Hi!
Welcome to Lachlan Likes A Thing, a show where I take a thing and see whether or not I like
it.
Now the thing we're looking at in this video is the NuForce Cube portable speaker with
inbuilt DAC and headphone amplifier.
Now if you haven't heard of NuForce they're a company based in California who make audio
gear including headphones, headphone amplifiers, DACs and speakers - and actually the company's
uDAC was my first headphone amplifier when I started collecting headphones.
Now a while back NuForce contacted me and asked me if I was interested in reviewing
any of their products and one of their products which really interested me in their lineup
was this little portable speaker here and these things always really interested me because
I've built speakers myself in the past and I'm always really curious to see what kind
of performance you can wring out of tiny little packages like this.
So I asked for one of these and I want to thank NuForce for providing this review unit
for me to have a listen to.
Up close the NuForce Cube actually resembles a teeny-tiny home theatre subwoofer.
The whole thing has a brushed metal finish and a minimalist design that I'm a really
big fan of.
The faces of the cube are mostly featureless except for a subtle NuForce logo and there
are rubber feet on the bottom to stop it from scratching anything.
I really quite like the build of this little thing because it's such a small size but at
the same time it's solidly built and the fit and finish is really good.
It also comes with this little carrying pouch which means it's really easy to carry around
with you.
The one thing is though, I wish the carrying pouch had internal pockets so you could put
the cables in without worrying about the cable jacks scratching the finish of the Cube.
On the back of the Cube are three ports: a 3.5mm Line Input, a USB Mini input and a 3.5mm
output for the headphone amplifier.
The 3.5mm Line Input connects to any device with a standard 3.5mm output like the headphone
port of a smartphone.
The USB Mini input lets you connect the NuForce Cube to a computer and use the onboard DAC.
Volume control is done digitally through the computer.
The USB Mini input also charges the device.
NuForce rates the battery of the Cube at 8 hours but I wasn't able to test this myself.
The headphone amplifier is a pretty unique feature of the NuForce Cube.
The output from the amplifier sounds quite decent to me with a clean signal and no hiss,
and if your laptop has a noisy output the Cube will kill two birds with one stone.
The headphone amplifier isn't going to outdo a dedicated solution and NuForce hasn't published
any specs so set some realistic expectations.
For instance I found that I had to set the Cube on maximum volume to get a decent listening
volume out of the hard to drive 250 ohm Beyerydynamic DT880.
Now because this is a speaker review I get to do something that I don't get to do in
my headphone review videos and that is instead of just telling you how this thing sounds
I get to record it and show you how it sounds.
Now keep in mind that this recording is coming through my Zoom H1 recorder that I use to
record all my videos and it's coming to you through your headphones or your speakers so
it's not going to give you a perfect idea of how this thing sounds - but hopefully I'm
going to be able to give you some idea of how this thing sounds compared to the outputs
on a phone or a laptop.
One thing I noticed about the NuForce cube is that 80% volume you can hear the electronics
start to distort.
It's not terrible distortion but unless you need the full volume I suggest not going past
80%.
The tests I'm showing you now were done at 100% volume.
Here's the cube compared to the speaker output on my iPhone 5.
This is a track called 'At The Count' by Broke For Free.
It's a pretty cool track and you can check out the description of the video for a link
to the album's Bandcamp page.
Here's the same track compared to the speakers on my Surface Pro 2 tablet.
The speakers on the Surface Pro 2 are improved over those on the Surface Pro 1 but the NuForce
Cube still gets much louder and clearer.
Now there are some basic laws of physics and no matter what you do a little speaker like
this with a single driver is never going to produce much bass below 100Hz and it's never
going to produce any amount of stereo separation - but that said I'm still pretty impressed
by the clarity and the richness of the sound coming out of a little speaker like this.
Especially when compared to the outputs on a phone or a laptop.
It's not going to fill a room with sound for a party but I think the sound of this thing
works especially well for spoken word dialogue like in podcasts or Youtube videos where the
lack of bass isn't going to make a huge amount of difference and I think that if you were
to take this with you while you were working just with your laptop for a long time or even
just moving around different rooms of the house if you wanted to have something a bit
louder to play background audio this thing will do really quite nicely.
Now I can't really comment on how the NuForce Cube compares to other little portable speakers
on the market and I've seen some cheap ones.
I do know for instance that Logitech makes a small UE Mobile Boombox which is just a
little bit bigger than the NuForce Cube but it comes with Bluetooth wireless audio and
2 drivers for around the same price.
But it doesn't have the headphone amplifier functionality that the NuForce Cube has.
So this is a pretty unique device and I can't really say whether it's going to be useful
for you.
I think you're going to be able to work that out for yourself if it's going to be worth
99 bucks.
I have to say personally I think it's really well built, and I'm quite charmed by the little
form factor so I think it's a pretty cool little thing.
Anyway click the Like button if you found this review helpful and you can subscribe
to my channel for more reviews.
Thanks to everyone who's liked my other videos and subscribed to my channel.
You can talk to me on Facebook at facebook.com/lachlanlikesathing or on Twitter @lachlikesathing.
And happy listening!