Tribit’s new speakers have joined the party. The Tribit XSound Plus 2 is a new model in the XSound family, and it looks like it’s going to take the crown. Packing a pair of tweeter drivers, passive radiators for enhanced bass, and up to 24 hours of battery life, all in a small unit that’s easy to carry anywhere, the Tribit XSound Plus 2 poses a threat to the rest of the sub-$100 portable Bluetooth speakers. At $70, it’s a tempting option, and Tribit often offers discounts, so this speaker is worth checking out for anyone in the market.
Tripit XSound Plus 2
The Tribit XSound Plus 2 has a lot of great features. It’s small in size but packs powerful, well-balanced speakers that are great for a variety of audio content. Its long battery life and modest price make it a contender among the best Bluetooth speakers.
- Long battery life
- Balanced and customizable sound
- Easily portable
- Stereo mode with second speaker
- Negligible stereo separation
- A bit heavy for its size.
- No deep bass
Price and availability
No color options, but coupon options.
The Tribit XSound Plus 2 is available on Tribit’s website and Amazon for $70. There are no alternative colors at this time, and black is the only option. While the retail price is $70, Tribit frequently offers discounts, and the speaker is available for 10% off on Amazon.
Design, hardware and what’s in the box
Simple but effective package
The Tribit XSound Plus 2 isn’t a huge departure from most portable Bluetooth speakers, in fact it’s just a slight tweak in form to the XSound Go and MaxSound Plus that preceded it. It’s a small, rectangular unit that fits almost anywhere a 16-ounce soda can fit. That makes it easy to slip into a cup holder, slip into a backpack pocket, or carry in your hand. The long cord on one end of the speaker also provides a way to loosely attach the speaker to objects, though I found it to be wobbly if that object were a bike.
Most of the Tribit XSound Plus 2 speakers are covered in hard plastic with a light rubber coating on the outside to give them a softer, more stable feel. They sit on four small rubber feet that do a good enough job of keeping them in place and preventing their vibrations from causing them to dance on the floor—something the Sony SRS-XB100 loved to do.
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Hold on tight, even though you’re not holding on completely.
At the top of the Tribit XSound Plus 2 you’ll find a single row of controls with power, Bluetooth pairing, volume, playback/voice assistant, a quick EQ adjustment button, and a final button that can pair multiple Tribit XSound Plus 2 units in Party Mode to play simultaneous audio from both. While these rubber-covered buttons feel nice enough to press once at a time, they’re not great for pressing repeatedly, as you might when trying to quickly turn down the volume.
The front of the speaker is covered by a tight mesh that effectively hides the two 15W speakers and the passive radiator. A second radiator is located behind a small plastic mesh on the back of the unit. There you’ll also find a covered 3.5mm jack and a USB-C port for charging.
These speakers are protected by a rubber cap that you may want to keep closed most of the time to maintain the speaker’s IPX7 water resistance. While most people will probably use the Tribit XSound Plus 2 exclusively as a Bluetooth speaker, there’s no harm in having a 3.5mm jack as a backup, as it can provide lower latency audio, which is crucial if you’re using the speaker to provide audio for video playback on another device.
Sound and battery life
Rock tunes you can play all day long.
The Tribit XSound Plus 2 is a direct upgrade over its predecessor, with more powerful speakers and a longer battery life. Even despite its small size, the Tribit XSound Plus 2 can pump out some seriously loud sound to get a small party started in a 200-square-foot space.
With XBass off, the speaker focuses on the mids and highs with a subtle bass in the mix. It’s still good for some baritone vocals. But if you want your music to have a little more life, the XBass EQ setting is a good option. It instantly boosts the low-end, making kick drums and bass lines sound more pronounced. Overall, it produces a very satisfying sound for an affordable speaker. Its frequency range is wide enough to hear most of what’s going on, and it’s balanced enough not to lose any bass, mids, or highs.
However, a powerful bass is not something the Tribit XSound Plus 2 can achieve. Some of the deep notes common in hip-hop and electronic music, such as the classic 808, can simply disappear into the air. This can lead to some distorted melodies, as the bass can drop and disappear if you move between notes. However, this alone is not enough to make the Tribit XSound Plus 2 a disappointing speaker.
A single speaker alone may produce stereo sound, but it’s not easy to tell because the speakers are so close together. Splitting two speakers into stereo mode makes a big difference (of course, doubling the cost in the process). The speakers announce the left and right channels, and being spaced out creates a more dynamic listening experience, bringing out more detail in tracks that benefit from stereo sound distribution.
