Mark Henninger

PRICE $650

AT A GLANCE
Plus
Works upright and on its side
Omnidirectional sound
25 hour battery life
Light show & karaoke
Charge other devices using its battery
Minus
Poorly designed wheels and handle

THE VERDICT
Sony's party speaker impresses with its sound quality and features but its wheels and handle make it difficult to move around.

Is there room for a party speaker in your life? How about this question instead: do you like to have fun? If so, then the answer is yes! This sometimes scorned category stands out in my experience because in recent years, whenever I see people having a good time with music, more often than not it's been some sort of lifestyle, entertainment-friendly, wireless, portable speaker dishing out the tunes. A party speaker.

Large, powered, wireless party speakers have been around for some time, but 2023 marked the first year I truly took notice. I recently reviewed a Sony party speaker, and this year seems to indeed be the year of the party speaker. At Audio Advice Live in Raleigh, North Carolina, I entered a room in the Sheraton and instead of the typical two-channel high-end system or home theater setups, what I found was a dance floor just waiting for a party to get started. This included disco lights, a DJ rig, and a pair of full-size JBL Partybox 710 speakers handling the PA duties.

I attended two separate Macintosh demos at Audio Advice Live 2023. They were strikingly different. One was the classic two-channel demo, in this case using new Macintosh equipment that has the classic build quality and aesthetic. The highlight of that demo? Trying to figure out the mysteries of tube sound.

But the other demo also got my attention because it is automotive. The Jeep Grand Wagoneer McIntosh demo—held in front of the hotel—featured an in-cabin entertainment system that is about as over-the-top as any OEM system I've seen or heard in a motor vehicle.

JVC is renowned for the quality of its D-ILA projectors. They offer some of the highest native contrast that you'll see in a projector that doesn't cost as much as a house. And in this show demo, the company pulled off its usual spectacular exhibition of its projectors' capabilities. In this case, the range-topping DLA-NZ9 ($26,000) took care of business with its 3000-lumen output that filled the screen with convincing HDR.

Meanwhile, GoldenEar is known for its high-performance home theater-friendly speakers, many of which feature integrated subwoofers. All of the company's speaker designs use AMT (folded-ribbon) tweeters.