Xiaomi Sound Play Review

With the Sound Play, Xiaomi slips a mini Bluetooth speaker in an upright format into its catalogue. IP68 protection, Auracast compatibility and, above all, an infinity-mirror light show make for a solid argument on paper. The question is whether the sound keeps up.

This is a portable speaker that invites you to take it out simply to watch it glow, and that is the wager Xiaomi has made. Available in four colours — black, white, green and the purple of the unit covered here — it lands in the fiercely contested segment of entry-level mini portable speakers.

With no dedicated application, no wired input and settings reduced to the strict minimum, the Sound Play plays the card of a product that is usable straight out of the box. That philosophy has its limits, but it also has its arguments, starting with a specification sheet that does not embarrass itself: amplification quoted at 18 W, a frequency response of 75 Hz to 20 kHz and 14 hours of battery life.

At first glance the Sound Play adopts the now familiar codes of the tubular speaker, a format that has been everywhere for years. But Xiaomi has not simply reused the recipe as it stands. Look more closely and the tube is not really a tube at all: the chassis is in fact a block with heavily rounded edges, only one side of which houses the passive radiator. The visual codes of the cylinder are retained without inheriting its main drawback. Laid flat on a table or a shelf, the Sound Play stays put, where a genuinely tubular shape tends to roll away at the slightest knock of an elbow.

Xiaomi uses a synthetic woven covering over a plastic shell, with silicone in the areas meant to be gripped. The silicone base escapes the woven mesh that covers the rest of the chassis; it acts as a stable plinth and carries a first row of LEDs.

The real highlight sits on top: a set of superimposed mirrors creates an illusion of depth, like a bottomless well. This is unquestionably the most impressive thing the Sound Play has to show. A dedicated button drives the lighting: a short press cycles through the five available colours, while a long press changes the display mode. The visual result sits well above what is usually expected in this part of the market. It is genuinely well executed and discreet enough not to tip into excess, and it can be switched off entirely to avoid distraction and save a little battery in the process.

There is nothing to complain about on the finish: everything is well assembled, the silicone strap gives an impression of solidity and the buttons are protected by a silicone band of their own. The speaker carries an IP68 ingress-protection rating. In terms of size this is a compact object: 6.3 cm around the waist, roughly 20 cm from the base to the top of the strap and 415 g on the scales, so it disappears into a bag. The small fixed strap is useful for hooking it onto a handle or a bicycle. Another well-judged detail: the power button must be held for around two seconds before the speaker responds, which prevents accidental switch-ons when it is knocking about at the bottom of a bag.

On connections, the Sound Play passes on anything that is not wireless: there is no jack socket and no audio mode over USB-C, which here only charges the battery. Bluetooth is therefore the sole route in for sound. The Bluetooth 6.0 chip does not settle for the strict minimum: it carries Auracast, the technology that allows a publicly broadcast audio stream to be picked up without conventional pairing, by as many as a hundred devices at once. For anyone wanting a wider soundstage, two Sound Play units can be paired in TWS mode for stereo playback.

With its seven buttons spread around the chassis, the speaker is surprisingly self-sufficient, which makes the absence of a dedicated application far less awkward than one might fear. On the left flank, three keys handle the essentials: volume up, volume down and pause or skip to the next track with a double press. At the rear sit the power and Bluetooth pairing keys, joined by a dedicated Auracast button and the one that drives the lighting effects.

In the end the application is not really missed: almost all of the useful functions remain a fingertip away and the result is a gain in simplicity. Users after fine-grained personalisation such as an equaliser or sound presets will be left wanting, however, since no setting of that kind is offered.

A microphone is included for hands-free calls, but the result disappoints: as soon as you move away a little, the voice takes on a boxy quality that sounds like speaking from the far end of an empty room. That echo worsens with distance, and the slightest ambient noise is enough to make the speaker unusable for a call.

On paper the Sound Play claims no outsized ambition: a single driver supported by a flat-membrane passive radiator, a quoted bandwidth of 75 Hz to 20 kHz and 18 W of power, enough to suggest a speaker that can take a little volume without complaint.

That leaves the question of the sound itself. The bass acquits itself honourably for such a compact format, including at higher volume. The problem comes from the top of the spectrum, which takes up too much room and ends up eating into the bottom: there is a fairly clear peak in the treble, with rough edges that tip into distortion as the level rises.

The speaker still resolves fine detail capably. That competence is not enough to hide a calibration that could be better, though: the low end lacks thickness and the listening experience stays broadly cold, almost clinical, where a little more generosity at the bottom would have been welcome. The tendency of the treble to impose itself is confirmed over longer sessions, to the point of becoming wearing on the busiest tracks.

Xiaomi promises 14 hours of battery life at 40 per cent volume with the lights off, a figure that places the Sound Play among the better performers in its category. Those figures unsurprisingly melt away if the volume is pushed or the lighting effects are switched on, although the lights have a noticeably smaller effect.

Under the recorded test conditions — 50 per cent volume with the lights off — the counter stopped at 12 hours 54 minutes before shutdown. That is no category record, but the gap to the 14 hours promised by Xiaomi remains reasonable. The 2600 mAh lithium-ion battery charges over USB-C at 5 V/2 A using a supplied USB-C to USB-A cable.