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S**O
A fantastic speaker to own and enjoy
By some fluke last week, two wonderful speakers came up on Amazon Warehouse Deals – the Vifa Helsinki and a Dali Katch, both at rather crazy prices for such top speakers. If you’ve read my Dali Katch review – you don’t need to read on, as this borrows heavily from it since both speakers are at the top of their game and the reviews needs must be similar. Because the prices were so very good, I took the plunge and bought both, thinking that I’d keep the best one of the two. But there wasn't a "best" – both showed themselves to be surprisingly different, but both in their own way, outstanding. For now, I’m keeping both. With my son, this week, we’ve had fun auditioning the two alongside his Bose Revolve Plus.How does the Vifa Helsinki sound? It’s big, spacious, loud, relaxed and natural – totally satisfying and as good as anything I’ve heard in a Bluetooth design. It’s still a one box speaker, of course, and that does limit, even if only by a little, the sense of hi-fidelity that can be achieved. The laws of physics cannot be broken. What this means in practice is that a small amount of what I call “chestiness” remains apparent on some tracks at least. This seems to be an inherent aspect of one-box designs. The best hi-fidelity, in my experience, can only be had from a stereo pair of speakers and those fed by a mains amp, not a battery. The Sonos are an obvious contender for this if small size is needed – otherwise, only floor standing speakers like the wonderful Focal Chorus will really create the sense of a concert hall in your lounge.I would put the Vifa, the Dali and the Bose as first equals amongst the several Bluetooth speakers I’ve owned or auditioned over the years. The Dali gives the brightest sound of the three, the Vifa the most neutral and the Bose the deepest-reaching bass-wise, as well as being the “warmest” sound signature. What is surprising is how different they each are – pointing to the reality that there isn’t a way to make a perfect small battery-powered speaker, I suspect. For my son, the Bose is his preferred speaker, but only just – his comment was that the Vifa and the Dali were more “audiophile” but a little less exciting to live with. This just proves how subjective loudspeakers are. For me, I am truly enjoying living with both the Vifa and the Dali. They both look far classier than the Bose – but that is by far the most practical, being very strongly constructed to take knocks and drops, as well as being fine if outside and the heavens opened. Not so the Vifa or Dali the would need shelter from the rain, for sure.
B**A
a little thin sounding for me.
well I had high hopes for this speaker given the huge number of glowing reviews out there. Let me start by saying I love my music and have had some equipment in the past and some decent Bluetooth speakers also. I do love peering into the depths of my music and hearing the separation of instruments and getting the pure sound with good deep bass. Now I know Bluetooth speakers can never deliver truly on this because Bluetooth is itself a compression algo but still given the reviews I hoped to be seduced. My first impression was that this was smaller than I was expecting although reassuringly weighty. The sound to my ears is highly analytical, overly so. On certain tracks yes, it was fantastic, but only on vocals. I found the high end to sound un-naturally bright, not harsh but still very bright. The mids seemed lacking and while the bass was there you don't feel it in your stomach as you do with some speakers, and yes I include the jbl xtreme. I also found the stereo speration to be limited and gace the speaker a boxy nature to the sound, it did not break the confines of its enclosure, I had expected more given the price and reviews. In comparison I have a pair of jbl charge 3's, together they are the same price. Listening side by side the jbls gave me real stereo (well they are 2 speakers at the end of the day) and the body of the music in a way thad gave me back my smile. I just have to equalise the treble on the jbls which is where they fall behind. There is an app for the Helsinki that lets you choose your setup, desktop or what they call all around. You can also switch from the stock neutral to what they call late night listening. For me late night does give it more full bass and mids but at the expense of the separation of instruments, it also hardened up the sound. I preferred the neutral and all around settings to maximise stereo and give a wider sound.I had issues with my speaker that I don't know if they are common to all the helsinkis. first it wont sync volume with my android and player pro app. It will only go to half volume and I have to put the volume control fully up on the speaker itself to get full volume. Also I can a loud constant humming sound when connected via Bluetooth, you can hear it over the music but its annoying when the music isn't playing.
L**S
Decent Sound, Battery life could be better, More buttons would be better
Looks great and sounds good. The battery life doesn't impress me honestly. You will get about 3hours of full play out of it I think though. I just feel like it's always out of battery when I want to use it.My main gripe is the use of one button to do everything other than change volume. It means you need to remember all these "hold for 3 seconds for Bluetooth and when it blink this color press it again to go to this mode etc etc". One more button on the other side would have meant one could be power and one could be switch modes. That was the most frustrating part of getting up and running with this speaker
Trustpilot
2 months ago
1 week ago
