In my never-ending nerdy quest to find new tech and gear, I spend an unfortunate amount of time scouring Amazon and YouTube for reviews of products that I’ll probably never buy. From gaming computers to high-end cameras to pointless gadgets that I’ll never be able to afford, I am always in search of legitimately useful tech - but on a budget.

One piece of gear that I’ve always wanted but never actually owned is a bluetooth speaker. I’ve had bluetooth headphones before with varying success, but never a dedicated speaker that I could setup in my kitchen when cooking breakfast or bring to the park when Reid and I play baseball in the summer and get our bro-tank tan on I knew of brands like JBL and more obvious names like Bose and Beats, but never could justify the high price tag. After all, its not like I needed some über-aggressive speaker when making a cup of coffee in the morning, nor was I in need of a block party-sized setup (because I’m just not that cool.) So I decided to stick to a budget of about $50. A price that would get me good sound and a decent feature set without filling me with buyer’s remorse the second that “Champagne Supernova” stopped playing.

I stumbled across a brand called Cambridge SoundWorks which produced highly rated speakers at a sub $40 price point. They have two of the highest rated speakers on Amazon, the OontZ Angle 3 and OontZ Angle 3 Plus. I chose the latter, citing the drastically increased battery size and larger dimensions, all for only about $7 more.

Arriving in the box is the speaker, a small user guide, and nothing else. You simply turn on the device (which came with about a 70% battery charge) and connect it to your phone or laptop via bluetooth, and you’re done.

First of all, the build quality is much better than expected for only $35. It’s a small, water-sealed triangular shape that makes it at least splash resistant and shower friendly. It has all the buttons you could need, including ‘next track’ and ‘previous track’ buttons which are sometimes hard to come by. It also has a battery that is said to last nearly 30 hours. I’ve only had the speaker for a few days, but after using it pretty heavily I can report that I still haven’t needed to charge it since it first arrived. Connection was quick and painless, too, and the bluetooth range has worked exactly as needed so far.

As for the sound, I was pretty impressed for what you get at this price point. The speaker houses two medium sized speakers with a passive subwoofer crammed in there too. Now the sound isn’t going to blow you away or make you drop your surround sound system that costs ten times as much. But the speaker remained clear and useable at full volume all throughout my house, and was heard pretty well outdoors in the park during a rousing game of Tennis (running around the court to a steady supply of John Mayer and Coldplay was quite an experience.) The highs and mids sound good, and offer pretty good separation even at this price. The low-end is good, not great, however. You can certainly hear the punchy bass tones in songs ranging from pop to folk, but you won’t always feel them, if that makes sense. Granted, the size of the entire speaker is about six or seven inches, so I wouldn’t expect to have my face melted off. The speaker also didn’t get as loud as I could have wanted, even with the volume maxed on both your device and the speaker itself. But a little tuning to the equalizer can fix both of these issues.

For as compact a package as you get with the OontZ Angle 3 Plus, you get quite a bit of bang for your buck. It's water resistant, has a crazy long battery life, and sounds pretty damn good when you need some tunes in a pinch. You’re not going to be throwing a banger with this bad boy - It just doesn’t get loud enough or provide big enough sound. But you have to ask yourself what you’ll be using a bluetooth speaker for. If you’re throwing a party and want to deafen your audience, you’ll need to spend quite a bit more (also, I happily accept your invite.) But if you just want a portable way of listening to your music that sounds exponentially better than just sticking your smartphone into a red solo cup to ‘project’ the sound, you can’t go wrong with this triangle of tunes.