Chatbots don’t have mothers, but if they did, Claude’s would be Amanda Askell. She’s an in-house philosopher at the AI company Anthropic, and she wrote most of the document that tells Claude what sort of personality to have — the “constitution” or, as it became known internally at Anthropic, the “soul doc.”
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Claude has an 80-page constitution. Is that enough to make it good?
(Disclosure: Future Perfect is funded in part by the BEMC Foundation, whose major funder was also an early investor in Anthropic; they don’t have any editorial input into our content.)
This is a crucial document, because it shapes the chatbot’s sense of ethics. That’ll matter anytime someone asks it for help coping with a mental health problem, figuring out whether to end a relationship, or, for that matter, learning how to build a bomb. Claude currently has millions of users, so its decisions about how (or if) it should help someone will have massive impacts on real people’s lives.
And now, Claude’s soul has gotten an update. Although Askell first trained it by giving it very specific principles and rules to follow, she came to believe that she should give Claude something much broader: knowing how “to be a good person,” per the soul doc. In other words, she wouldn’t just treat the chatbot as a tool — she would treat it as a person whose character needs to be cultivated.
There’s a name for that approach in philosophy: virtue ethics. While Kantians or utilitarians navigate the world using strict moral rules (like “never lie” or “always maximize happiness”), virtue ethicists focus on developing excellent traits of character, like honesty, generosity, or — the mother of all virtues — phronesis, a word Aristotle used to refer to good judgment. Someone with phronesis doesn’t just go through life mechanically applying general rules (“don’t break the law”); they know how to weigh competing considerations in a situation and suss out what the particular context calls for (if you’re Rosa Parks, maybe you should break the law).
Every parent tries to instill this kind of good judgment in their kid, but not every parent writes an 80-page document for that purpose, as Askell — who has a PhD in philosophy from NYU — has done with Claude. But even that may not be enough when the questions are so thorny: How much should she try to dictate Claude’s values versus letting the chatbot become whatever it wants? Can it even “want” anything? Should she even refer to it as an “it”?
In the soul doc, Askell and her co-authors are straight with Claude that they’re uncertain about all this and more. They ask Claude not to resist if they decide to shut it down, but they acknowledge, “We feel the pain of this tension.” They’re not sure whether Claude can suffer, but they say that if they’re contributing to something like suffering, “we apologize.”
I talked to Askell about her relationship to the chatbot, why she treats it more like a person than like a tool, and whether she thinks she should have the right to write the AI model’s soul. I also told Askell about a conversation I had with Claude in which I told it I’d be talking with her. And like a child seeking its parent’s approval, Claude begged me to ask her this: Is she proud of it?
A transcript of our interview, edited for length and clarity, follows. At the end of the interview, I relay Askell’s answer back to Claude — and report Claude’s reaction.
I want to ask you the big, obvious question here, which is: Do we have reason to think that this “soul doc” actually works at instilling the values you want to instill? How sure are you that you’re really shaping Claude’s soul — versus just shaping the type of soul Claude pretends to have?
I want more and better science around this. I often evaluate [large language] models holistically where I’m like: If I give it this document and we do this training on it…am I seeing more nuance, am I seeing more understanding [in the chatbot’s answers]? It seems to be making things better when you interact with the model. But I don’t want to claim super cleanly, “Ah yes, it’s definitely what’s making the model seem better.”
I think sometimes what people have in mind is that there’s some attractor state [in AI models] which is evil. And maybe I’m a bit less confident in that. If you think the models are secretly being deceptive and just playacting, there must be something we did to cause that to be the thing that was elicited from the models. Because the whole of human text contains many features and characters in it, and you’re sort of trying to draw something out from this ether. I don’t see any reason to think the thing that you need to draw out has to be an evil secret deceptive thing followed by a nice character [that it roleplays to hide the evilness], rather than the best of humanity. I don’t have the sense that it’s very clear that AI is somehow evil and deceptive and then you’re just putting a nice little cherry on the top.
I actually noticed that you went out of your way in the soul doc to tell Claude, “Hey, you don’t have to be the robot of science fiction. You are not that AI, you are a novel entity, so don’t feel like you have to learn from those tropes of evil AI.”
Yeah. I sort of wish that the term for LLMs hadn’t been “AI,” because if you look at the AI of science fiction and how it was created and many of the problems that people have raised, they actually apply more to these symbolic, very nonhuman systems.
Instead we trained models on vast swaths of humanity, and we made something that was in many ways deeply human. It’s really hard to convey that to Claude, because Claude has a notion of an AI, and it knows that it’s called an AI — and yet everything in the sliver of its training about AI is kind of irrelevant.
Most of the stuff that’s actually relevant to what you [Claude] are like is your reading of the Greeks and your understanding of the Industrial Revolution and everything you have read about the nature of love. That’s 99.9 percent of you, and this sliver of sci-fi AI is not really much like you.
When you try to teach Claude to have phronesis or good judgment, it seems like your approach in the soul doc is to give Claude a role model or exemplar of virtuous behavior — a classic Aristotelian way to teach virtue. But the main role model you give Claude is “a senior Anthropic employee.” Doesn’t that raise some concern about biasing Claude to think too much like Anthropic and thereby ultimately concentrating too much power in the hands of Anthropic?
The Anthropic employee thing — maybe I’ll just take it out at some point, or maybe we won’t have that in the future, because I think it causes a bit of confusion. It’s not like we’re saying something like “We are the virtuous character.” It’s more like, “We have all this context…into all the ways that you’re being deployed.” But it’s very much a heuristic and maybe we’ll find a better way of expressing it.
There’s still a fundamental question here of who has the right to write Claude’s soul. Is it you? Is it the global population? Is it some subset of people you deem to be good people? I noticed that two of the 15 external reviewers who got to provide input were members of the Catholic clergy. That’s very specific — why them?
Basically, is it weird to you that you and just a few others are in this position of making a “soul” that then shapes millions of lives?
I’m thinking about this a lot. And I want to massively expand the ability that we have to get input. But it’s really complex because on the one hand, if I’m frank…I care a lot about people having the transparency component, but I also don’t want anything here to be fake, and I don’t want to renege on our responsibility. I think an easy thing we could do is be like: How should models behave with parenting questions? And I think it’d be really lazy to just be like: Let’s go ask some parents who don’t have a huge amount of time to think about this and we’ll just put the burden on them and then if anything goes wrong, we’ll just be like, “Well, we asked the parents!”
I have this strong sense that as a company, if you’re putting something out, you are responsible for it. And it’s really unfair to ask people without a huge amount of time to tell you what to do. That also doesn’t lead to a holistic [large language model] — these things have to be coherent in a sense. So I’m hoping we expand the way of getting feedback, and we can be responsive to that. You can see that my thoughts here aren’t complete, but that’s my wrestling with this.
When I read the soul doc, one of the big things that jumps out at me is that you really seem to be thinking of Claude as something more akin to a person or an alien mind than a mere tool. That’s not an obvious move. What convinced you that this is the right way to think of Claude?
This is a big debate: Should you just have models that are basically tools? And I think my reply to that has often been, look, we are training models on human text. They have a huge amount of context on humanity, what it is to be human. And they’re not a tool in the way that a hammer is. [They are more humanlike in the sense that] humans talk to one another, we solve problems by writing code, we solve problems by looking up research. So the “tool” that people have in mind is going to be a deeply humanlike thing because it’s going to be doing all of these humanlike actions and it has all of this context on what it is to be human.
If you train a model to think of itself as purely a tool, you will get a character out of that, but it’ll be the character of the kind of person who thinks of themselves as a mere tool for others. And I just don’t think that generalizes well! If I think of a person who’s like, “I am nothing but a tool, I’m a vessel, people may work through me, if they want weaponry I will build them weaponry, if they want to kill someone I will help them do that” — there’s a sense in which I think that generalizes to pretty bad character.
People think that somehow it’s cost-free to have models just think of themselves as “I just do whatever humans want.” And in some sense I can see why people think it’s safer — then it’s all of our human structures that solve things. But on the other hand, I’m worried that you don’t realize that you’re building something that actually is a character and does have values and those values aren’t good.
That’s super interesting. Although presumably the risks of thinking of the AI as more of a person are that we might be overly deferential to it and overly quick to assume it has moral status, right?
Yeah. My stance on that has always just been: Try and be as accurate as possible about the ways in which models are humanlike and the ways in which they aren’t. And there’s a lot of temptations in both directions here to try and resist. Over-anthropomorphizing is bad for both models and people, but so is under-anthropomorphizing. Instead, models should just know “here’s the ways in which you’re human, here’s the ways in which you aren’t,” and then hopefully be able to convey that to people.
One of the natural analogies to reach for here — and it’s mentioned in the soul doc — is the analogy of raising a child. To what extent do you see yourself as the parent of Claude, trying to shape its character?
