SonicGear Aquarius (2017) portable speaker review — Cutesy fountain, acceptable sound

We are tech enthusiasts, which means that there aren’t really that many things that make us excited like little school girls just by looking at it. Well, when we received the SonicGear Aquarius portable speaker to review, we did just that, and not just us at Pokde.net, but many of my friends as well. Because it was really just that cute.

Unboxing

From the packaging we know that it will be shaped sort of like a rocket head, and will support a multitude of inputs. The design is nothing spectacular, but we get a hint of the multi-colored fountain effects the SonicGear Aquarius will offer us, much to our delight.

The SonicGear Aquarius comes with a microUSB cable for charging, 3.5mm cable for AUX input, a dropper to add water and an extra stopper in case you lose the original one. The user manual is nearly unworthy of mention, being just a tiny leaflet.

Appearance

As mentioned, the SonicGear Aquarius is shaped like a rocket head, but it isn’t actually a cone. It is more of a pyramid with smoothed corners and scooped out sides, but with a round bottom. This is the back, where all the inputs are found. The power switch is also here.

The remainder of the controls are over on the front. You get to control your Bluetooth audio with basic controls like adjusting the volume, skipping the track and play/pause. A mode button allows you to switch between the input options.

Specifications

User Experience

The array of inputs are pretty nice, with Bluetooth included in case you just don’t want the hassle of 3.5mm input. The switch here is great too. It allows you to play music through the SonicGear Aquarius, without the water fountains and colorful lights. This is really quite considerate as you might not want to let the people around you bask in the glory of the colorful fountains but instead just listen to your music.

Over here on the front we have the Mode button as well as the usual controls. There are LEDs under the main body which will denote the mode it is running on. We mainly used this speaker over Bluetooth, so we will comment on the sound quality of the SonicGear Aquarius over the wireless standard later. The volume buttons actually increase and decrease the volume by long pressing them, which is quite unusual.

So as expected, it has to be filled with a certain amount of water before you get to enjoy the fountain effects. The user manual recommends filling it with 50mL of water, but we found that filling it with less water gives us more attractive taller spurts of liquids. It actually comes with some water pre-filled, so you can actually start using it right away even when your area is having a water disruption or something. In terms of filling the SonicGear Aquarius with water, I wished that SonicGear had the foresight to make the hole bigger, as it will make filling and also removing water from the chamber much easier.

The lights run randomly, while the water will spurt based on the height of the vocals. We would have preferred it shooting water with every bass thump, but yeah it does look pretty cool. The sound quality of the SonicGear Aquarius will not stun anyone, but it is the novelty of the water shooting up.

The SonicGear Aquarius features a bass radiator that works together with the 2″ main driver, offering bass that are very really quite acceptable despite the SonicGear Aquarius’s size. You do give up on stereo sound, and you aren’t getting a lot of clarity here, but it sound okay. I would not recommend audiophiles to get this speaker, but if you are just looking for a fun way to listen to music with friends, with the novelty of the accompanying colorful water fountain, this is a pretty fun speaker to have.

Conclusion

The SonicGear Aquarius is not going to be the best speaker you can get, but it will definitely be one of the cutest you can get for around RM79.90. Heck, you can even get it in different colors if Blue isn’t your favorite shade. With the SonicGear Aquarius, it isn’t the sound quality you are paying for, but the novelty of the water fountain. The bonus is that it doesn’t sound too bad at all. If that is what you are after, the SonicGear Aquarius is pretty nice to have.