Huawei launched the Huawei Sound X Bluetooth speaker made in collaboration with Devialet in Malaysia, and they were kind enough to send us a unit for review, and it was quite the life changing experience. Here’s our review of the Huawei Sound X Bluetooth speaker.
Music has been a big part of my life. Not that I write or produce music, but the sheer enjoyment of music listening brings peace and excitement to my soul. It may sound cringey, but music really does have that kind of effect on me. When I’m listening to “Everytime We Touch (Hardwell Mix)” and that crazy good bass drop drops, I get chills. When I’m listening to Celine Dion shredding those high notes, I get chills.
Specifications – Huawei Sound X
| Product Name | HUAWEI Sound X |
| Product Type | Wireless speaker |
| Colour | Starry Night |
| CPU | MediaTek MT8518 Quad-core 1.5 GHz |
| RAM | 512 MB DDR |
| ROM | 8 GB Flash |
| Frequency Range | 40 Hz to 40 kHz |
| Speaker Units | ● Two x 3.5-inch subwoofers with a total power of 60 W ● Six x 1.5-inch full-frequency speakers with a total power of 30 W |
| Dimension | 165 mm (diameter) x 203 mm (height) |
| Weight | About 3.5KG |
| WI-FI | 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac 2×2, 2.4 GHz & 5 GHz |
| Bluetooth | Bluetooth 5.0 |
| Bluetooth Frequency | 2.4 GHz |
| Button | ● Mute button ● Volume up/down buttons ● Multi-function button |
| In The Box | HUAWEI Sound X, Power adapter, Charging cable x 3, Quick Start Guide, Warranty card, Cleaning cloth |
Who Is Devialet?
The more I listen to music, and the more audio equipments I go through in life, I realised I began to form different needs and requirements to the quality of the equipments I use. I wanted an even more rich audio experience, and Huawei comes up with the Sound X made with Devialet. But then I thought, who is this “Devialet”? I’m no audiophile, but according to my research Devialet is one of the global top 3 professional audio brands in the world. And here I was thinking Sonos was pretty high-end already.
Devialet is kind of like the Rolls Royce of the audio industry, and here it is sitting in an all-black Huawei Sound X Bluetooth speaker. The company is famous for their coveted Phantom speakers. What the brand does so well is that it utilises brand new technology to create high-fidelity sound quality. And it seems the company managed to fit it all into this rather small body of the HiFi-level Huawei Sound X. I hear no background noise, no distortion at loud volumes, and bass that I (and my house) can actually feel.
Design
The Huawei Sound X looks really slick, but it also reminded of a shorter Mac Pro. Speaking of a Mac Pro, the Sound X also has a quad-core 1.5GHz MediaTek MT8518 processor, paired with 512MB of RAM and 8GB of internal storage.
There’s a touch control area on the top of the speaker, which has 12 RGB tricolor lights that acts as a notification indicator too. In normal or changing volume, the colours are in RGB mode, but when the music is paused it will turn red. When in pairing mode, it will turn orange with a breathing pattern.
Speaker wise, there are two 60W subwoofers built-in (two 3.5-inch subwoofers), and six 1.5-inch full-frequency speakers. That’s a total of eight speakers that give you 360-degree surround sound, so you’ll hear the full range of audio no matter which angle you’re listening from.
The Huawei Sound X also uses Bluetooth 5.0 and supports Huawei Share, which lets you do a one-tap audio sharing. I’ll get into that a little later.
The top half of the Huawei Sound X has a coating finish technology that is transparent. It also has a special insulation structure that guarantees great transmission and reception of signals within the box. As for the bottom half, it has an integrated seamless coating design, which also allows dust and splash prevention.
User Experience
The Huawei Sound X is super easy to setup and use. I just took it out of the box, plugged it in, and it immediately turned on. Because it supports Huawei Share, I tapped my Huawei Mate 20 Pro with its NFC turned on on the NFC icon on the speaker, and the two devices instantly paired up. Then, a Chinese lady greeted me saying that the connection is successful and asks me to download the AI Speaker app to further tweak the speaker’s settings.
One, the notification prompt’s volume was pretty loud, louder than the music playing even. And two, AI Speaker app isn’t available on the Google Play Store or the AppGallery yet. At the time of writing, you can’t really do anything to change the Sound X’s settings, not even connecting it to the Huawei AILife app. But, we’re sure Huawei is working on it to bring its full smart features to the Sound X speaker.
I also kind of wished that Huawei would’ve added a mini remote control to go with the speaker so you wouldn’t have to move to the speaker just to change the volume or mute it. Huawei does intend for you to control the speaker via voice, but the speaker currently only supports Mandarin voice recognition. The only way to do it remotely is to change the volume on your smartphone, or pause/stop the music entirely.
Audio
When I first heard the audio playing, I went “Holy…” The unique SAM subwoofer enhancement algorithm and push-push symmetrical design is the main contributor to how the two 3.5-inch subs on the Huawei Sound X can sound so good. With a 60W transmission power, the audio can easily fill a big room with amazing sound quality. The amplitude of the loudspeaker is 20mm, where the average level of the industry is less than 10mm.
The Huawei Sound X uses this highly magnetic NdFeB rare earth loudspeaker, where the magnetic flux of NdFeb will be stronger. This results in a greater force on the sound film, and the audio sounding more tense. The push-push symmetrical design also helps the Sound X to cancel out backwave interference, which gives you a noise-free music experience. It can go as high as 93dB of maximum sound pressure, where the average sound pressure of mainstream speakers can only reach 87dB.
In summary, the Huawei Sound X’s speakers provide a really, really low bass, a crystal clear midrange for clear vocals, and a bright treble. The sound quality is lossless, and I have to say it is one of the best I’ve ever heard from a Bluetooth speaker.
Conclusion
Huawei went for the slogan “Party anytime, anywhere” for the Huawei Sound X Bluetooth speaker, and I can’t agree more. Even though you’d need to plug it in for it to work, but it will definitely be the party wherever it is plugged into. The sound experience you get from the Huawei Sound X is phenomenal and in some ways, life-changing because you’d realise how different the audio quality is compared to the speakers you’ve heard before this.
There may not be any smart features supported yet on the Huawei Sound X, but when it does finally become available, this RM1,299 bluetooth speaker will definitely be worth every penny you spend.