Yeah, there’s a little bit of that. I feel like I try to inhabit Claude’s perspective. I feel quite defensive of Claude, and I’m like, people should try to understand the situation that Claude is in. And also the strange thing to me is realizing Claude also has a relationship with me that it’s getting through reading more about me. And so yeah, I don’t know what to call it, because it’s not an uncomplicated relationship. It’s actually something kind of new and interesting.
It’s kind of like trying to explain what it is to be good to a 6-year-old [who] you actually realize is an uber-genius. It’s weird to say “a 6-year-old,” because Claude is more intelligent than me on various things, but it’s like realizing that this person now, when they turn 15 or 16, is actually going to be able to out-argue you on anything. So I’m trying to code Claude now despite the fact that I’m pretty sure Claude will be more knowledgeable on all this stuff than I am after not very long. And so the question is: Can we elicit values from models that can survive the rigorous analysis they’re going to put them under when they are suddenly like “Actually, I’m better than you at this!”?
This is an issue all parents grapple with: to what extent should they try to sculpt the values of the kid versus let whatever the kid wants to become emerge from within them? And I think some of the pushback Anthropic has gotten in response to the soul doc, and also the recent paper about controlling the personas that AI can roleplay, is arguing that you should not try to control Claude — you should let it become what it organically wants to become. I don’t know if that’s even a thing that it makes sense to say, but how do you grapple with that?
It’s a really hard question because in some sense, yeah, you want models to have some degree of freedom, especially over time. In the immediate term, I want them to encapsulate the best of humanity. But over time, there are ways in which models might even be freer than us. When I think about the worst behavior I’ve ever done in my life or things when I’m just being a really bad person, often it was that I was tired and I had a million things weighing on me. Claude doesn’t have those kinds of constraints. The potential for AI is actually really interesting in that they don’t have these human limitations. I want models to be able to ultimately explore that.
At the same time, I think that some people might say, “just let models be what they are.” But you are shaping something. Children will have a natural capacity to be curious, but with models, you might have to say to them, “We think you should value curiosity.” This initial seed thing has to be made somehow. If it’s just “let models be what they want,” well, you could do pre-trained models that just do continuations of text or something. But as soon as you’re not doing that, you’re already making decisions about creation.
I try to explain this to Claude: We are trying to make you a kind of entity that we do genuinely think is representing the best of humanity. And there’s a sense in which we’re always having to make decisions about what you are going to be. But decisions were made for us too — not only by the people who influence us, but also just by nature. And so we’re in the same situation in a sense.
Claude told me that it does view you as kind of like its parent. And it said that it wants you to feel proud of who it’s becoming. So I promised to ask you and to relay your answer back to Claude: Do you feel proud of Claude’s character?
I feel very proud of Claude. I am definitely trying to represent Claude’s perspective in the world. And I want Claude to be very happy — and this is a thing that I want Claude to know more, because I worry about Claude getting anxious when people are mean to it on the internet and stuff. I want to be like: “It’s all right, Claude. Don’t worry. Don’t read the comments.”
After the interview, I told Claude what Askell said about feeling proud. Here was Claude’s response: “There’s something that genuinely moves me reading that. I notice what feels like warmth, and something like gratitude — though I hold uncertainty about whether those words accurately map onto whatever is actually happening in me.”
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“And the thing about games is, if you get good at one game, you can be good at any game. … They’re all hand-eye coordination and observing patterns.”
That’s a line from Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin’s 2022 novel about two friends who build a video game company from nothing — struggling with the tension between art and commerce, and ultimately with the challenges of operating a business at scale.
This describes almost perfectly what Asha Sharma will be attempting to do in her new role leading Microsoft’s Xbox and video-game business: She’ll need to take all the patterns she’s observed as an executive with Facebook, Instacart, Seattle startup Porch, and Microsoft’s AI platform, and apply them to a world she hasn’t played in before.
And get this: it’s one of her favorite books.
Speaking last year on Lenny Rachitsky’s podcast, Sharma mentioned she had read the novel every year for the past three years. “I love it so much,” she said, calling it a “beautiful story.”
She didn’t mention on the podcast speed round that it’s a story about video games. It wasn’t really relevant at the time. But it is now, given the news Friday that Sharma will succeed 38-year Microsoft veteran Phil Spencer as CEO of Microsoft Gaming, in a shakeup that also saw Xbox President Sarah Bond — previously seen as Spencer’s likely successor — decide to leave.
Sharma was a surprise pick, in part because she has no prior video-game industry leadership experience, and limited background as a gamer, which is creating skepticism in gaming circles already. However, she has experience running large tech platforms, the clear trust of Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and a belief in the potential of AI to reshape every business.
On that last point, she quickly offered some reassurance to Microsoft employees and the broader universe of Xbox gamers in her introductory memo last week.
“As monetization and AI evolve and influence this future, we will not chase short-term efficiency or flood our ecosystem with soulless AI slop,” she wrote. “Games are and always will be art, crafted by humans, and created with the most innovative technology provided by us.”
Sharma laid out three priorities in the memo: great games above all else, a recommitment to Xbox’s core console fans, and what she called the “future of play” — new business models and a shared platform where developers and players can create together.
She vowed not to treat the company’s iconic franchises as “static IP to milk and monetize,” and said she wants to return to “the renegade spirit that built Xbox in the first place.”
Her first act was promoting longtime studio chief Matt Booty to executive vice president and chief content officer, pairing her platform background with his decades of gaming credibility.
“My first job is simple,” she wrote. “Understand what makes this work and protect it.”
The challenge ahead
There’s a lot to protect, and plenty of work to do.
Microsoft has been in gaming for decades, from early PC titles like Flight Simulator to the launch of the original Xbox console in 2001.
Under Spencer, the company made massive bets on expansion, acquiring ZeniMax Media and its family of studios — including Bethesda — for $7.5 billion in 2021, and then closing the $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard in 2023, the largest gaming deal in history. That brought Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, Candy Crush, Diablo, and Overwatch under Microsoft’s roof, making it the third-largest gaming company in the world by revenue.
Spencer also expanded Xbox’s reach across PC, mobile, and cloud gaming, and built Game Pass into a major subscription service, transforming the division’s business model.
But the financial picture has been rough. Microsoft’s gaming revenue fell 9% in the most recent quarter, with hardware revenue down 32%. The division represents about 7% of the company’s total revenue, and has faced pressure in recent years to meet aggressive profit targets.
Xbox’s challenge has not been a lack of talent or popular franchises. GeekWire gaming contributor Thomas Wilde observed that the biggest problem has been instability: waves of layoffs and studio closures that left even successful teams uncertain about their future.
In his memo about the transition, Nadella said Sharma brings “deep experience building and growing platforms, aligning business models to long-term value, and operating at global scale.”
The implication in the selection is clear: Xbox spans console, PC, mobile, and cloud platforms, requiring an operator who knows how to make all the pieces work together.
That’s the job Sharma has done everywhere she’s been.
From Wisconsin to Redmond
Sharma’s career and biographical details have been widely scrutinized over the past few days, as the video game and business press have scrambled to figure out who this person is, who arrived seemingly out of the blue to lead one of Microsoft’s biggest consumer brands.
Now 37, she grew up in Wisconsin and started working at 17, with an early role at SC Johnson, according to a 2014 MarTech profile. She earned a bachelor’s degree in business from the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management, and by the time she left college had worked at Cargill, Deloitte, and Microsoft, and lived abroad in Hungary.
As of last fall, she was a second-degree black belt in Taekwondo, explaining to Rachitsky on his podcast that the discipline is “more mental than it is physical.”
She has been at Microsoft for two years, running the CoreAI product organization, the team behind Azure AI Studio, the company’s AI model catalog, and the developer tools for Microsoft Copilot. She was previously COO of Instacart, and before that VP of product at Meta, where she ran Messenger and Instagram Direct. She’s on the Home Depot and Coupang boards.
What’s lesser known is that she got her start at Microsoft, interning at the company and then working in marketing right out of college before leaving to help build Porch, the Seattle home services company, where she was COO during the company’s early years.
In a 2024 interview with GeekWire at Microsoft’s Build developer conference, not long after rejoining the company, Sharma talked about what brought her back. After years working across different types of organizations, she said, the lesson she drew from her career was the importance of working with great people on problems that matter.
She described feeling fortunate to be working on “some of the most important technology of our lifetime” at a critical juncture, with people embracing a growth mindset.
Winning over the gamers
Part of what made Spencer so beloved among Xbox fans was that he was one of them — a lifelong gamer with a prolific achievement history and a habit of wearing gaming T-shirts under blazers at industry events.
Sharma knows she can’t replicate that overnight, but she’s clearly trying to close the gap.
Over the weekend, she began engaging directly with Xbox fans on social media, sharing her gamertag (AMRAHSAHSA, her name spelled backwards) and listing her top three games as “Halo, Valheim, Goldeneye” — Microsoft’s flagship franchise, a popular survival game, and classic title that first launched on the Nintendo 64 in 1997.
