Portable bluetooth speakers are easy to use, travel with, and charge, I can imagine a day when I have a half dozen of these around the house. The Bongo, however, stands out as the most beautiful I’ve used. While bluetooth speakers of this type (easily carried in a backpack) are usually black plastic affairs, O&E has chosen to work many premium details into the Bongo: beautiful, stamped wood, hemp and fabric speaker grills, a hemp carry bag (with a pocket for your cables!), and even a premium ribbon aux cable to accompany the micro USB charging cable.
As for the size, the bongo is 6 1/2″ wide and 2 1/2″ high. The speaker bag is not expected in products like this, but as soon as I saw it, I thought it’d make a “beach speaker” bag. This is lighter weight than speakers of a comparable size, and while O&E touts lots of premium speaker and porting features, the sound quality is good, but not exceptional. I experienced a bit of speaker rattle on the upper ends of the volume level.
At $140, the Bongo is beautifully designed, first and foremost, and certainly the speaker you’d want on your counter top or desk. It’s functional, easy to pair with, and as long as you’re not driving high volume levels through it, the sound quality is good.
As of today, there are 11 color combinations of Bongo speakers and Otis & Eleanor also sells a set of bamboo headphones as well. Visit Otis and Eleanor’s site here.
