Bem Wireless's three pack of speakers could be a cheap and easy way to blast music all around the house, but the package is marred by transmission shortcomings.
The design is quite neat. There's a combination charging and transmission base station to which you connect your music source wirelessly by Bluetooth or with a 3.5mm cable.
The base station then beams music to one, two or three of the battery-powered speakers across its own 2.4Ghz wireless network.
Theoretically, the Bem Speaker Trio system gives you instant party music anywhere you want around the house.
Just fire up the speakers, plant one on the deck, another, say, in the kitchen and the other in the lounge room, and everyone can bop on through the night.
Alas, practice gets in the way of theory with the Bem setup.
First up, Bluetooth is a short-range wireless transmission technology.
Using an iPhone 4S as the music source, I found that once I was more than about 3m away from the base station or if I turned away from it or someone walked in front of me, transmission to the base was stuffed.
The best way to ensure a constant music pipe is to tether the phone to the base station with a 3.5mm cable. However, that means not having the phone to hand so you can easily control the music.
The other problem is with the range of the base station's wireless network.
In my modest, weatherboard house I could get a speaker working reliably on the backyard deck and another working well in the lounge room.
This arrangement had the farthest speaker about 8m from the base station and in line of site. The other speaker about 1m away from the base.
These two speakers worked well enough, the problem was with the third speaker, which I tried out in each of the three bedrooms and the entertainment room.
This meant the signal needed to get through one or two wooden walls and there was no way I could get satisfactory reception in any of the rooms, which was disappointing.
Bem claims a range of 35m, albeit depending on room conditions, but I reckon the company needs to refine its system so it works better through walls.
Sound quality from the small speakers is OK, even when maxed out, but there's not a lot of bass.
The speakers will run on battery power for five or six hours away from the base.
RATING: 6/10
PRICE: $349.95
