Mohu BeBox: Portable Music with a Punch

The Mohu BeBox (www.bebox.gomohu.com) is a great sounding portable music system that packs in lots of features and, most importantly, sounds great.

Update May 4, 2016: Mohu contacted me and told me that they’ve discovered a potential safety issue with the BeBox. I’m disappointed because I really enjoyed the BeBox Smart BoomBox.

Mohu has discovered an issue with the BeBox Smart Boombox with Android Tablet. One unit caught fire during an unmonitored test. While the cause of the failure is unknown at this time, there is a danger of overheating and/or fire which may result in significant property damage and/or serious injury to the user. This issue affects all models and serial numbers of the Mohu BeBox.

As the safety of our customers is always our primary concern, Mohu is working with the Consumer Product Safety Commission to voluntarily recall this item and remove it from the market. In the meantime, please do not use the product. Unplug it from the power source and power the unit off. If you are a retailer, please discontinue selling the product and contact your Mohu representative.

Customers should return the product for a full refund by visiting the following web page and filling out a short form. We will then send you a shipping container and a pre-paid shipping label. Once we receive the item, we will credit the full amount back to your original form of payment (if applicable).

http://www.gomohu.com/bebox-recall-request

Please call 1-855-446-6648, send an email to su*****@go****.com or write us at Mohu, 2720 Discovery Dr., Raleigh, NC 27616 if you have any questions or concerns about this BeBox recall notice.

When I met with Mark Buff, founder and CEO of Mohu, he told me that he set out to design “a modern boombox, not just another Bluetooth speaker”, and that’s exactly what the company did.

BeBox is all about big sound. It has five speakers: two soft dome tweeters, two midrange drivers, and the shining star is a six in long high-performance throw woofer. The core of the unit is made of up five Class D amps for a total of 100W of audio power. This thing can pound out some powerful bass when asked to. I could feel the beat when I cranked up the dancehall and the reggae. I also noticed that it isn’t all about bass. It’s about realism. When I listened to classical and jazz I found the sound to be rich and warm, not overly bass-y.

BeBox has a built-in Android tablet and WiFi, which means that you can run your favorite music apps directly on it while you use your phone for something else. I loaded it up with TuneIn Radio, Pandora, Spotify, YouTube, Amazon Music, Deadhead Archive, and Podcast Addict. I downloaded my favorite media player, Rocket Player. Everything worked great. It also has 16 GB of internal storage for music and a microSD slot. I popped in a 32 GB card full of music and enjoyed that too.

I connected my phone, iPad, and Windows PC to it using Bluetooth very easily. The only drawback is that there is no Bluetooth security which concerns me but doesn’t ruin the BeBox experience. I watch a lot of movies and TV shows on my iPad and BeBox sounded great for those too.

BeBox offers lots of connectivity. It has an HDMI port so you can stream video from it onto a monitor. It has a 3.5 mm AUX in port and a USB slot. I love the USB slot because I was able to connect a hard drive with all of my music – almost 400 GB at this point – and play it all. The hard drive required an additional power source, so this isn’t a good set up for listeners on the go. I connected a 16 GB USB flash drive and listened to music from that quite easily.

Speaking of music on the go, BeBox includes a 16,000 milli-amp battery, which is a pretty big battery. I got a lot of battery life during testing, ranging from 8 to 10 hours depending on what I was doing and how loud I played my music.

BeBox is $499 and is available from http://bebox.gomohu.com and Amazon. I love my BeBox. It looks and sounds great in my living room. At 14 lbs it’s a bit heavy to be carried around, but it’s doable. It’s more of a carry it somewhere then sit and listen to it than it is for constant movement. The $499 price tag is a bit steep, but this unit packs in so many features and sounds great so it’s worth it. The BeBox is much more than a Bluetooth speaker – it’s like getting great sounding musical devices in one.