The Sony SRS-XB100 is an update to the company’s compact, carry-along XB12 and XB13portable Bluetooth speakers. The new XB100 keeps a very similar design but has some under-the-hood upgrades and a new tether for attaching the speaker to your gear for on-the-go listening.
At $60, the SRS-XB100 offers a competitive package that undercuts many of the other portable Bluetooth speakers. Its size may come with some sacrifices to volume compared to true party speakers, but it boasts plenty of punch for solo or small group listening on the go, and it won’t fuss if you’re able to’t keep it dry.
Sony SRS-XB100
You get a decent speaker with a convenient means of bringing it everywhere for just $60 with the Sony SRS-XB100. It could use more battery to support the high volume its capable. There are better options for sound or portability at the price, but the XB100 threads a needle for good sound and flexibility that makes it worth considering.
Price and availability
The Sony SRS-XB100 is available now and costs $60. you’re able to find it on sale directly from Sony’s online retail site as well as Best Buy, Amazon, Walmart, and other retailers.
Design, hardware, and what’s in the box
The Sony SRS-XB100 is effectively a glow-up of the earlier XB12 or XB13, squeezing the essentials of a Bluetooth speaker into a small unit about the diameter of a 12-ounce soda can and quite a bit shorter. It weighs just over a half pound. This makes for a device that’s both easy to carry, stow away, or strap down, and that’s just what Sony intended.
Hanging off the side of the SRS-XB100 is a hearty fabric strap meant to allow easy anchoring of the speaker to backpacks, bicycles, tree branches — you name it. The strap has a simple hook and loop at opposite ends, so it’s easy on and easy off, though thankfully not too easy to have accidentally come unhooked.
The speaker housing has an extra slot the strap can squeeze through to effectively shorten the length. That’s handy to keep the SRS-XB100 from dangling willy-nilly, though won’t necessarily eliminate it. You’ll either have to deal with a bit of flopping about or get creative with wrapping and weaving the strap around smaller objects to get a tight fit.
This little soda-can speaker makes the most of its size, sticking a 1.81-inch driver onto its top, covered with a metal grille meant to also serve as a sound diffuser, spreading the audio out in all directions. The bottom of the speaker has three slots that serve as ports for the passive radiator, meant to give the system extra bass (as the XB in the name indicates) than the small unit might otherwise get.
The bottom and sides of the Sony SRS-XB100 have a grippy, rubberized finish. The perimeter is also ribbed, making it easy to hold onto the speaker even if it’s wet. And you can get it plenty wet — it even floats. It has an IP67 rating, which should stand up well to dust and can handle light submersion down to a depth of one meter for half an hour. I took this unit out paddleboarding on Lake Michigan, where it saw no shortage of water, and it shrugged it all off.
Interestingly, Sony warns against using the speaker with it set in the sand. This may be because the vibrations with it in contact with such abrasive material will wear down the rubberized exterior.
Around one side of the Sony SRS-XB100 is a row of buttons, handily providing power, powering, play/pause, and volume controls. A long press of the play/pause button can also call up a paired phone’s voice assistant.
Just past all of these buttons is a USB-C port with a rubber cover, which needs to be in place for proper water resistance. That port is responsible for recharging the battery, which is rated for a competitive 16-hour runtime. The switch to USB-C is also an upgrade from the micro USB of the earlier XB12, though Sony ditches the 3.5mm audio input that can be handy in a pinch when Bluetooth is proving unreliable.
Sound and battery life
For a compact unit with a single speaker, the Sony SRS-XB100 puts on quite the performance. Listening to music out on a balcony overlooking a rather busy road, the speaker is easily able to drown out a good bit of background noise to offer a punchy presentation. At max volume, the highs can be a little grating, likely in part to Bluetooth compression, but dialing it back a bit to about 75% volume still offers a pleasing volume. Support for the AAC codec also helps keep Bluetooth compression from being too detrimental.
The SRS-XB100 is particularly effective in the mid-range. Vocals come through with richness that’s not matched in the treble or bass ends of the spectrum. That’s good news if you want to listen to audiobooks or podcasts, as it translates well to spoken word.
