Soundcast was building great wireless speakers while the powers behind Bluetooth were struggling to find a use for the technology. In the nearly 10 years since I reviewed the company’s Outcast, I haven’t found a better powered, portable outdoor speaker. The Soundcast VG7 comes very close.
The VG7 does, of course, rely on Bluetooth—with support for the aptX codec and NFC for quick and easy pairing to boot. The Outcast came with an external iPod dock that had Soundcast’s proprietary wireless technology built in. The dock also had a 3.5mm analog audio input that I’ve always plugged a Sonos Connect into—effectively converting the Outcast into the outdoor Sonos speaker Sonos stubbornly refuses to build.
But enough about the Outcast, let’s talk about the VG7. The 18.9-inch-tall cabinet is built like a tank—weighing in at a beefy 21 pounds. A thick and sturdy basket-style handle on top makes it easy to lug around. A pair of 15-watt Class D stereo amplifiers drives four 3-inch full-range drivers, while a second 30-watt amp Class D powers a down-firing 7-inch long-throw woofer.
The full-range drivers feature aluminum cones, and the woofer is fabricated from injection-molded polypropylene. Both materials are valued for their stiffness and resistance to the type of resonance that can color the sound produced by some other types of speakers.
Michael Brown/TechHive
The woofer fires into a dome-like structure at the base of the speaker so that the speaker’s low frequencies radiate all around (aided by four ports near the base). The full-range speakers fire out in all four directions to create a not-quite-stereo 360-degree soundstage. But the VG7 also supports Qualcomm’s TrueWireless Stereo, so if you buy two of them, you can get genuine left/right channels. With the VG7 priced at $800, that’s an expensive proposition to be sure. But it can be done. What can’t be done is to include the VG7 in multi-room DTS Play-Fi setup. That honor is being reserved for the VG7’s bigger brother, the not-yet-available VG10.
On-speaker controls
Most of the time, you’ll control the VG7 from your smartphone or tablet. But there are also volume, mute, and transport-control (play/pause and track forward/back) buttons on top of the speaker. An indoor/outdoor EQ button taps an onboard 24-bit DSP that—to my ears, anyway—mostly just boosted bass response (the music note in the Soundcast logo lights up when the outdoor EQ is active). If you don’t want to tie up your smart device, you can plug an analog audio source into the VG7’s 3.5mm input. Pull the rubber cover off this port and you’ll also find a convenient USB 2.0 charging port for your phone or tablet.
That cover, and the one over the power input jack, have retainers so you don’t need to worry about misplacing them. An inline power brick with a generous 10.5 feet of cord can charge the VG7 whether it’s playing music or not. With the plug covers in place, Soundcast says the VG7 earns an IP64 rating. That means the speaker is completely dustproof (6) and protected from splashing water (4). In other words, you don’t need to worry about leaving next to the pool or taking it to the beach, but don’t get any ideas about hosing it down if it tips over into the mud or sand. It goes without saying that it’s not submersible.
[Source”pcworld”]
