Huawei Sound Joy portable speaker test: appearances are sometimes deceptive – archyworldys

Huawei and Devialet have been working hand in hand for two years now on the Chinese giant’s speakers. After one Sound X Disappointing in many ways, Huawei and the French start-up are launching head-to-head in the portable Bluetooth speaker market with the new Sound Joy. They hope to nibble shares in the indebted Ultimate Ears and JBL.

The promises of this Sound Joy are numerous: robustness, sound performance up to the reputation of Devialet, autonomy of 26 hours never seen on this type of product and extensive integration with devices under HarmonyOS 2.0. It remains to be seen whether these beautiful announcements are concrete or blatant.

The Sound Joy was launched in November 2021 at a price of 149 €.

The speaker has been tested in version 5.0.3.0 with opus 12.0.3.315 of the AI ​​Life app. For this test, we used an iPhone 11 Pro running iOS 15.1, a Pixel 4a running Android 11, and a MatePad Pro running HarmonyOS 2.0.

On paper, the Sound Joy seems pretty easy and fun to handle. In fact, the speaker faces many points of frustration which give the impression of an unfinished product that was released much too early. We faced so many problems that we requested a second copy to make sure the first one was not faulty. No luck, the second Sound Joy presented the same concerns.

As controls, the Sound Joy has a series of mechanical buttons on the rear edge, as well as two large volume buttons, reminiscent of the Ultimate Ears speakers. Only the navigation between the tracks is missing, which can be frustrating in use.

There are many pairing possibilities on this Sound Joy. In addition to the classic procedure, the speaker incorporates an NFC chip on the front for easy pairing with Android and Huawei devices. It is also compatible with quick pairing on Windows 10 and devices running HarmonyOS 2.0. Despite our best efforts, we have not succeeded in triggering this quick pairing with devices running the Huawei OS, because this feature is not available in Europe, a shame! The Sound Joy also needs to be paired each time you switch it on, which is far from practical.

Like many competing products, it is possible to pair two Sound Joys for stereo rendering. To do this, just shake the two speakers next to each other, which is easy to handle and works quite well. If you are not happy playing maracas, it is possible to pair two speakers using the button provided for this purpose. Care should be taken to deactivate this feature before switching off one of the speakers, otherwise the second will be blocked with a single stereo channel.

The Sound Joy can also be managed using Huawei’s AI Life app. There are indications such as the remaining battery level or options such as activating the light ring or different sound profiles. Still, the app is quite capricious and sometimes struggles to detect the speaker.

In addition, we have encountered major problems with recharging. In addition to lasting forever (allow 3 to 4 hours for a full charge), it does not automatically trigger when a USB cable is plugged in (including the one supplied), even if the speaker indicates that it is charging. It’s totally “haphazard luck” and there is plenty to pull your hair out!

According to Huawei, its partnership with Devialet foreshadowed excellent sound performance on the Sound Joy. Despite a relatively good frequency balance, this portable speaker nevertheless suffers from a significant deficit in precision and usable power.

It is indeed imperative to remain extremely wise on the sound level to maintain a minimum of listening pleasure, which corresponds overall to 40-50% of the volume depending on the content and is therefore suitable for close listening in a small room. Under these conditions, the proposed sound reproduction is all in all correct, fairly well balanced, while the extension in the bass allows to enjoy a minimum comfortable seat. Even so, the faults of the speaker can already be felt, especially with low-detailed treble, with a slightly piercing and “scintillating” sound. The Sound Joy is more particularly directive and the overall restitution clearly loses in presence when one is no longer located in the direct axis of the speakers – these being placed at the level of the Huawei logo.

As soon as you want to benefit from a comfortable listening level and as a bonus you play particularly demanding songs (with many sources to reproduce, for example), the Sound Joy loses the pedals: bass / bass Mids get very messy and drown out some of the higher frequencies, while sibilance peaks. To top it off, the dynamics are very quickly crushed and the different elements clump together, so much so that it becomes very difficult to separate them properly. These are all reasons that instinctively force you to lower the listening level in order to enjoy your music as much as possible.