NFC boasts the possibility of wireless charging, but what else can you do with it?
NFC ascribing plates are a nice concept, but who can be bothered to use them? But what about a charging plate that will also play your melodies? go in the JBL PowerUp, an NFC/Bluetooth sound dock aimed at new Nokia Windows devices like the Lumia 920 and 820.
It's on sale now for round £198. accessible in black, white or baby azure tastes, the PowerUp is a solid-looking piece of kit -- purposeful and dependable, if not necessarily sleek and cool.
The NFC plate on peak of the device is assessed by a rubber roundel with the Nokia logo in the middle. And embedded shift sensor identifies when you arrive close and activates four navigating lights that mark out the bounds of the NFC plate. location your NFC-enabled phone on here and it will charge while you play. It won't play your melodies by NFC of course, for that you'll furthermore need to have Bluetooth swapped on.
Wireless ascribing only makes sense when it's befitting, and the PowerUp certainly offers that. Playing melodies from your telephone via Bluetooth will soon gnaw gigantic chunks out of your electric electric battery life, so it makes sense to be adept to simply rest your phone on peak of the speaker to keep it completely charged while you play. Yes, you could close it into the mains, but really, this is a alallotmentment more convenient, and rather than taking up the space of a charging plate, the PowerUp actually supports its location on the ledge or desktop. And if you just want to charge without playing music, you don't even have to switch the speaker on -- so long as it's plugged in it will still charge.
Around the back there's a microUSB but that's only for connecting to your computer to download future software revisions. If you desire a wired attachment to the device you'll need the 3.5mm headphone jack, for which there's a lead supplied. When it's connected by Bluetooth you can use the controls on the PowerUp -- touch perceptive buttons for play/pause, fast ahead and previous pathway, in addition to volume. These won't work if you're plugged in utilising a twisted cord -- you'll need to use the controls on your apparatus.
The internal amps can pump out up to 10 watts of sound from each of the stereo speakers. They're only 2.5in in diameter, and cover the full variety -- no woofers and tweeters here.
That's usually a recipe for a muddled sound stage but JBL's hi-fi know-how shows and these speakers organise to consign a apparently delineated performance over the sound spectrum.
No, you won't get earth-shuddering bass, but you do get a surprisingly full sound from such somewhat little speakers, and the bass is well comprised, tight and controlled, not ever appearing to get out of control, even with the big bass n drums on Tommy T's The Eight Wonder.
Midrange and high end lack certain thing of the immediacy that you get with higher value speakers, but still organise to sound characteristic and clear both with delicate acoustic melodies like Gillian Welch's Time (The Revelator) and big, booming promenade pathways like Mint Royale's Dancehall locations.
So far so good. But we had some difficulties connecting devices by Bluetooth. Most, like Nokia's Lumia 920 and our trusty iPhone 4S had no matters, but our Samsung S4 couldn't find it, though it appeared to find our other Bluetooth apparatus. NFC ascribing worked fine with all the NFC devices we tried though.
deduction
The JBL PowerUp is a compact little boombox that pumps out a respectably large-scale sound. It examines joy but joyctional, rather than cool and suave, suggesting a smaller cost point than what they're asking, but for the quality of the sound, and the convenience, it's worth the investment.
