’re going to have an end table looking at you, I think this end table would work? Then again, if your end table is in the middle of the room, isn’t that a great end table thing, right? Also, you can kiss the convenience of the wireless charger and nice buttons.

A solid execution on a bad idea

Listen, I’m not here to indulge in someone else’s Parade; Like I said before, furniture with tech in it has a cool vibe. I’ve admittedly been a fan of what Ikea is doing in this space, and even if it’s expensive and unnecessary, I can’t help but want it. And you know? Sometimes there is also real creativity in tech-laden furniture. Heck, maybe you live in a small apartment in Tokyo, and you don’t have room for a coffee table and cleaning the air in one place.

However it may appear, there is a right and wrong way to shoot gadgets at things, and the wrong way is to do it in a way that ignores the direction of both things you control. Coffee table spirit porridge? That’s right. A speaker lamp? Good. These are things that live together. But there is a beginning and an end where it works where it works.