Porsche Design has a reputation for creating visually stunning (and stunningly expensive) tech products that take their design cues — and sometimes their actual parts — from Porsche’s iconic family of sports cars. Over the years, PD fans have grown accustomed to paying radically higher prices for its speakers, soundbars, smartwatches, smartphones, and laptops that are functionally identical to much less expensive (yet equivalent) products from other brands. With the launch of PD’s latest offering — a tiny dust- and waterproof Bluetooth speaker dubbed the PDS20 — that legacy is firmly in place.
This diminutive 10-ounce, 3-inch diameter speaker will set you back a whopping $245.
Porsche Design says the speaker, which is built from anodized aluminum, comes with two silicone straps that not only provide a carrying loop but also provide shock protection. (Should you happen to drop the speaker directly on the narrow strip the strap protects.) Unlike PD’s other speakers, which use literal Porsche auto parts, the only elements tying the PDS20 to the cars are the straps themselves, which come in two Porsche vehicle colors — Agate Grey and Shade Green — the colors, PD tells us, of the Porsche 911 Dakar.
The PDS20 uses a single, 1.75-inch driver and two passive radiators to generate sound. Strangely, PD refers to this driver as a woofer. But presumably, it’s been tuned to deliver mids and highs as well. There’s no word on how many watts are being driven through the speaker’s amplifier, but if you find the output too low — or if you simply want stereo sound — you can stereo-pair two PDS20s over Bluetooth.
You also can use the PDS20 as a speakerphone, thanks to a built-in mic. PD claims you can use the mic to speak to your phone’s native voice assistant, though we’re not entirely clear on which one of the speaker’s controls lets you trigger that interaction. The controls are integrated into the face of the PDS20’s acoustic fabric grille, and we can see obvious buttons for volume, playback, power, and Bluetooth pairing. Perhaps it’s the mysterious two-dots button that lets you speak to Siri or Google Assistant.
The speaker’s battery is good for a claimed 10 hours of playback and it takes three hours to recharge from empty. PD includes a USB-A-to-USB-C cable for charging. The speaker’s IP67 rating makes it effectively dust and waterproof, but PD correctly points out that the waterproofing is “temporary,” meaning the speaker can survive for up to 30 minutes when submerged to a depth of no more than one meter.
Not to belabor the point, but the similarly small Sony SRS-XB100, which has an almost identical set of features to the PDS20, costs just $50 on Amazon. Still, if you want a highly portable Bluetooth speaker with ties to a legendary German car marque, you can preorder the PSS20 on porsche-design.com.
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