LG Tone Studio Wearable Personal Speaker REVIEW

Personal Speaker does a good job of producing sound, but it’s nothing spectacular.

When it comes to headphones, I’m usually a traditional user. I either want headphones that fit over my ears or earbuds. I’ve never been one of those users that wears them around my neck, but apparently, it’s a new trend with headphones. What intrigued me about the LG Tone Studio was the fact that it’s not just earbuds attached to a neck band — it’s a personal speaker that you wear around the neck. They have earbuds that can stretch up to your ears if you want to listen to something little more privately, but the around-the-neck speaker is what really intrigued me.

The Tone Studio is referred to as a wearable personal speaker and is worn around the neck. It does have retractable earbuds, but you can easily just use the built-in speakers in the neck band. Some of the key features include:

Personal Surround Experience – Combines immersion and portability with high-quality sound and rich volume.
Real 3D Surround Sound – Four strategically placed speakers designed to deliver the best in surround sound.
Haptic User Experience – Special vibration speakers engage your body in low bandwidth.
Sound Designed by DTS® – experience the first DTS-tuned wireless device for wearable “cinema-like” surround sound.
Dual Play – Connect two LG TONE Studio™ devices simultaneously
Velvet Sound™ – provides 32-bit DAC for Hi-Fi sound (earphone 32-bit; speaker 24-bit).

First of all, the Tone Studio is packaged pretty simple. The outside box is branded with LG’s standard color/look. There is a pretty extensive explanation of what the device has to offer. The idea is to give users surround sound wherever they go. It comes packaged with a simple user guide (complete with illustrations), replacement ear gels, and a Micro USB cable. If I were to grade the packaging, it would get a C- because it was a little hard to get the inner box out of the outer branded packaging.

When you pull the speaker band from the box, you will notice that it has several different controls on it and the aforementioned earbuds. The buds are retractable and to be honest, while they aren’t uncomfortable, I’d much rather use the Tone Studio as a speaker. That said, you can switch between the earbuds and speaker seamlessly. I did this several times and never missed a beat of the music I was listening to.

Connecting to your phone isn’t difficult. The device I had needed a charge before I could use it, but once it was charged, I was able to connect with no problems to my iPhone. I tend to listen to streaming audio most of the time, so I went directly to Pandora and started up some 90s hip-hop. That’s usually what I turn to gauge bass. I have to admit, that for the speaker, the sound was a little hollow. The earbuds had a little more depth, but I’ve heard a lot better quality from other Bluetooth speakers and headphones. Because I was curious about the surround sound aspect, I pulled up Netflix and turned on Doctor Strange. I felt like the speaker feature did a good job of amplifying the voices, but I couldn’t really tell a difference in the surround sound. Plus, I had to turn the volume to max on both my phone and the Tone Studio. So, next, I pulled up Pirates of the Caribbean, which has a pretty strong sound mix. Again, I didn’t really get much of an impact as far as surround sound, but I could hear the audio well.

One question I had with the Tone Studio was how much another person could hear from the speakers. As it turns out, pretty well. If you want a private audio listening experience, you will need to use the earbuds. I actually hung the Tone Studio on my headphone stand and kept playing music from the speaker.

All in all, it’s an interesting audio accessory, but I’m not sure it’s for me.
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