Boat Stone 700A review

What is it?

Boat’s new budget Bluetooth speaker with built-in Alexa. What’s better is that it is IPX6 water and dust resistant, while its solid construction promises drop protection as well.

Audio Quality

• Let’s put it straight, the Boat Stone 700A is surely one of the best sounding budget Bluetooth speakers out there.
• One problem with most Bluetooth speakers out there, especially among the budget-oriented ones, is their amplified bass output. Most brands tune their speakers to be bass-heavy and that results in high and mid-frequency tones getting muffled. Thankfully, the 700A is very different.
• Its sound output is incredibly balanced. In fact, we’ve never heard a budget speaker before that sounds this good great with multiple music genres. There’s no artificial bass here and the end result is a neutral sound output which goes well with every kind of music.
• What’s even better is that the speaker can get pretty loud at full volume without any sound distortion.

Alexa

• While the Stone 700A brings Amazon Alexa on a budget, it’s worth noting that it does not work as flawlessly as on Echo smart speakers. There’s no “Alexa” hotword support here, so you have to manually trigger the function by either pressing a button on the speaker or through the companion app.
• Talking of the app, it’s called Boat Nirvana and you can get it on both Android and iOS. The app gives you the option to log into your Amazon Alexa account as well. However, to fully make use of Alexa, you’ll need the official Alexa app on your phone too.
• You can use Alexa with a wide variety of supported voice commands, however, many features like setting alarms & reminders, controlling smart home devices, etc. are pointless on a wireless speaker like this. To make the most of Alexa, a wired speaker like Echo, which is powered on all the time.
• Another thing to note is that Echo devices have four mics so that they can pick up voice commands properly. Here, there is just one. So while talking to Alexa, you have to be loud and ensure that your surroundings are quiet, or else it won’t respond.

Design & Construction

• The Boat Stone 700A is IPX6 rated for water resistance which makes it a fantastic party speaker, or even a great bathroom speaker for that matter.
• Boat also claims that it can handle accidental drops pretty well, and going by its rugged design that’s made of solid plastic and rubber, it sounds believable.
• The speaker is slightly heavier than its competitors, but that’s due the added ruggedness, which makes it totally worth it. Still, its reasonably portable and would fit well in your average backpack while travelling.

Battery Life

• The 700A has a 2,000mah battery which recharges through a micro USB port. Charging time is around 2.5-3 hours.
• It can last for up to 8 hours when used on medium to high volume, which may not be class-leading, but is good nonetheless.
• Oddly enough, there’s no battery level indicator on this speaker. Even the app says absolutely nothing about the battery level. There’s an inbuilt voice that abruptly kicks into your music to remind you to charge. It can be a bit annoying.

Verdict

• Boat has nailed it with the audio output of the Stone 700A, and based on that alone, we can recommend you to buy it.
• On top of that, the IPX6 rating and the drop-resistant construction is boon. It promises that the speaker would last longer than your average budget speaker.
• The Alexa experience, while not as whole as that on the Echo, is still good to have on something that costs less than Rs 3,500.
• Talking of the price, while you’ll typically find it for Rs 3,499 on Amazon India, it often drops to under Rs 3,000 during the sale season. Now that makes it even better value!

Check out our video review below: