Mad Style and Sound - Beats by Dr. Dre Pill Bluetooth Wireless Speaker

What kid doesn’t like candy? For the kid in us all, Beats by Dr. Dre has brought us the Pill Bluetooth Wireless Speaker in an array of candy colors. Not only is it a powerful, compact speaker for listening to music but it also works as a speaker phone to make calls hands-free using any Bluetooth compatible phone. It is pretty impressive how much sound a lot of these type of devices get (take a look at the Jawbone Jambox, Cambridge SoundWorks Oontz, JBL Micro or Flip,etc…) considering how small they are. The Pill is truly wireless. Sound is provided by hooking up any Bluetooth compatible audio device, like a phone/mp3 player/tablet/laptop, and, because it runs on a rechargeable battery that can last up to 5-7 hours, it is cord-free. For some reason all of the manufacturers for these types of devices want to make them look HUGE. However, once you see them in person you realize just how small they are. The Pill is lightweight and can literally be tucked in a cargo pocket or a backpack. It even comes with carabiner clip on its carry case so you can attach it to your backpack. Here’s a decent representation of how big it really is (and this person’s hand is prety small):

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Even though there are a lot of similarities in this crowded field of competitor’s there are a few features that set it apart:

The Pill Bluetooth Wireless Speaker features NFC, otherwise known as Near Field Communication, which is a form of very low power wireless that allows you to simply tap your phone on the speaker and it have it automatically connect, or pair, via Bluetooth. Can’t get much easier than that. It does require an NFC capable phone, however. Most of the recent Android phones have it, unfortunately the iPhone doesn’t…yet. Rumor has it that the iPhone 5s or 6, or whatever it will ultimately be called, is supposed to have it. We here at QTOOTH sure hope so. We’ll see!

The Pass-through Audio feature means that the Pill has both in and out jacks. So even without an NFC/Bluetooth device you can still hook up your computer or other audio source with a cable. This also means that the audio out can make any audio system into a Bluetooth sound device. Leave it plugged in to your home stereo system and stream music from your phone, laptop or tablet. This is a massive plus when comparing the Pill to the competition.

The Pill can also act as a speaker phone capability and does it with an ease that is missing from other models. One button does it all when it comes to a call. If you are listening to music and a call comes in you the option to answer it with through the Pill. Tap the ‘b’ button on the front the answer. If another call comes in while you are still on the first call, tap and hold to ignore or tap quickly to switch to the new call. Switch back and forth between the calls with another button tap or hang up with a sustained press of the button. The calls quality was very clear without a lot of shouting or ambient noise.

And did we mention the riot of colors this comes in? The light pink one pictured above is a limited edition Nick Minaj version. All of the other colors for the Pill Bluetooth Wireless Speaker are pictured below.