This little speaker packs a lot of battery. The Tribit XSound Plus 2 is rated to last up to 24 hours at 60 percent volume. In everyday listening, I rarely felt the need to crank the volume up that much, and despite heavy use in my testing, I was unable to completely drain the battery from either unit Tribit sent me for testing. These little speakers just keep going. If they do run out of juice, the USB-C port on the back can recharge them in about 4 hours.
While battery life at low volume levels is great, this is naturally a niche scenario. XBass increases power usage, as do high volume levels. If you’re playing tracks at full volume with XBass on, don’t expect 24 hours of playback time from the Tribit XSound Plus 2. Although it’s safe to say you’ll get very good playback time.
Features and Application
Simple and easy features
The Tribit XSound Plus 2 works with the Tribit app, which offers some simple controls and doesn’t require an account. You can control playback and volume within the app, though these controls are largely unnecessary since they’ll also be available via your phone even without the app. The same goes for displaying the battery level.
More usefully, the app provides access to a few different equalizer settings and the ability to create your own equalizer preset using a five-band equalizer. The speaker will save three equalizer presets on the device, allowing you to use the equalizer button on the device to cycle through them, and you can set these presets and the color of the LED indicator that will correspond to them. By default, these are XBass Off, XBass On, and Audiobook. Other than these features, the only major benefit of the app is installing firmware updates, which you could probably use the speaker for its entire lifespan without ever having to do.
Outside of the app, the Tribit XSound Plus 2’s main feature is Party Mode. With two units in hand, you simply press the Party Mode button, give them a moment to find each other, and they’ll pair up. They can be played in stereo for a more immersive listening experience, or doubled up by playing the same thing.
One thing you might miss on the Tribit XSound Plus 2 is high-resolution audio. The kind of audiophile sound you’d expect is out of reach for a small speaker like this, because it simply doesn’t have enough range to deliver deep bass, and Tribit doesn’t hide that fact even by listing 50Hz as the lower end of the speaker’s frequency response range.
But if you were hoping for at least some high-quality codec support, you may be disappointed to find that only AAC supports Bluetooth Multipoint. However, the speaker does support Bluetooth Multipoint. The first time I set it up, it resulted in intermittent connectivity between the two paired devices. But after a reset, it handled the Multipoint connection smoothly.
a race
Not alone, but with a separate battery
The Tribit XSound Plus 2 needs a lot of work. There’s no shortage of capable speakers in this space, with many coming in under $100. The Anker Soundcore Motion 100, which I recently tested for $60, is a worthy contender. It may not have the same volume or battery life, but it’s cute, portable, comes in fun colors, and is a bit cheaper, but ultimately the Tribit can serve as an upgrade option for situations where you need more volume.
Of course, the $80 Anker Soundcore Motion 300 takes it a step further, though it has a shorter battery life than the Tribit XSound Plus 2, no voice assistant support, and no AUX port.
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Small, powerful and cheap.
The Tribit StormBox Flow is also in a similar space. It’s $80 at full price (but there’s always a deal on it), and it gets a battery life of 30 hours. Part of that comes from its larger design. It’s also not as nice as the Tribit XSound Plus 2, and it only has one speaker compared to the Tribit XSound Plus 2.
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Should you buy it?
Yes, the Tribit XSound Plus 2 is a solid portable Bluetooth speaker. At $70, it’s not the cheapest Bluetooth speaker on the market, and it has plenty of competition, but it has more than respectable sound for the price, all in a comfortable design. It’s easy to carry around and throw in a bag, slip into a water bottle pouch, or even attach to something.
The Tribit XSound Plus 2 packs a punch despite its small size, and can run for a full day at decent volume. It also offers adjustable equalizer settings that help it do more, like pumping out tunes with extra bass or flattening the EQ and emphasizing vocals for audiobooks and podcasts. Its ability to pair with a second speaker for stereo sound also adds to its usefulness and listening pleasure. With all you can get out of it, the Tribit XSound Plus 2 makes a lot of sense.
Tripit XSound Plus 2
The Tribit XSound Plus 2 has a lot of great features. It’s small in size but packs powerful, well-balanced speakers that are great for a variety of audio content. Its long battery life and modest price make it a contender among the best Bluetooth speakers.
