Bluetooth speakers are a dime a dozen. You can find them on the end caps at your neighborhood drug store, and if we could somehow meld the 80s and now, you’d probably find them as toy surprises in cereal boxes (yeah, I just aged myself).
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Not all Bluetooth speakers are created equal. Bluetooth speakers are almost always a “get what you pay for” proposition, meaning cheap speakers will often sound like cheap speakers. Once you get into the midrange prices, you’ll find plenty of speakers that sound pretty good. And every so often, you land on something like the Fender Rockster Cross
When I first unboxed this speaker, it immediately conjured images of guitar amps, with its gray metal grill and Fender logo. I wanted to grab my old Kramer guitar, channel the spirit of Randy Rhodes, and crank it up. Speaking of Randy Rhodes, the opening of “Mr. Crowley” gave me sufficient chills through the Rockster Cross. Oh, yeah.
The Immersive button is directly to the left of the Power button.
Jack Wallen/ZDNET
After going through “Signals,” I cranked up Devin Townsend’s new single, “Powernerd,” and rejoiced in the brilliance of that mad musical scientist. I cranked the speaker up yet again and found it to handle the increased decibels without distortion. Once I hit roughly 80 dB, I started worrying about our cat’s comfort and turned it down.
Yeah, it handled it far better than I would have thought… because this thing rocks.
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Okay, let’s talk about the sound quality. One thing I should mention is that I was weaned on the mastering of early Van Halen albums, so my ears tend to prefer a good balance of lows and highs. If you’ve listened to enough albums mastered in the late 1970s and early-to-mid 1980s, you understand what I’m talking about.
The Rockster Cross is a perfect match for such an EQ curve. For some, there might be too much in the low-to-mid treble (between 2K and 5K). With the wrong music (at the right volumes), that frequency range can wear on you. If you find that’s the case, disable the immersive sound feature, and you’ll find the sound a bit more comfortable.
The grab handles make it easy to carry the speaker without worrying that you might drop it.
Jack Wallen/ZDNET
Sound aside, one of my favorite aspects of this speaker is the side handles, which allow you to grab and go without concern that you might drop the Rockster Cross. Given the device’s very grippy rubber coating, you can snatch this up with confidence. On top of that, you don’t have to worry about it sliding off whatever surface it’s on when the decibels hit the rafters.
ZDNET’s buying advice
I’m not going to say this is a perfect Bluetooth speaker. It’s not. Regularly priced at $180, though, I’m hard-pressed to think of a more impressive speaker than the Rockster Cross