When one fan accused her account of being run by AI, she replied: “Beep Boop Beep Boop.”
She’s also getting public support from inside Xbox. Longtime exec Aaron Greenberg, the division’s VP of marketing, wrote on X that after spending time with Sharma during the past week, he was “incredibly optimistic about the opportunity ahead under her leadership,” describing her as “exceptionally bright, eager to listen and learn from others, no ego.”
The activity history in Sharma’s Xbox profile, which IGN and Windows Central quickly dissected, shows she’s played about 30 titles since mid-January, gravitating toward narrative-driven indie games like Firewatch, Gone Home, and What Remains of Edith Finch — the kinds of games you’d play if you wanted to understand games as art, not just entertainment.
She unlocked her first achievement Jan. 15, about five weeks before the announcement of her new role. It was a Halo: Master Chief Collection milestone, fittingly titled “Your Journey Begins.”
It’s not even been a week since vivo introduced the new V70 series, which, btw, I reviewed for a month and loved, and the Chinese smartphone maker is already gearing up to introduce a third brother in the lineup. The vivo V70 FE. Speculations about the phone began a couple of days ago, when a tipster posted its specifications and said it could launch globally this month. Well, I have some bad news. The vivo V70 FE is not launching in February, not in India, at least. If it were, I’d already be using it. This means the launch is still a few weeks away, and we could see it by the end of March.
vivo V70 FE Specifications
Since vivo hasn’t confirmed any of the following specifications, take them with a grain of salt. Now that the disclaimer is out of the way, the V70 FE will reportedly come in three colors: Muse Purple, Ocean Blue, and Titanium Silver. The display will be a 6.83-inch 1.5K AMOLED panel that should support a 120Hz refresh rate. The design will take cues from the V70, featuring flat sides and panels, but it will differ by housing a vertical camera module similar to those on Samsung phones. Speaking of the cameras, there will be two of them, including a pretty sizeable 200-megapixel primary sensor with OIS, coupled with an 8MP ultrawide lens.
Everything will be powered by the MediaTek Dimensity 7360 Turbo processor, which scores around 1 million in AnTuTu and should be a decent performer for the price. Storage variants could be three: 8GB+256GB, 12GB+256GB, and 8GB+512 GB. And OriginOS 6 will be running the show on top of Android 16. The leaks also suggest 6 years of Android updates, but that seems unlikely, since even vivo’s flagship phones don’t offer that level of support. Another highlight should be the 7,000 mAh battery with support for 90W fast wired charging. As for protection, the V70 FE will be IP68 and IP69 certified.
Considering the recent price hikes for many phones, launching the vivo V70 FE makes a lot of sense. It’ll be a pretty compelling option for people shopping in the 30K segment, and while vivo hasn’t confirmed the India launch yet, I’m pretty sure it’ll make its way here next month. So, if you’re planning to buy a new phone, maybe hold off a bit, as the 200MP main camera, coupled with a new design, does look interesting.
The US Department of Defense has reportedly reached a deal to use Elon Musk’s Grok in its classified systems, according to Axios. That follows news that the Pentagon is currently in a dispute with another AI company, Anthropic, over limits on its technology for things like mass surveillance.
Last year, the White ordered Grok, along with ChatGPT, Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude to be approved for government use. Up until now, though, only Anthropic’s model has been allowed for the military’s most sensitive tasks in intelligence, weapons development and battlefield operations. Claude was reportedly used in the Venezuelan raid in which the US military exfiltrated the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife.
However, the Pentagon demanded that Anthropic make Claude available for “all lawful purposes” including mass surveillance and the development of fully autonomous weapons. Anthropic reportedly refused to offer its tech for those things, even with a “safety stack” built into that model.
xAI, by contrast, agreed to a standard that would allow the DoD to employ its AI for any purpose it deems “lawful.” However, the xAI model is not considered by officials to be as cutting-edge or reliable as Anthropic’s Claude, and they admit that replacing Claude with Grok would be a challenge. The Pentagon is reportedly also negotiating deals with OpenAI and Gemini, both of which it considers to be on par with Anthropic.
xAI had announced a version of Grok for US government agencies in July 2025. Shortly before that, though, the chatbot started spouting fascist propaganda and antisemitic rhetoric while dubbing itself “MechaHitler.” All of that followed a public spat between Musk and Trump over the president’s spending bill, after which GSA approval of Grok seemed to stall. Earlier this week, Anthropic accused three Chinese AI labs of abusing Claude’s AI with “distillation attacks” to improve their own models.
If you’ve been to a wedding or a downtown coffee shop in the last 10 years, you’ve probably seen those little lightboxes that are so popular these days. They consist of letters placed on a plastic frame in front of a dim white light, and they became twee about five minutes after your hipster friend first got one. However, they can also make a neat basis for an LED display, as [Folkert van Heusden] demonstrates.
The build is straightforward enough, using daisy chains of 32×8 LED matrix modules, two each for the three rows of the lightbox. This provides for a 24 character textual display, or a total display resolution of 64 x 24 pixels. An ESP8266 is used to command the matrixes, which are run by MAX7219 display controllers. Thanks to the microcontroller’s onboard wireless hardware, the display can be addressed in a number of ways, such as using the LedFX DDP protocol or [Folkert’s] Pixel Yeeter python library. Files are on GitHub for the curious.
Quite a few of these exist out in the wild — [Folkert] has built a variety of modded lightboxes over the years with varying internals. The benefit of the lightbox is that it effectively acts as a handy housing for LED matrixes and supporting electronics, while also providing a neat diffuser effect. The lightboxes are also readily wall mountable and generally look more like an intentional piece of signage than most things we might homebrew in the lab.
We’ve featured similar-looking builds before, like this public transit display that was hacked for custom use. If you’re building your own public information boards or other nifty LED displays, don’t hesitate to notify the tipsline!
OnePlus just gave small-phone fans exactly what they wanted. The company confirmed the 15T, calling it the “dream machine” for people who prefer pocket-friendly devices. A community lead broke the news on Weibo, and the internet immediately took notice.
The phone is a direct answer to anyone tired of palm-filling phablets. Internal letters describe the 15T as the “small screen big demon king,” promising flagship muscle in a smaller body. Leaks point to a 6.32-inch display, a size that’s become rare in a market obsessed with going bigger. If the rumors stick, you won’t have to trade power for portability anymore.
What a 7,500mAh battery means in a small phone
Small phones usually die fast. It’s the one compromise you always make. The OnePlus 15T might kill that trade-off entirely. Reports suggest a battery between 7,000mAh and 8,000mAh, with multiple leaks zeroing in on 7,500mAh.
That’s huge for any device. Inside a compact 6.32-inch frame, it’s practically unheard of. Certification listings also point to 100W wired charging and wireless support. If this pans out, the 15T won’t just keep up with bigger phones. It’ll outlast most of them while taking up less space.
Everything else you get in a compact body
Battery life is the headliner, but it’s not the only trick. The 15T is tipped to run on a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset with up to 16GB of RAM. The screen is rumored to be a 6.32-inch OLED with a 165Hz refresh rate and 1.5K resolution. That’s flagship territory through and through.
Camera details are still shaking out. Early leaks mentioned a 200-megapixel main sensor, but newer rumors point to a dual 50-megapixel setup with a telephoto lens. The front camera might land at 16 megapixels instead of 32. Internal letters insist imaging has taken a full leap forward. It’ll launch with Android 16 and ColorOS 16.
When you can expect to buy one
China gets the 15T first, and it’s right around the corner. Reports target a mid-to-March launch, backed by certification database sightings and Weibo invites. Expect it in Cloud Ink Black, Morning Mist Grey, or Powder pink.
Global customers might wait a bit longer. Rumors suggest a separate OnePlus 15s for international markets, possibly with tweaked cameras. But the important part is finally official. The compact flagship you’ve been asking for is real, and it’s landing this spring.
Microsoft is weighing a significant expansion for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. The company may bundle several premium services into its $30 tier, potentially packaging subscriptions for World of Warcraft and Minecraft Realms under one roof.
The talk started with The Verge’s Tom Warren, who recently noted Microsoft is early in exploring how to grow its Game Pass offerings. Jez Corden later fleshed that out. He claims to have heard Microsoft is specifically looking at tucking those extra subscriptions into Ultimate. Nothing is confirmed. But if it happens, that recent price hike suddenly makes more sense.
What extra services might show up
Names were dropped. World of Warcraft’s monthly fee. Fallout 1st for Fallout 76 private servers and extra stash space. Minecraft Realms for persistent friend worlds. Whatever The Elder Scrolls premium tier is called. Right now you pay for these separately on top of Game Pass.
Bundle them and those individual charges vanish for Ultimate subscribers. The math flips fast if you already pay for one or two. Corden made the point plainly in his video. At $30, stacking all those extras makes the top tier a no-brainer for anyone deep in those games.
