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The Panasonic SC-NA30 is a portable Bluetooth speaker with some excellent design flourishes (retractable knobs), useful features (a built-in speakerphone), and some troubling issues (it dances across tabletops). Plenty of speakers can vibrate all over surfaces or distort on tracks with deep bass, but most of them don’t cost $299.99 like the SC-NA30. I really wanted to love this speaker and its cool retro knobs, but it just doesn’t sound like a speaker in its price range should, even with the ability to individually adjust bass and treble. The Editors’ Choice Editors’ Choice Bose SoundLink III($399.00 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) offer betters performance at the same price, even if it doesn’t have nifty retracting knobs.
Design
I am equal parts baffled and amazed by the design of the SC-NA30. At first glance, it’s not obvious which way the speaker is supposed to be sitting in order to distribute audio. Does the rectangular 5.7 by 9.6 by 1.9-inch (HWD), 2.1-pound system sit flat and project sound upward like an alarm clock, or is it meant to stand upright and project stand forward? Closer examination reveals rubber feet, so my first guess was wrong, and this system stands on its side, projecting sound forward. It looks odd sitting upright, like I’ve set it down on the wrong side and it might fall over.
Once you press Power, however, the magic begins: The knobs for bass, treble, and volume on what turns out to be the top panel of the system pop out like they’re on the console of some Batman gadget, a rare design flourish in the current era. The knobs themselves don’t actually retract (the base panel around them does), but it looks cool regardless. The bass and treble knobs have default click-stop positions at their middle levels, and all three knobs are manually retractable with the smooth glide you often feel on pro-level gear.
The pairing process with an iPhone 5s is a simple matter of holding down the main Play/Pause button, and once connected wirelessly to your mobile device, the SC-NA30 seems less like an awkwardly-designed system and more like an original, graceful concept. Yes, the SC-NA30 looks a bit odd sitting upright, like a slightly off homage to old portable transistor radios, but it has charm, and it doesn’t look much like anything else currently on the market when it’s powered up.
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There are still problems in its design, though. It stands upright on a tabletop without issue, but on a picnic blanket this thing would likely wobble and fall, covering its speaker panel. And, at high volumes with bass-heavy tracks, the rubber feet don’t prevent it from scooting across desktops.
Along on the right-hand side panel, there’s an NFC touch area for automatically pairing compatible devices, a Power button, a combination Play/Pause button that doubles as Call Answer/End for the built-in speakerphone, and the LP button. No, pressing this button doesn’t reveal a hidden turntable; it sets the system to a low power consumption mode by reducing the speaker’s output. Panasonic estimates the battery life for the SC-NA30 at roughly 14 hours, and up to 20 hours in LP mode.
The back panel holds a pinhole reset button, a 3.5mm Aux input, a USB port for charging portable devices, and the connection point for the included power adapter. The SC-NA30 doesn’t come with USB or 3.5mm cables.
Performance
The SC-NA30 isn’t really capable of outputting the level of audio (both in terms of volume and quality) that you’d expect for its $300 price tag. On tracks with intense sub-bass content, like The Knife’s “Silent Shout,” the SC-NA30 cannot handle the bass attack of this song’s intro, even at moderate volume levels with the Bass knob all the way down. At high volume levels, the drivers distort a bit and the enclosure vibrates tremendously, and it doesn’t really scream $300 speaker when it’s dancing across your tabletop.
On Bill Callahan’s “Drover,” which isn’t a particularly bass-heavy track, the bass still proves to be too much at top volumes, and its problems don’t stop there. Adjusting the Bass and Treble knobs adjusts the sound signature wildly, but with each set at its mid-level, I heard plenty of boosted bass and some very bright treble, with the mids basically missing in action. It’s a scooped-out sound signature that sounds better when it’s blasting tunes, but unnatural and even tinny at more moderate volume levels.
Jay-Z and Kanye West’s “No Church in the Wild” once again causes the SC-NA30 to dance around on surfaces, and at high volume levels it sounds a bit too bright and piercing. It pairs these highs with considerable bass response for a speaker this size. But while it’s truly impressive how loud the speaker can actually get, it simply can’t seem to handle the bass it creates.
I was able to find some tracks that sounded pleasant at moderate-to-high volumes on the SC-NA30, but there were those just that seemed oddly off-balance or had distortion issues at top volumes. I’d have less of a problem if the SC-NA30 were a $150 speaker, but it neither sounds nor behaves quite like a $300 speaker should. The Editors’ Choice Bose SoundLink III and SoundLink Mini are both similar in shape and size to the SC-NA30, and offer better audio. For bass lovers, the larger Beats Pill XL can handle all of the low end the SC-NA30 simply can’t. If all of these are out of your price range, the Panasonic SC-NT10($26.99 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) is a much smaller and rugged Bluetooth portable speaker that can get fairly loud and does not distort, but it can’t come close to producing the bass levels the aforementioned speakers can. I love the retro knobs, but the other aspects of the SC-NA30 disappoint.
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Source link : https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/panasonic-sc-na30