Disclosure: This product was sent to us free of charge for the purpose of this review. However, as per my PR Info page, this review represents our honest opinion of the product. This post may contain affiliate links.
Product: Music Creator Mini Speaker
Price: £9.99 RRP – Currently £7.99 at Amazon (at time of publishing)
Age Range: 8+
Manufacturer’s Description: Take your music anywhere with this portable wireless Mini Speaker. Delivering clear 3W sound, it features colour-changing LED lights that move with the beat to create a fun, dynamic atmosphere. The customisable inner plate lets you personalise your speaker with doodles, names or messages using the included marker, adding a creative touch.
Rating: (4/5 stars) Review: Lydia was sent this wireless Mini Speaker from Canal Toys’ Music Creator range to review, and has been having fun with it. This pocket-sized Bluetooth speaker is customisable, with an inner plate that can be drawn on, and it also comes with a sheet of stickers to decorate it. Coloured LEDs then light up the plate when the speaker is on, with the white ink shining brightly on the clear plate. When you want to change it up, you simply twist open the top of the speaker and wipe the transparent plate clean to draw something new. You can pull out the plate to make it easier to decorate, and just slide it back into place when you’re done. The speaker comes with a keychain clip, allowing you to easily clip it onto your bag so it’s always at hand. Also included in the box are the instruction sheet, sticker sheet, USB-C charging cable and a white marker to draw your designs. There are three buttons on the base of the speaker: -, ⏻ and +. The minus and plus buttons let you change the volume and skip back and forwards through songs, depending on whether you use short or long presses. A double-click of the minus button also changes the colour mode. The power button turns the speaker on and off with a long press, but also plays and pauses the music with a short press. The audio quality is decent enough for Lydia’s use, but isn’t super great – it is a case of you get what you pay for a bit on that front, and Lydia is pleased with it. It does also let her play music or audiobooks louder than her little iPhone speaker, if not quite as well. As for the Bluetooth performance, it connects and reconnects to her iPhone perfectly, although it doesn’t seem to have a way to force it back into pairing mode other than to ‘forget’ it on the first device – or presumably sticking a paperclip into the tiny reset hole. So far, the battery life has been good. Lydia has been using it on and off for the past few weeks and hasn’t had to charge it yet. I had no luck getting the micro-SD card playback functionality to work. I tried a few different formats of music, both in the root directory of the card and in a folder. The instructions included are extremely vague on the subject, so I’ve no idea if there is an issue with the size of the card, formatting, etc. It either didn’t seem to do anything at all, would go into a loop saying something about the SD card before cutting off and repeating mid-word, or would just go back into Bluetooth mode and reconnect to Lydia’s iPhone. This doesn’t matter too much to us as Lydia would never actually use this functionality, but it is worth knowing that it is difficult to use at best and possibly unusable in this mode. The LED lights click through a few different modes, so you can have rainbow lights all at once or single colours that fade from one colour to the next. The lights are always on when it’s switched on, so if you’re looking for a speaker to listen to when falling asleep, this isn’t one for you! This Mini Speaker would make a great gift for the music (or audiobook!) loving tweens or young teens in your life, and would especially be a great stocking stuffer for Christmas. At less than a tenner, it’s a bargain and a really fun one at that. There are six colours of speaker available, and they are available online at Amazon, and in-store or online at Smyths Toys – though when ordering online from either, it’s a mystery what colour you will get. If you’re just looking for good audio quality in a small, portable speaker, this probably isn’t the best option. But if you’re looking for a fun and colourful, kid-friendly speaker at a low price and aren’t too fussy about having super-clear audio, this one’s a winner. Overall, we’ve been really pleased with this little speaker. The customisable design and colourful lights make it much more fun than a standard mini speaker, and Lydia has been happy with the sound quality and battery life. The Bluetooth connection has also worked really well, although the problems I had with the micro-SD card playback is worth mentioning. For £9.99, though, I think it’s a fun little speaker and a great gift or stocking filler, so it gets a ★★★★☆ from us – especially when you can buy it for less than that at the time of publishing.