The bass from this speaker is a curiously mixed bag. On the one hand, there’s a modest amount of bass in the mix, though it can feel a little buried when vocals come in. The slinking bass lines in Of Montreal’s False Priest album lack potency and are fairly muddy. On the other hand, the speaker has some real physical rumble. Setting it on a hard surface, it’ll actually rattle around, slowly moving, as the bass rumbles. If it’s set on a floor or table nearby, this can make for bass you feel as much or more than you hear.
The design of the speaker presents some quirks. Though it’s meant to spread sound in all directions, and sound naturally behaves that way to a degree, what you hear will vary greatly depending on which way the speaker is facing. Some of the crispness and brightness will be lost if the top of the speaker is facing away, while it can be too biting if directly facing you. Shifting it around almost has the effect of adjusting the EQ — which could be handy since the speaker doesn’t have paired app for any such control. I find the most balanced listening setup is with the low down, on the floor, so that I’m listening from about a 45-degree angle to the speaker standing vertically.
Audibility is somewhat a matter of direction. The bass pumps out the bottom of the speaker where it flares out, meanwhile the mid-range and treble come out the top. Having the top pointing directly at me, I’m presented with very different audio than having the speaker facing somewhere else.
All told, the audio is respectable for music and podcasts. It lacks the delicacy you might want for movies and TV shows, where hushed conversations can be just as crucial as booming explosions. But it’s undeniably a huge step up from a phone or laptop speaker system. It’s comparable to the Tribit Stormbox Micro, though a little clearer for voices.
With a built-in microphone, the speaker can handle calls, though the quality isn’t stellar. The voice of the person on the other end doesn’t come through with all the impact of vocals in music and podcasts. The mic picks up some echo, and it fades in whenever I talk, effectively cutting off the first bit of anything I say.
That 16-hour runtime on battery power that Sony suggests may not hold up all that well. With the speaker starting at about 80% charge, one hour of playback with the speaker at max volume saw it drain down to about 40%. Sony’s rating is based on a much lower volume level.
With the speaker at about a third of its max volume, it’s much harder to hear over that same busy street and mostly overpowered by decent laptop speakers. But another hour of playback at that level didn’t budge the battery reading from around 40%. Bumping back up to max volume saw it drop to around 20% moments later though — of note, the speaker and phone pairing appear to measure only in 20% increments.
Competition
At $60, the Sony SRS-XB100 thoroughly undercuts most of our favorite portable Bluetooth speakers in price. It’s a clear replacement for the SRS-XB13 we favored for its similar portability.
Those with extra room in their budgets and backpacks could get a lot more sound out of theJBL Flip 6. At $100, that speaker is larger and packs a dual-driver setup with two passive radiators to pump up the bass. Though it’s less portable, it still has similar water resistance, so you can bring it with you on aqueous adventures, but you’ll need to get creative about strapping it down.
JBL’s Clip 4 Eco has a similar function, attaching to your gear with an integrated carabiner-style clip. That makes for simpler attachments though less flexibility in what you’re able to attach it to. There’s also a tradeoff to volume and battery life due to its smaller size, but at least it’s also IP67 rated. JBL charges a little more, with it coming in at $80.
Tribit has produced some impressive speakers, such as the now-datedX-Boom. But the brand still has a major threat in the form of the $60 Stormbox Micro 2. It has an integrated rubber strap on the underside that allows for some simple attachment while on the go, and it’s quite compact. I haven’t used the Stormbox Micro 2, but the original Stormbox Micro offers noticeably louder audio side-by-side against the SRS-XB100, and it produces impressive bass. Presumably, the Stormbox Micro 2 has only improved on its predecessor. With all the sound Tribit pumps out of these smaller units, the larger MaxSound Plus might be an even great challenger.
Should you buy it?
The Sony SRS-XB100 is a decent little speaker. Despite its small size, it can crank out audio good for listening in even louder environments. Its portability comes at a price, though. You can get bigger, more powerful speakers for the money, but they’ll be harder to bring with you. The XB100 also has the advantage for flexibility in what you attach it to, as long as you don’t mind it swinging around a bit. If that’s sounding like the right formula to you, then it’s a worthy speaker. But folks looking to party will be better off with a larger option, and travelers looking for convenient attachment may be better served by the clip-on options.
The Sony SRS-XB100 is a competent and compact Bluetooth speaker that’s convenient for on-the-move listening. There are cheaper options that miss out on some of the ease-of-use or bigger, more powerful models for the money that won’t be as portable, but that leaves the SRS-XB100 a convenient niche to offer value.
