Xiaomi Sound Play hands-on

The Xiaomi Sound Play is an 18W Bluetooth speaker that's both functional and looks great. It comes in Black, White, Purple, and Green, and costs €50.

The speaker weighs 415 grams and is IP68-rated, so you shouldn't worry about dust and water inclusion. There's TWS stereo pair support, so you can set up two to get stereo sound. And there's also Auracast support, so you can pair up to 100 speakers to play simultaneously.

There are three buttons on the front: volume up, play/pause, and volume down. Then, on the back, you get a covered USB-C port, a Power and Bluetooth button, the Auracast button, and a special button to control the lights on the speaker.

There are two lights - a bottom ambient ring light and an infinity mirror light - on the inside of the speaker. You can choose between orange, blue, green, and purple, and the lights can sync with the music.

The infinity mirror light is pretty cool. You can see how it trails off into the cavernous inside of the speaker. It's especially impressive in the dark.

There's a neat little top handle you can use to carry the speaker around. You can also use it to attach the speaker to a backpack or to a bike.

The speaker has a roughly 400ml can or bottle shape, which makes it ideal for a backpack pocket, or even the bottle cage on a bike.

Alright, a word on sound quality. There's a single, full-range speaker with a rated output of 18W on the Xiaomi Sound Play.

The sound is tuned for clarity and general listening with emphasis on vocals and midrange. The bass stays in its lane and doesn't bleed into the mids. In practice, you're getting a safe, crowd-pleasing tuning that's suited for most styles of music.

There's ample volume on tap - the speaker nicely fills a regular room even at 60-70% volume. Going beyond 90% and you'll start getting some audible distortion with most songs.