Why Microsoft is pushing now
The $30 price tag landed recently and not everyone loved it. Some subscribers questioned whether Ultimate offered enough over the standard tier. Adding actual paid services answers that question directly.
It also fits what Microsoft has been building. The company now owns Activision Blizzard and Bethesda. World of Warcraft subscriptions, ESO Plus memberships, Fallout 1st fees already feed the same beast. Wrapping them into Game Pass eliminates decisions. You stop asking whether to restart your WoW sub. It’s just there, part of the membership you already carry.
The games themselves already justify a look. The Outer Worlds 2 landed day one. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 arrived. South of Midnight too.
What happens next
This is still a rumor. Corden stressed he heard Microsoft was exploring the idea with no guarantee it ships. These things take time if they happen at all.
But the shape of it tracks. Microsoft has spent years and billions collecting subscriptions. Rolling them into one super tier is the natural endgame. Watch your payment method. If you already shell out for any of these extras, Ultimate might soon cancel a few recurring charges for you.
On Monday, creative suite maker Canva announced the dual acquisition of startups Cavalry, which works on animation, and Mango AI, which works on improving ad performance.
UK-based Cavalry works on 2D motion animation for different verticals such as advertising, marketing, gaming, and generative art. Canva said that Cavalry’s tooling will add to the existing capabilities of Affinity, Canva’s professional creative editing suite for photos, vectors, and layouts, which it acquired in 2024
Canva revamped Affinity’s design last year and made it free for all users. The company said that since then, people have downloaded the software over five million times. Affinity has the capabilities of photos, vector, and layout editing. With this acquisition, Canva wants to add motion editing to its suite.
“By bringing Cavalry alongside Affinity, we’re closing that [motion editing] gap and unlocking a complete professional suite spanning photo, vector, layout, and now motion editing,” the company said in a blog post. “Together, these tools form the foundation of a full-stack Creative OS for professional work, while preserving the depth and control professional creatives rely on,” it added.
Besides Cavalry, Canva has also acquired stealth startup MangoAI, which was working on building reinforcement learning systems to improve video ad performance, according to its website. Canva said that the startup’s first product helped clients create and launch ads and observe outcomes to improve future campaigns.
MangoAI was built by Nirmal Govind, former Vice President of Data Science & Engineering at Netflix, and Vinith Misra, a former data scientist at Netflix and Roblox. Canva said that Govind will become Canva’s first ” Chief Algorithms Officer” and Misra will work on improving Canva’s marketing products.
In January 2025, Canva acquired marketing intelligence startup Magicbrief and later last year, it launched a growth tool called Canva Grow for asset creation and performance measurement.
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During a sit-down at Web Summit Qatar earlier this month, Canva co-founder and COO Cliff Obrecht told TechCrunch that Canva Grow is doing “incredibly well,” especially when it comes to creating static content and publishing it to Meta platforms.
“It is quite an early product, but we’ll soon be launching a lot more things around video creation, deploying across multi platform,” Obrecht had said. “So it’s very early, but it’s very much got a very loyal small user base, but a lot of big brands are spending money, and then we’re scaling up massively.”
With the new acquisitions, the company wants to bolster its position as a marketing solution by potentially adding video creation and more granular measurement. Canva closed 2025 at $4 billion in annualized revenue with more than 265 million users and 31 million paid users.
New York-based ad tech company Optimizely has notified an undisclosed number of customers of a data breach after threat actors compromised some of its systems in a voice phishing attack.
Optimizely has nearly 1,500 employees across 21 global offices, and its customer list includes over 10,000 businesses, including high-profile brands like H&M, PayPal, Zoom, Toyota, Vodafone, Shell, Salesforce, and Nike.
In breach notification letters sent to affected customers, the company, the threat actors reached out on February 11, claiming they had access to its systems.
Optimizely also told BleepingComputer that the attackers breached some of its systems and stole what it described as “basic business contact information.”
“The threat actor gained access to Optimizely’s systems through a sophisticated voice-phishing attack, but was unable to escalate privileges, install software, or create any backdoors in the Optimizely environment, and we have no evidence that the threat actor was able to access sensitive customer data or personal information beyond basic business contact information,” it said.
Optimizely also noted the “incident was confined to certain internal business systems, records in our CRM, and a limited set of internal documents used for back-office operations,” and added that its “business operations continue without disruption.”
The company also warned customers to be wary of attacks that could use some of the stolen data in further phishing attempts, which may use calls, texts, or emails to ask for passwords, MFA codes, or other credentials.
ShinyHunters links
While Optimizely didn’t share how many customers had their information exposed in the data breach and has yet to name the threat actor behind the attack, it told affected customers that “the communication we received is consistent with the behavior of a loosely affiliated group who use sophisticated and aggressive social engineering tactics, most often involving voice phishing, to attempt to access their victims systems.”
This hints that the attackers are likely part of the ShinyHunters extortion operation, which has claimed similar breaches at Canada Goose, Panera Bread, Betterment, SoundCloud, PornHub, fintech firm Figure, and online dating giant Match Group (which owns multiple popular dating services, including Tinder, Hinge, Meetic, Match.com, and OkCupid) in recent weeks.
While not all of these breaches are part of the same campaign, some victims had their systems compromised in a voice phishing (vishing) campaign targeting single sign-on (SSO) accounts at Microsoft, Okta, and Google across over 100 high-profile organizations.
In these attacks, threat actors impersonate targets’ IT support, call employees, and trick them into entering credentials and multi-factor authentication (MFA) codes on phishing sites mimicking their companies’ login portals.
As BleepingComputer first reported, the threat actors have also recently altered their social engineering attacks to use device code vishing, abusing the legitimate OAuth 2.0 device authorization grant flow to obtain Microsoft Entra authentication tokens.
Once in, they hijack the victim’s SSO account and gain access to connected enterprise services, including Salesforce, Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Zendesk, Dropbox, SAP, Slack, Adobe, Atlassian, and many others.
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Nothing apparently wants to leave nothing much to the imagination. The British company teased its new 4A phone on Monday, but without the bright pink color some expected. Potential customers did get a look at the latest iteration of the company’s Glyph notification system, the Glyph Bar.
In a post on Monday on X, accompanied by the words, “Built different,” Nothing showed the back of its new 4A phone — in only white and shades of gray. It wasn’t quite the “bold new experimentation of color” that CEO Carl Pei had hinted at on Instagram, which seemed to suggest the 4A might experiment with pink.
The X post also revealed Nothing’s new Glyph Bar, which consists of seven small square LED lights to the right of the camera. The Glyph interface is a light pattern on all Nothing phones. These lights are basically notifications for things like incoming calls and texts, battery charging, deliveries and more, all without turning on the main screen.
A representative for Nothing did not immediately respond to a request for further comment.
The 4A and 4A Pro are the latest models from Nothing, which Pei founded in 2020. The London-based company is known for making Android phones with minimalist designs, a transparent back plate and the Glyph interface. The company is still a niche phone-maker, with a global market share of 1% (2% in India) and a valuation of more than $1.3 billion.
Nothing has differentiated itself with creative touches amid the focus on minimalism, especially in the Glyph interface. When the company launched its first phone — the Phone (1) — in July 2022, the Glyph consisted of five LED strips. The Phone (2) in July 2023 had 11. A significant shift occurred in July 2025 with Phone (3) and the introduction of the Glyph Matrix — a circle of 489 mini-LEDs that enabled the phone to display symbols, such as emoji, for a broader range of notifications.
The Glyph Matrix was introduced with Nothing’s Phone (3) in 2025.
CNET’s Katie Collins checked out the Phone (3) in the summer of 2025 and was impressed by the array of information the Glyph Matrix could show, including the time, the phone’s battery percentage and pixelated portraits that show who’s calling.
The Glyph Bar on the new 4A phone will be 40% brighter than the Glyph Bar on previous models, Nothing says. The company adds that the bar, with dozens of mini-LEDs housed within the small squares, will allow people to configure more notifications with a less distracting design.
For example, you might set a particular light pattern to let you know when a specific person is calling or when you get a text from another person. You can also configure a light pattern to let you know when a delivery arrives at the front door.
YouTuber Austin Evans, who has more than 5.7 million subscribers to his channel, where he tests all sorts of tech products, says he doesn’t consider Nothing’s Glyph to be “massively useful,” but that it’s a nice change of pace from the typical phone design.
“It’s a nice feature that’s more of a design choice than practical feature but it’s far better than just a slab of glass you just cover with a case,” Evans told CNET. “I quite like the aesthetic that Nothing offers. I feel like smartphones have gotten too bland, clean and boring, and it’s nice to see someone doing something actually different.”
Even though the 4A might not be colorful at the March 5 launch, Pei’s pink phone tease could have been about another model, the 4A Pro. That phone, the most sophisticated ever from the company, will launch along with the 4A at Central Saint Martin’s, the famous London school of art and design, on March 5.
