Performance

For testing the Roar 2 there were a few different things I wanted to look at. For starters I wanted to find out just how much use it would see for someone like me who just isn’t as active. Typically, with a portable speaker like the Roar 2 I imagine it more of something you take with you when on vacation, at the beach, or maybe something you bust out when people are over for music. None of those are things I would normally do though so I wanted to see what I would end up using it for. The of course I wanted to see just how good the Roar 2 sounds. The other aspect was just how easy it to work with. This is the type of device that need to be easy to use and accessible for anyone.

So first off just how did I end up using the Roar 2. The first time I busted it out was just in the office doing some audio testing, this seemed especially pointless though because I could just as quickly attach my phone to the X7 and have even more power. So the Roar 2 sat around for a little while until one weekend I was out in the garage working on my car. I have a stereo in the garage but using the Roar 2 was a much better option because I wanted to listen to Pandora. Then after that the Roar 2 ended up in our living room during the college football season. On top of our big screen TV for a few weeks we also had our projector hooked up and the Roar 2 provided a perfect way to get audio from the small PC hooked up. I could have just gone with the speakers on the projector but let’s be honest those typically don’t sound very good.

So how easy was it to get connected to the Roar 2 during my testing? Well in the first few tests I was just using the speaker with my phone so all I did was make sure I had NFC turned on and tapped the phone to the Roar 2 and it did all of the work. I don’t think setup could be any easier. When hooking up a PC I did have the option to hook up via the audio input but I just went with bluetooth so going that route was as simple as holding the bluetooth button on the Roar 2 while in the search screen on the PC, once again very simple. This actually brought up to me how great the Roar 2 would be when traveling to hook up to my laptop to improve audio quality when listening to music or even when on group calls.

That leads me to the third and most important part of my testing. Just how good does the Roar 2 sound? Well as far as power it was the perfect size to fill the room both in our living room and in the two car garage. It’s not going to replace a full stereo for really turning things up but for a portable device I was really impressed with how loud it could go. As far as the audio quality goes. Initially I was a little concerned with the lack of bass but when I turned on the Road mode it bumped up the bass performance to right where it needed to be. As I mentioned when using the Roar 2 with our projector it was a huge difference in performance compared to the built in audio. The audio quality depends a lot on how the device is positioned, laying it flat fills the whole room and running it on its side is very directional. That said I was seriously impressed with how the Roar 2 sounded, it makes the Sound Blaster name proud that’s for sure. Obviously you will still get a better experience with a full audio system but I have a hard time believing that you are going to get a better portable audio experience.

How was the battery life? Well the suggested battery life was about 8 hours and that seemed to be lose to what I experienced when using in longer term in the living room. Of course even once it was low I just had to plug it in and didn’t get any interruption. You could easily take the Roar 2 out for most of the day and listen to your music. Hell you could even keep your phone charged all day as well using the built in USB port.

 

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garfi3ld's Avatar
garfi3ld replied the topic: #37414 22 Dec 2015 01:25
Today I take a look at the portable Roar 2 from Creative Labs

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