You guys, I am so excited about my newest gadget.

Until recently, this is how I listened to music in the shower. Or any other situation where I was not in my car and wanted to rock out to some tunes:

By the way: for those of you that may not know this, you can stick a phone in a cup to amplify the sound. Cleaning kitchen? Taking a shower? Stick your phone in a cup. It’s not great, but it’s loud.

But all that is in the past now, my friends. Because now I have THIS:

Its the HEX TL Wireless Bluetooth Portable Speaker by 808Audio. I’m not kidding when I tell you that I didn’t even have to look at the quick start guide to get it up and running. You guys, knowing me, will know that this means it was: Super. Simple.

I think I got it all hooked up and playing tunes in like, less than five minutes. And most of that was just figuring out how to open the package.

What I really like about it:

The packaging is great, though it did take me a few minutes and my keys to get the stickers off the clear plastic case and to actually get the case apart.

I kind of think I can use the case for something else crafty, though. It’s that cool.

The second thing is the soft little feet:

The picture is awful but the feet are nice and soft and make it feel a little bit more…plush? Expensive? Less likely to damage my furniture and/or countertops?

Thirdly, it has this neat little sound effect it does when you turn it on. Also, the buttons are the kind that seem better (firmer? sturdier?) than cheap plastic wobbly ones. Am I the only one that judges the quality of an item based on the buttons? These ones are good.

It comes with an AC adaptor that lets you plug it into the wall, although it takes what looks like eight AA batteries. There’s also a cord for attaching it to an auxiliary (?) such as your computer or phone, I’m guessing.

The best part is the Bluetooth. To hook it up, I turned it on and the blue light started flashing. I went to the Bluetooth options on my phone, and voilà! There it was. I selected it, and within like 2 seconds my music was playing through it.

At first I was a little disappointed because I turned the volume all the way up and it still wasn’t very loud…but then I realized that the volume on my phone was set at like, 2. Once I turned the phone volume up, the speaker got loud. And I mean, loud.

I’m by no means an audiophile so I can’t speak to how many amps or however you quantify or measure sound quality it has, but when the volume was low I didn’t hear any static or white noise at all, and when I turned the volume up, the sound was really crisp and clear. Even with a bass-y song on, it didn’t distort or sound like it was about to explode.

All good things.

The only drawback I’ve found so far is that it takes like 8 or so (I haven’t checked for sure) AA batteries if you want to run it without the AC adaptor. Which I’m going to need to do since the plug in my bathroom no longer works. Not because of this.

Also, I am sad to report that I couldn’t find it on Amazon. The Hex SL was on there, but not this one.

I haven’t tested to see whether I can use my Bluetooth headset AND play music through this at the same time yet. We’ll have to see what happens. I wouldn’t be surprised if I can’t, because something about that doesn’t sound like it would work.

Woot! Off to go listen to some music NOT in a cup!