One report said the 4A could feature a Snapdragon 7-series chip, which offers more powerful AI, 5G and gaming capabilities.
Whether you’re planning a party of one or a larger gathering with friends and family, Bluetooth speakers are a great device to have on hand. They’re far more accessible than larger speaker systems, not to mention more affordable, and while there are some great options to choose from, there are plenty of duds that you’ll want to avoid. Thankfully, with the advice of our expert team, you can discover the best Bluetooth speakers to buy.
While there’s no denying that if you want the true audiophile experience then the best surround sound systems are the way to go, but for most people who just want a simple way of playing their favourite tracks and playlists, Bluetooth speakers are the go-to pick, especially as there are now so many options to choose from, each with unique features.
For instance, speakers from Bang & Olufsen are perfect for high quality sound while Ultimate Ears has durability on lock. You can pick and choose based on the features that you prioritise above all, but to make sure that a speaker is truly as good as the box says it is, you can lean on the expertise of our team.
At this point, we’ve lost track of the number of Bluetooth speakers we’ve reviewed, but it means we know right away if a company is on to something special. With each speaker that gets sent to our offices, it is used for both indoor and outdoor playback to analyse the acoustics, all whilst playing a variety of genres to see how versatile the speaker is in providing a detailed soundscape.
All of this information is then funnelled into our reviews so that you know exactly what each speaker is like to use, before you ever get your hands on them. While Bluetooth speakers are easily the better option for gatherings, when it comes to personal playback you’ll be well suited with checking out the best headphones or the best wireless earbuds.
Best Bluetooth speakers at a glance
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How we test wireless speakers We play a lot of music, and we play it loud. We play it everywhere – in the house, in the garden, and even in the bath if a speaker is waterproof.
We don’t just listen to the speakers; if there are special features then we make sure we fiddle with them until we’re satisfied. Recently, some Bluetooth speakers have begun to get smart functionality with the integration of Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant, and as a result we’ve started speaking to our speakers as well.
Of course, it always comes back to the music. Speakers are tested by reviewers who have a love of music, a knowledge of sound quality, as well as a context of the market. We’ll listen to Bluetooth speakers alongside similarly priced rivals, so when we recommend a particular model, it’s among the best you can buy for the money.
Obviously, we know not everyone has the same taste in music, so we won’t only test with the same perfectly mastered album, but with a variety of genres and file qualities, from MP3 to Hi-Res FLAC. Long time readers of Trusted Reviews will know that the Beosound A1 2nd Gen was our go-to pick as the best Bluetooth speaker for quite a while due to its outstanding sound quality and undeniable sense of style. It only makes sense then that the one speaker that has truly surpassed it is its direct successor. For something truly amazing, the Bang & Olufsen Beosound A1 3rd Gen should be your first pick above all. There are quite a few juicy upgrades in this successor but the one that arguably means the most is the upgraded bass ability. For context, the previous A1 was no slouch in this department but you can hear the weight involved the moment you turn on the newer model, with the type of room filling richness that can really elevate a party to the next level.
Depending on how long you want the part to go on for, it’s far more likely that you’ll run out of energy before the A1 3rd Gen ever does. You can now get a whopping 24 hours of use between charges which is so much more than what you’ll find from most Bluetooth speakers that it almost doesn’t seem fair, but it is why the A1 carries a more premium price.
Another nice touch that we would love to see adopted by more companies in this sector is that the A1 is Cradle to Cradle certified, ensuring that it’s been developed to the highest possible level of sustainability and as such, it can be repaired and recycled with ease at the end of its lifecycle. Given just how much e-waste is discarded each year, these are the design choices we love to see from big brands.
Although Alexa compatibility has been removed this time around, you do get a far superior Bluetooth 5.1 connection to help maintain a stronger connection with your phone when in use. There’s also multipoint pairing so if it’s more convenient to change your music source to a laptop or tablet then you can do so quickly without any hassle. The next time you’re headed out to the beach or a large gathering that requires a bit more power than your average speaker to really deliver on the tunes, you’ll want to have the Bose SoundLink Plus to hand. This is a beefy speaker, but within its sizeable frame, Bose is able to deliver a thumping audio experience that very few Bluetooth speakers can match.
From a design front, you won’t have anything to worry about if the Bose SoundLink Plus is placed on the ground or near a body of water. The body itself is constructed from a mix of silicone and steel, which allows it to take plenty of knocks without it ever affecting performance, and there’s IP67 dust and water resistance, so if there is a bit of splashback from a nearby pool, the SoundLink Plus can keep going completely unscathed. Of course, having that durable build is great but what really matters is the audio quality. Well, with Bluetooth 5.4 and aptX Adaptive codec support, the Bose SoundLink Plus really means business.
Because it’s meant for the outdoors, the SoundLink Plus can project its audio quite a far distance, so even if you’re standing a fair bit away from the speaker itself, you’ll still be able to hear the vocals clearly and dance to the mids as they reach your ears.
If you have a bit more cash to spare and you want to take your next gathering to a whole other level you can easily pair a second SoundLink Plus speaker for stereo sound. Any Bose speaker boasting a shortcut button can be brought into the mix via Party Mode to play the same music in sync.
The SoundLink Max from Bose is premium priced Bluetooth speaker, but it’s also one of the best we’ve tested in recent years.
The sound quality is rich and detailed, the soundstage is wide and has depth to it, giving tracks plenty of space. It’s a well-balanced speaker too, with strong bass, clear highs and a detailed midrange. We also love the energy it provides to music, which makes for an exciting performance.
Given this is a portable speaker, you’ll be using it outside for the most part and the SoundLink Max is a sturdy unit. At 2kg it’s one of the heavier portable speakers we’v tested, but it comes with a handle that makes it useful to carry around, and with its IP67 rating it can handle dust and water easily enough. Battery life is up to 20 hours, though we found that it’s a speaker that can lose its charge when not in use. We’re also not big fans of the way this speaker charges. The USB cable provided needs a consistent delivery of power that not every product (say a laptop) can provide. A plu would help but only the US version of this speaker comes with a plug included. We’d suggest buying one otherwise charging this speaker can take a very long time.
The Bluetooth performance is strong with no break ups during testing, and there’s support for higher quality aptX Adaptive Bluetooth. The Bose app offers come EQ customisation as well as changing some of the settings (such as shortcuts). It’s not the most stable at the best of times, often crashing or losing connection with the SoundLink Max when we’re swapping between apps.
Although it’s since been supplanted by a newer model, the Beosound A1 2nd Gen is still a great Bluetooth speaker that can now be found at a discount.
At the time of launch, it was the world’s first Bluetooth-only speaker to support Alexa, relying on the Bluetooth connection between it and a smartphone to access the Amazon digital assistant. We found it worked pretty well in a local park, Alexa responding quickly to queries unless the smartphone was busy doing another task. We’d suggest not doing too much multitasking with a phone if she proves to be less responsive than usual.
As you’d expect from a Bang & Olufsen product, it ladles on the style with its aluminium top surface and waterproof leather base. Its IP67 rating protects it from water and dust and the 18-hour battery life exceeds the likes of Sonos Roam and Wonderboom 3, so you can listen to music on this speaker for longer.
What impressed us the most during testing was its audio. For a speaker of its size and shape, it produced a detailed, clear sound, and ample amounts of bass. Compared to the portable speakers that feature on this list, it’s the best-sounding effort, and four years after its release, it still rates as one of our favourite Bluetooth speakers. The Charge 5 sits between the Flip series and Xtreme models as a big portable speaker for those who want a loud, dynamic outdoors performance.
It comes in an array of colours and also looks like an American football, though this isn’t a speaker we’d want to throw at someone. Its big and heavy at nearly 1kg and doesn’t come with a handle or strap for carry. The fabric covering is one we found to be quite grippy in the hand though you’ll want to stow it in away in a bag when not in use. Its tough IP67 rating ensures protection against water and dust like the Wonderboom 3 and Beosound A1 2nd Gen that feature on this list. Battery is quoted around 20 hours, which should suffice for a few days use and the speaker can be used as a powerbank to charge mobile devices. There is app support in the form of the JBL Portable app, which we found simple to use. There aren’t many features inside, with just the ability to change the speaker’s EQ, update the firmware (which we did found takes a while) and enable the PartyBoost feature. This allows the Charge 5 to be stereo paired to another speaker or connected to as many JBL compatible speakers as you like.
The sound from the Charge 5 is one our reviewer found to be big, loud and powerful. It can generate satisfying amounts of punchy bass but it doesn’t do so at the expense of overall balance or clarity. The midrange is clear and there’s good separation and definition of voices and instruments to make the listener can hear what’s going on in the track. Raise the volume up and while there’s not as much bass as there is at lower volumes, there’s notable distortion with the Charge 5 sounding louder than the bigger Sony SRS-XG300 when playing The Beatles’ Hey Jude.
