Remembering Nokia JBL PlayUp while waiting for Nokia Portable Wireless Speaker

Together with Nokia 3.4 and Nokia 2.4, Nokia Mobile announced a Nokia Portable Speaker (SP-101) as a new member of the official Audio accessories. It is a small speaker with a 43mm (3W ) driver that can play music on a single charge for up to 4 hours. The speaker is meant to be a portable unit and since it has microphone, you should be able to answer calls over it. With the price of almost €30, it is quite interesting product, but as many other Nokia branded products, it is not so visible in the stores.

Anyway, while we are waiting for Nokia SP-101 to pop up in stores, lets remember Nokia JBL Play Up speaker (MD-51) that Nokia launched back in 2012 together with Nokia Lumia 820 and 920. This is a speaker that I still use on a daily basis, and that can play music up to 10 hours on a single charge of a 1500 mAh battery that is the same as in Nokia 5800 XM. It has 3 speakers with 10W power output, and it also has a bass channel for a better bass reproduction. It came as an upgrade to Play 360 that could be connected in series with other 360 speakers.

JBL PlayUp is designed nicely, with simple lines in mind, with just a few buttons and connectors, and a cleverly hidden 3.5 mm cable in a compartment underneath the speaker. Another quality of this speaker is its exquisite build quality and how easy it connects over NFC to your device. The sound it reproduces is good, with pronounced deep, and both mid and high tones too.

Do check out nice unboxing, test and final review of Nokia’s JBL PlayUp speaker that was filmed almost 10 years ago by lobbamobba, also known as Mathias Burling at YouTube.

Unboxing and Demo

 

Speaker test

 

Final review

I don’t know how Nokia Portable Speaker will turn out to be, but I wonder if Nokia Mobile can once again make something like JBL PlayUp. Anyone here still using it?