I get a whole lot of pitches daily in my inbox. I spoke the other day about “themes” at CES. One year, not too long ago, there was about a billion and one Bluetooth speaker companies. I ignored every single pitch I got to review Bluetooth speakers. Mainly, I just didn’t quite see the point of them. It’s not like the 80’s where people carried boom boxes around. Speakers on the phone did just fine for me. I do always check out the company that pitches me though, before I actually ignore the email, or respond that I’m not interested. When RIVA Audio pitched me a couple months ago, and I checked out their website, I was actually intrigued, so I accepted the pitch and am finally reviewing a Bluetooth speaker, because I actually believe in the company and the product. I got to meet the owner of the company at CES, and I was right to back this company, FOR SURE. Here’s a video I got to watch while visiting with Rikki Farr at CES…
What first intrigued me about the company from their website was the “Roots of Riva” section of the site. To quote from the page “RIVA started with innovation, not iteration. It’s about pure sound, it’s as if you are hearing your favorite music for the first time. It’s about true originality and unbound imagination that follows no one and defies convention. It’s about beauty of design, of features and of function for our modern lifestyle.” My husband is a musician, and sound quality is extremely important to him (as I’ve mentioned before). The company is created by someone just as obsessed with music as my husband. I knew I had to check it out.
When I received the speaker, it could not have come at a better time, as I had just blown out the speakers on my tablet listening to Christmas music all day long during work. I put it to use right away. I also called my husband up to check it out, to get the real scoop. He played a couple of his “test songs” to check out speakers and headphones and what not, and gave the speaker the stamp of approval (which is extremely high praise coming from him… especially for a Bluetooth speaker).
As I mentioned, I’ve never accepted another Bluetooth speaker to review, so I actually had nothing to compare this one to. Luckily at CES they had some of the most popular speakers there to compare the sound to. They’d start to play a song on the RIVA Turbo X, and then pause it, continue the song on one of the other speakers, and then back again. The difference was actually pretty astonishing. The RIVA Turbo X consistently sounded WAY better than it’s competition. It had a way of FILLING the room with sound as opposed to sound limited to a specific area near the speaker. Not only was the sound deeper, it was clearer as well. As mentioned in the video above with Rikki Farr, sound has nuances and subtlety that can get lost if you aren’t listening to a clear enough version of it.
There is really so much more to this speaker than I can even cover, but I did just find the app you can download for the speaker, so you can control the volume of the speaker, pause your music, etc without even being near the speaker. Plus it has a great rechargeable battery that you can use to bring the speaker anywhere in the house. My daughter has taken to stealing it from my office to have dance parties in her room, and sometimes uses it to help her clean up.
Especially after meeting them at CES, I know I’m backing the right horse when it comes to Bluetooth speakers. You have really got to check it out.
This post may contain affiliate links, which means I receive compensation if you make a purchase using the links.
Why won’t my speaker batterie not work when it’s not plugged in it won’t charge my phone or anything unless it’s plugged into wall