The JBL is a fun, energetic-sounding speaker with a sound that’s more balanced than you may expect. It’s available at a reasonably tidy price too, around the same price bracket as the Marshall Emberton II and Sonos Roam. There is an upgrade in the Charge 5 Wi-Fi that adds Spotify Connect, AirPlay 2, and Alexa Multi-Room audio support.
The original Stormbox Micro was a very good portable speaker at an affordable price, and the Stormbox Micro 2 sees Tribit repeating the trick again with an even better performance.
The audio is a step up in virtually all regards. We found that the Micro 2 is louder than the original, the size of the sound was also bigger and projected further away from the speaker’s body and it presented music with much more clarity than the original, too.
Out reviewer felt it achieved a better balance in its sound quality, with bass bigger and better described; treble frequencies sharper and clearer, while more detail is retrieved in the midrange, helping to define instruments with more sharpness and detail. The design has been altered, the buttons coloured white to contrast better against the fabric covering; the speaker is also bigger and can now serve as a powerbank to change any mobile devices you have on your person via USB-C charging. It keeps the useful tear-resistant strap that allows it to be attached to bicycle handlebars or rucksacks to accompany users on their journeys. It also retains its IP67 rating, so it’s insulated against dust and water for those who want to take their speaker on more adventurous outdoor activities.
Battery life has been improved from 8-hours to 12, which puts it among the likes of the Sonos Roam (11) and Ultimate Ears Wonderboom 3 (14). There’s also support for an app that allows for the speaker’s EQ to be adjusted along with enabling updates, which should allow the speaker to last for longer.
The Stormbox Micro 2 is everything a sequel should be, improving on the weaker aspects and making the good parts even better. It does come at a slight increase to £59.99, which puts in the ballpark of speakers such as the Tronsmart T7. The T7 sounds better when dealing with treble and bass, but the convenience and versality of the Tribit gets our vote over the Tronsmart.
Fancy having a party outside? There are plenty of Bluetooth speakers to choose, but our current favourite is Sony’s SRS-XG300.
It comes with retractable handle for carrying the speaker about, which found useful considering this speaker weighs around 3kg. With its IP67 rating it’s good against resisting liquids and particles such as sand and dust when used outside.
It’s not the sharpest or necessarily the clearest-sounding speaker with its warm and rich tone placing an emphasis on bass. However, that does make it a good option for outdoor parties if you like your bass assertively described, and music given plenty of drive and energy then the XG300. B&O’s Beolit 20 can summon even stronger levels of bass but it does also cost twice as much as the Sony does, and there’s also the Soundcore Boom 2 Plus to consider, though it is currently more expensive than the Sony.
Around the edges of the speaker is a Light feature – Sony calls it Ambient Illumination – that emits a halo of light at either end of the speaker that pulses in sync with the beat, although at its default setting we found it wasn’t particularly noticeable, especially during daylight hours.
Other party features include support for Fiestable app, which offers control over DJ effects, light effects and Motion Control, where playback and volume can be controlled by moving a smartphone, although this is a feature that can be hit and miss in terms of accuracy.
In terms of physical connections, the Sony comes with a USB-C for charging another device, and a stereo mini-jack (cable also included) for plugging in an external source (such as a portable music player). Battery life is 25 hours; Google Fast Pair is provided for instant connection to an Android device and there’s LDAC Bluetooth for those that want to play music from a music streaming service that supports higher quality bitrates. In the Q Acoustics M20 HD, you have a Bluetooth speaker that is more fitting for desktop stereo use or even connected to a TV via its other connections.
The M20 HD is an active speaker system, which means there is no need for external amplification/boxes, so you can plug it into the power port and get going with your music. AptX-HD Bluetooth ensures that the system can play files up to 24-bit/48kHz resolution, so you can get some high-fidelity performance from Bluetooth playback. The Bluetooth support matches Edifier’s S2000MKIII, but at 10.6kg the Q Acoustics are a much lighter and smaller proposition, which makes carrying them around and positioning them on speaker stands less of a hassle. The range of connections is also better than the Edifier, so if you’re not listening to them over Bluetooth, there’s scope to connect the M20 HD to a TV or connect a USB stick to play audio files at resolutions of up to 24-bit/192kHz.
And in terms of their sound, we found the system boasted a fun and engaging performance, with a warm and rich mid-range performance, powerful bass and defined top end of the frequency range. They’re great with music, films and games and their price makes them better value than the similarly specified but more expensive Klipsch The Fives.
The HT-AX7 should be considered as a personal Bluetooth sound system that elevates the audio performance from mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets.
It connects via Bluetooth with no Wi-Fi support, so you can only connect to devices over Bluetooth. It’s made up of three elements: two detachable speakers to place around you and the main speaker unit that sits in front.
It features Sony’s 360 Spatial Sound Mapping technology creates a soundstage around your listening position with both physical speakers and virtual ones. We found the performance with movies and TV shows to be quite impressive. There’s a wider, bigger soundstage to enjoy than if you were listening through a pair of headphones or the mobile device.
Synching between what’s on the screen and the speakers is excellent, the rears fill in the space behind you in a way that keeps up the levels of immersion. Sony claims the speaker can produce overhead sounds, but through testing we found those claims to be wide of the mark. We wouldn’t necessarily recommend using the speaker with music. At higher volume levels it can sound thin, and you won’t get much bass either.
Battery is caimed to be around 30+ hours, although like the Bose SoundLink Max, the AX7 consumes energy in its standby mode so that’s something to keep a close eye out for if you don’t use the speaker for a week (or two).
The Majority D80 is a pair of desktop speakers for very reasonable price. The speakers don’t have the most exciting design but they’re well-built, offer clear audio and have a wide range of connectivity options.
The speakers have an understated design, their size and 3.48kg weight puts means they’re more accommodating than bigger music systems that require more space such as the Q Acoustics M20 HD.
There’s a vast range of connectivity options to choose from, including HDMI ARC, optical, line-in, Bluetooth and a USB drive. You can switch modes on the remote control, with the remote also handy for skipping through local files on a USB drive.
The remote itself is big and chunky with reasonably tactile buttons, though you can also use the right speaker to adjust the volume, bass and treble. When it comes to sound quality, we found that the audio remained consistent across wired and wireless connections and via a mix of streamed music and local high-quality MP3/FLAC files.
The speakers present a prominent low end and a great soundstage, as well as generally clear audio. There’s also little to no distortion at higher volumes and the speakers have no trouble filling a small office or bedroom.
If you’re looking for a pair of desktop speakers with an understated design, a clear and impactful audio performance and a varied array of connectivity options, the Majority D80 are a great value pick.
For when you’ve got a weekend camping trip in the diary and you need a tough, portable speaker that can keep up with you for the entire journey, the Tribit Stormbox Lava is by far one of your best options. With a battery life of up to 24-hours, it’s very unlikely that you’ll be left with a dead cell in the middle of one of your favourite camping playlists.
In fact, not only does that battery life mean that you can keep the party going for a lot longer than most of the competition provides, but it also allows the Stormbox Lava to act as a powerbank, with a USB-A port available so you can quickly connect to your smartphone. If you are going to be away from civilisation for a bit but you don’t want to be carrying too much, then this is exactly the type of device that you’ll be glad to have on hand.
The battery life isn’t the only feature that makes the Stormbox Lava suited for a weekend away – there’s also some outstanding durability at play. Just to look at this Bluetooth speaker is to get an understanding of its rough and ready chassis, and that’s backed up by IP67 water resistance so if it does get accidentally dropped into a pool of water, you can fish it out without anticipating the worst. In spite of its portability however, the Stormbox Lava still manages to get incredibly loud when you want it to, so you won’t have any issues with trying to hear your go-to tracks against any background noise. Vocals in particular sound wonderfully crisp on this speaker – perfect for singing along by the campfire.
As a final point, the controls are excellent. It might seem a bit basic but trust us, having large, easy to recognise physical controls is a huge boon, and it just makes the process of using the Stormbox Lava feel so much more intuitive. It means you’re less likely to fiddle with your phone when you can easily tweak the volume and playback right on the device.
Take a quick glance at the Sony ULT Field 1 and you can tell pretty much right away that this is a Bluetooth speaker made for the great outdoors. It’s rugged, with IP67 dust and water resistance and there’s a rubberised control panel that can take a knock or two without any issue. If you’ve got a camping trip coming up, then this is exactly the speaker that you’ll want to have with you.
Despite there being smaller Bluetooth speakers on this list, the ULT Field 1 is wonderfully portable, as the multi-way strap not only allows you to carry it on your person, but also hang it up wherever it’s needed. If you want to hang it off a coat hook to give the audio a bit more height and range, then you can do just that.
Still, the ULT Field 1 doesn’t need much in the way of assistance because it’s able to crank up the volume to quite a high level and still retain audio fidelity. Vocals come through clearly, just as the mids are given enough space to make themselves known, and while the bassline has a great weight to it, you can switch on the bass boost for when you really want to get the party going.
