Tribit StormBox Flow Bluetooth speaker review

With the StormBox Flow, Tribit continues its tradition of providing more speakers at an affordable price. In this case, there’s more bass than you’d expect from a model of this size, an IP67 rating, all for less than $80. You could spend a lot more and get a lot less.

Design

The Tribit StormBox Flow has a compact design with rounded corners and sloping sides. It measures 20.1 x 9 x 5.2 cm and feels very sturdy, but with a weight of almost 700g it is not particularly light. This is not a criticism, because a little weight reassures us about solidity when moving or falling.

Despite its weight, the StormBox Flow floats; its IP67 rating means it is completely dustproof and can withstand immersion in water up to 1m deep for 30 minutes. We submerged her in the water several times and she came to the surface each time.

Jon L. Jacobi/Foundry

On the bottom, the speaker has four feet to raise it so that sound escapes properly, while one of its lengths has two additional feet, which helps keep it stable when standing.

The top of the speaker houses the power, Bluetooth pairing (5.3), volume up, play/pause, volume down, EQ (XBass/Audibook/normal), and TWS buttons (True Wireless Stereo). Status lights are located above the TWS, EQ, power/battery level, and Bluetooth buttons; play/pause and volume controls are multi-functional to manage all aspects of music playback and call management.

There is a wrist strap on the right end of the speaker and a USB-C charging port on the left. The unit boasts a power output of 25W which powers a single 62mm woofer. If you want stereo performance, you’ll need a pair that works in TWS mode. There are no wired connections, the StormBox Flow is Bluetooth or nothing.

Audio quality

The sound of the StormBox Flow is good. We wouldn’t say the sound is perfect, but for less than $80, we’re not complaining. The highs are clear, the mids are well defined, and the XBass produces more sound than we would have imagined when we first saw it. Much more, but not to the point of spoiling the musicality of the pieces.

The only real issue we noticed is the sudden and drastic drop in bass volume just below 50Hz. It’s still there, and you’ll feel the subwoofer vibrating, but it doesn’t project. On the other hand, the fact that it goes down to 50Hz is better than most speakers of this type can do.

The bass is particularly visible on the song “Put On” by Young Jeezy, where the first subnote is prominent, while the following, lower ones, disappear. That’s why this track is on our playlist when testing speakers.

If you want to determine where your speakers reproduce and resonate best, and where they don’t, there are sound generators available for download and online. Here is a link to my favorite sound generator.

With only one speaker on board, it’s obvious that you won’t get stereo separation. Despite this, we didn’t experience any phase distortion or frequency cancellation, which can occur during stereo-to-mono conversion.

We should also mention that the StormBox Flow can be very loud for its size. Sending 25 watts to a single speaker achieves this goal. The sound is also not particularly impaired at higher volumes (at least, not more than normal, and that’s partly human perception).

Battery life and charging

Tribit announces 30 hours of autonomy with the 4800mAh battery without XBass activated, and 24 hours with XBass. A full charge takes 4 hours, but the company doesn’t list a fast charge time. We were about 10 hours in and the status light was still blue-white, she still had more to spare!

Should you buy the Tribit StormBox Flow?

Tribit has been making premium sound quality speakers for quite some time and selling them at great prices. The StormBox Flow fully lives up to this reputation. We would have liked the bass reproduction to be improved, but overall this is another winning product at an affordable price.

For an outdoor speaker, there is the Stormbox Blast which we also really liked.

Adapted from the original review published on our sister site Tech Hive