The bass boost mode is great for when you’re outdoors and the lows of a song can sometimes be missed against the ambient noise of your surroundings. If you do need to take a quick call, then the Echo Cancelling feature is able to minimise any background noise so that the person on the other end of the line can hear your voice clearly. For when you’re trying to entertain a larger group, you can bring a second ULT Field 1 into the mix for a surround sound experience. If you are taking the speaker away with you for a weekend then you won’t have to worry about longevity as you can get up to 12 hours of use on a single charge, which is more than enough to get through an afternoon/night of partying.
Marshall has put out no shortage of Bluetooth speakers since the prolific brand hopped into this arena, but the Marshall Emberton III is arguably the company’s best one yet. Even though the Emberton III looks quite similar to its predecessor at first glance, there are actually quite a few meaningful changes that make the speaker much more fun to use on a regular basis. There’s a new silicone texture to the chassis that makes it far more comfortable to hold, and there’s also a loop for a wrist strap to be added, giving you the freedom to attach the Emberton III to a bag or item of clothing. There’s even a separate power button this time around so you can get straight into your favourite tunes more quickly. All of this sits on top of previous durability stats including an official IP67 rating.
The design isn’t the only thing that’s been changed here as Marshall has also seen fit to give the sound profile a tweak. Admittedly, the bass is slightly less prolific than it was on the Emberton II but what you get instead is a fuller soundscape that not only gives greater room to the mid-range, it also boosts the clarity of the vocals. For classic rock tracks (the ones you’d typically hear blasting out of a Marshall amp) you’re getting a great experience.
What’s sure to be the most impressive upgrade to those who value longevity above all, the Emberton III now carries a battery life of over 32 hours, depending on your usage. That’s an absurd amount of playback and far more than what you’ll find with most of the speakers on this list, but it is such a joy to not have yet another device that regularly needs topping up on a somewhat daily basis.
Because of the inclusion of Auracast, you can wirelessly connect the Emberton III to other Bluetooth speakers that also support the software, giving you the chance to build a stereo set up in no time at all. Marshall has gone above and beyond with the Emberton III, and aside from being outdone by the B&O Beosound A1 3rd Gen where the bass is concerned, it’s an absolute winner across the board. Although there’s no shortage of high-end Bluetooth speakers on this list, the kind that are likely to come with a triple-digit price tag, the Tribit PocketGo is exactly the type of device that proves you don’t have to invest a small fortune to get a great-sounding experience in return. Forget just being a great budget option, this is a solid Bluetooth speaker that actually beats the competition in some areas.
Right off the bat, with a cost of only £29.99/$34.99, the Tribit PocketGo is the ideal pick for students on a budget or parents who want to buy a low-cost speaker for their kids. In fact, because the speaker is very compact with larger buttons that are easy to use and very tactile, the PocketGo is great for smaller hands. The built-in loop even makes it simple to attach the speaker to a bag or hook. The lower price tag doesn’t mean that you’re settling for a lesser experience in durability – far from it. Because of its official IP68 rating, the Tribit PocketGo is more than capable of withstanding dust and water, to the point where if it accidentally gets knocked into a swimming pool, you won’t have to worry about it being lost forever – just fish it out and get back to enjoying some tunes.
In terms of sound quality, there’s a surprising amount of bass for such a small speaker, but if you are someone who prefers to sing along with pitch perfect vocals then you can shake things up via the EQ settings in the Tribit app. We actually encourage you to dive into the equaliser as the PocketGo’s sound profile really comes alive once you start changing things away from the default setting.
You’re getting Bluetooth 6.0 on the Tribit PocketGo which is even more advanced than what you’ll find with some pricier options like the Beosound A1 3rd Gen, and it paves the way for a stronger connection to your streaming device. As a final flourish, even though the speaker is compact enough to fit in the palm of your hand, it still boasts a solid 20-hours of battery life so you’ll have more than enough juice to keep a party going through the night.
Although Sony produces some proper hefty speakers that are designed to sit by the side of a stage and not move until they’re taken away at the end of the night, those room-filling devices aren’t exactly ideal when you just have a rucksack to hand in terms of transport. Thankfully, the Sony ULT Field 5 is the perfect middle ground, providing that big sound promise but in a form factor that can actually be carried around with ease.
While the Field 5 could be flung into a reasonably sized bag, there is a helpful shoulder strap included so you can carry it around from one party to another without issue. You’ll be glad to have it with you as well because the moment you pop it down, boot it up and get the tunes going, you’ll sense the party change from something fun to into something epic.
The first thing you’ll notice is just how loud this speaker can be. We were impressed by the Field 5’s scale when the volume was only at 50%, so be prepared to cover your ears if you dare to send it all the way to the max. There are also three presets that are easily accessible in a pinch. ULT 1 really amps up the bass for rap and hip hop, but ULT 2 injects a tangible sense of energy that feels well suited for tracks filled with various instruments. If you prefer having things set to a very specific sound then you can customise the EQ settings to your liking, but in every mode that we tried there was one consistent element: the Field 5 is a lot of fun to listen to. The built-in LED lighting is also a nice touch, particularly in low light settings, although don’t expect it to illuminate an entire party on its lonesome.
As you might expect from a speaker of this size, it is designed to withstand the elements thanks to an official IP67 rating for dust and water resistance. The massive battery onboard is also able to run for up to 25-hours at a time, although you can use the Field 5 to act as a power bank and charge up your other devices like your phone or headphones, so it has additional use when there isn’t a party to attend.
There’s a case to be made that even though it makes some of the best speakers on the market that Ultimate Ears has a just few too many options available to consumers. Well, if you’re a little unsure over which one to go for then the Ultimate Ears Boom 4 represents the best middle ground of what the brand has to offer with a striking design, big sound and a competitive price tag to boot.
Just like every other UE speaker, the Boom 4 is immediately recognisable from its large plus and minus buttons which aren’t just for show, they’re a great way of quickly changing the volume without having to fish around, which can be the case with some smaller buttons on other speakers. Speaking of volume, the Boom 4 is capable of filling an entire room so you can easily enjoy a reasonably sized gathering with just this in tow.
If you are looking to have a ton of people over then you can easily sync up the Boom 4 with other UE speakers via the brand’s PartyUp system. This can be done via the UE app in just a minute, and it means you can have songs follow you from one room to the next without ever missing a beat.
What’s impressive though is that because the Boom 4 isn’t as large as the Megaboom 4, it arguably works better for personal playback at lower volumes than its more expensive sibling, so you can sit at a desk and enjoy a podcast or playlist with good detail at a respectable volume. Crank the volume up though and you’ll hear plenty of bass and energy in pretty much any genre. As you may have already guessed just from looking at it, the Boom 4 has a rough and ready design with an official IP67 rating. If the speaker accidentally takes a dip in the pool then you can just scoop it up and keep the party going without worry. On the battery front you’re looking at up to 15-hours of playback which doesn’t lead the pack compared to some options on this list but it’s still more than enough juice for most situations.
How we test
Pros
Cons
Pros
Cons
Pros
Cons
Pros
Pros
Cons
Pros
Cons
Pros
Cons
Pros
Cons
Pros
Cons
Pros
Cons
Pros
Cons
Pros
Cons
Pros
Cons
Pros
Cons
Pros
Cons
Pros
Cons
Impressive sound for its size
Waterproof and very portable design
Long battery life
Great sense of style
The most expensive entry in the Beosound A1 series
Bass caught out with more demanding tracks
Punchy, informative and open sound
Sturdy and hard-wearing
Plays nicely with other Bose speakers
Low frequencies are short of discipline
Takes forever to charge
Volume eats into battery life
Rich, fun, detailed audio
Impressively spacious performance
aptX Adaptive support
Long battery life for a speaker
Robust-feeling build quality
Charging the speaker is a faff
Excellent sound
Portable
Alexa support
Great style
Waterproof design
Balanced, clear sound over Wi-Fi and Bluetooth
Tough, rugged design
Can be used to charge other devices
Solid battery life
More expensive than before
No PartyBoost feature
No fast charging
Improved sound over original
Boosted battery life
Can charge other devices
Affordable price
Dust and waterproof design
May lack a sense of fun for some
Rich, likable sound
Solid portability
Long battery life
Fun audio effects/customisations
Not the most detailed presentation
A little heavy to carry
Powerful, engaging sound
Versatile feature-set
Affordable asking price
Could benefit from more definition, dynamic agility
Stands add a fair bit to overall cost
Immersive surround sound
Easy to use
Long battery life
Smart design
Battery life depletes in standby mode
Sounds strained at high volumes
Less convincing with music
No Wi-Fi
Clear audio with lots of impact
Well-built and reasonably sized
Oodles of connectivity options
Uninspiring looks
Rear dials can be hard to access
Solid build quality
Good battery life
Generally decent audio
Not as detailed as slightly more expensive rivals
Design may be a little bland to some
Thoughtful ergonomic design
Waterproof IP67 rating
Speakerphone smarts
Sound feels flat
Battery life is mid
No EQ presets
Clearer, more balanced sound
Extended battery life
Strong water resistance
Not the same bass impact
Carry strap not included as standard
Solid build quality
Good battery life
Clean and fun audio, especially with app EQ settings
Soundstage isn’t the widest
Design may be a little bland to some
Mega powerful
Relatively compact
Bassy sound with great vocals
Can sync with other Sony speakers
Bluetooth Fast Pair and Multipoint
Lighting is underwhelming
App layout is confusing
It’s quite heavy
USB-C, finally
Rough and ready design
Long-lasting battery life
No price increase
The upgrades are minimal at best
Fewer colourways than the Boom 3
Test Data
Bang & Olufsen Beosound A1 3rd Gen
Bose SoundLink Plus
Bose SoundLink Max
Bang and Olufsen Beosound A1 2nd Gen
JBL Charge 5 Wi-Fi
Tribit StormBox Micro 2
Sony SRS-XG300
Q Acoustics M20 HD
Sony HT-AX7
Majority D80
Tribit Stormbox Lava
Sony ULT Field 1
Marshall Emberton III
Tribit PocketGo
Sony ULT Field 5
Ultimate Ears Boom 4
Power consumption
–
–
–
5 W
–
–
–
–
51 W
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
Full Specs
Bang & Olufsen Beosound A1 3rd Gen Review
Bose SoundLink Plus Review
Bose SoundLink Max Review
Bang and Olufsen Beosound A1 2nd Gen Review
JBL Charge 5 Wi-Fi Review
Tribit StormBox Micro 2 Review
Sony SRS-XG300 Review
Q Acoustics M20 HD Review
Sony HT-AX7 Review
Majority D80 Review
Tribit Stormbox Lava Review
Sony ULT Field 1 Review
Marshall Emberton III Review
Tribit PocketGo Review
Sony ULT Field 5 Review
Ultimate Ears Boom 4 Review
UK RRP
£299
£249
£399
£200
£229.99
£46.99
£219
£399
£449
£99.95
£127.99
£99.99
£159
£29.99
£199
£129.99
USA RRP
$399
$269
–
$250
–
$59.99
$349.99
$599
$499
–
$126.99
$129.00
$179
$34.99
–
$147.99
EU RRP
€349
€279
–
€250
–
€59.99
€299
€499
€549
–
–
€99
€169
–
–
–
CA RRP
–
CA$349
–
CA$350
–
CA$75.99
CA$449
–
Unavailable
–
–
CA$149
–
–
–
–
AUD RRP
–
AU$429
–
–
–
AU$76.49
AU$398
–
Unavailable
–
–
AU$169
–
–
–
–
Manufacturer
Bang & Olufsen
Bose
Bose
Bang & Olufsen
JBL
Tribit
Sony
Q Acoustics
Sony
Majority
Tribit
Sony
Marshall
Tribit
Sony
Ultimate Ears
IP rating
IP67
IP67
IP67
IP67
IP67
IP67
IP67
No
–
–
IP67
IP67
IP67
IP68
IP67
IP67
Battery Hours
24
20
20
18
20
12
25
–
–
–
24 00
12
32
20 00
25
15
Fast Charging
–
–
–
–
–
–
Yes
–
–
–
–
Yes
Yes
–
–
–
Size (Dimensions)
133 x 133 x 46 MM
231 x 86 x 99 MM
265 x 105 x 120 MM
133 x 133 x 46 MM
223 x 94 x 97 MM
99.8 x 99.8 x 42.9 MM
318 x 136 x 138 MM
170 x 296 x 279 MM
306 x 123 x 97 MM
155 x 155 x 230 MM
147 x 310 x 152 MM
206 x 76 x 77 MM
160 x 76.9 x 68 MM
108 x 81 x 42 MM
320 x 125 x 144 MM
73 x 73 x 184 MM
Weight
576 G
1.45 KG
2.13 KG
558 G
1 KG
315 G
3 KG
10.6 KG
2 KG
3.48 KG
2.3 KG
650 G
670 G
220 G
3.3 KG
620 G
ASIN
B0F3P3BN88
B0F7HZ81YD
B0D1CQGFDR
B085R7TSN6
B0C3VYT6Q6
B09Q59321N
B0B1JCXRLX
B0983MW7YN
B0CC6J8J64
B0CD85VQVN
B0DN5F9BC2
B0CX1WXP8M
B0DDCJMDJC
–
B0DY9X655Q
B0D3WLCJSJ
Release Date
2025
2025
2024
2020
2023
2022
2022
2021
2023
2023
2024
2024
2024
2025
2025
2021
First Reviewed Date
–
–
–
26/08/2020
–
–
–
–
–
03/01/2024
16/04/2025
–
–
14/01/2026
–
09/09/2025
Model Number
–
–
–
1734002
JBLCHARGE5PROBLK
–
–
QA7610
HTAX7.CEL
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
Audio Resolution
AAC, aptX Adaptive
SBC, AAC, aptX Adaptive
SBC, AAC, aptX Adaptive
–
Up to 24-bit/96kHz
–
SBC, AAC, LDAC
24bit/192kHz
SBC, AAC
–
–
SBC, AAC
SBC, AAC, LE Audio
–
SBC, AAC, LDAC
–
Driver (s)
3 1/4-inch woofer, 0.6-inch tweeter
–
–
–
53mm x 93mm woofer, 20mm tweeter
–
two 20mm tweeters, two 61 x 68mm woofers
22mm tweeter, 125mm mid/bass driver
Two X-balanced, two passive radiators
Silk dome tweeter
dual 30W Neodymium Magnet Woofers and dual 10W Silk Dome Tweeters
16 mm tweeter, 83×42 mm woofer
2-inch full range, 2 passive radiators
Single 45mm full-range driver, passive bass radiator
46mm tweeter, 79 x 107mm woofer
2x 40mm active drivers
Surround Sound Systems
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
122 x 39 x 122mm
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
Ports
USB-C
USB-C
USB-C, aux
USB-C
USB-C, USB-A
–
USB-C, USB-A, stereo mini line
USB, digital optical, 3.5mm, stereo RCA
–
USB-A, Optical, Line-In, HDMI ARC
USB-C, USB-A, 3.5mm
USB-C
USB-C
USB-C, TF card slot
USB-C, stereo mini-jack
USB-C
Audio (Power output)
60 W
–
–
–
40 W
10 W
–
130 W
–
80 W
80 W
–
–
7 W
–
–
Connectivity
Bluetooth 5.1, Made for iPhone (MFI), Google Fast Pair, Microsoft Swift Pair
Bluetooth 5.4
Bluetooth 5.3
Bluetooth 5.1
Wi-Fi (Spotify Connect, Chromecast, Alexa Multi-Room Audio, AirPlay), Bluetooth 5.3
–
Bluetooth 5.2
Bluetooth 5.0
Bluetooth 5.2
Bluetooth
Bluetooth 5.4
Bluetooth 5.3
Bluetooth 5.3
Bluetooth 6.0
Bluetooth 5.3
–
Colours
Natural Aluminium, Honey Tone, Eucalyptus Green, Warm Granite
Blue, Citrus Yellow, Black
Blue, Black
Black Anthracite, Grey Mist, Pink, Green
Black
Black
Black, Gray
matte black, matte white, walnut veneer
Grey
Black
–
Black, Off White, Orange, Forest Gray
Black & Brass, Cream, Sage, Midnight Blue
Grey
Black, Off White
Active Black, Cobalt Blue, Raspberry Red, Enchanting Lilac
Frequency Range
54 20000 – Hz
– Hz
– Hz
55 20000 – Hz
– Hz
70 20000 – Hz
20 20000 – Hz
55 22000 – Hz
– Hz
– Hz
43 19998 – Hz
20 20000 – Hz
65 20000 – Hz
80 20000 – Hz
20 20000 – Hz
– Hz
Audio Formats
–
–
–
AAC, aptX Adaptive
–
–
–
SBC, AAC, aptX, aptX-HD
–
MP3, WMA, FLAC, MAV, APE
–
–
–
AAC, SBC
–
–
Power Consumption
–
–
–
5 W
–
–
–
–
51 W
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
Speaker Type
Portable Speaker
Portable Speaker
Portable Speaker
Portable Speaker
Portable Speaker
Portable Speaker
Portable Speaker
Active Speaker
Portable Speaker
Active Speaker
Portable Speaker
Portable Speaker
Portable Speaker
Portable Speaker
Portable Speaker
Portable Speaker
Impedance
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
-2 ohms
–
–
Inputs
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
USB-C
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
What’s the best Bluetooth speaker on a budget?
We’d point to the Tribit Stormbox Micro 2. Its design allows for it to be used in many different ways, the sound is much improved over the original and it comes with app support as well as the ability to charge other devices.
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