The TREBLAB HD77 is a small, well-made portable Bluetooth speaker that comes with a removable carrying strap and carabiner clip so you can clip it to your bag when you’re out and about. It looks and feels like the JBL Flip 5 and other speakers in the Flip series. It has a water resistance rating of IPX6, which means it can be in direct contact with water for up to three minutes without getting damaged.
This means you don’t have to worry about it getting a little wet when you take it outside. This stereo speaker has a 360-degree design that gives it a wide, immersive soundstage. But, like most speakers of this size, it doesn’t have a deep bass and isn’t very loud. Unlike the JBL Flip 6, it doesn’t have a graphic EQ or other ways to change the way it sounds to your liking.
The black HD77 is a cylinder that is 7.3 inches long and 3 inches across. It has two LED bands, one on each end of the speaker. They light up when you use them, but they usually stay the same colour (blue when on, red when powering down, and green when charging, with nothing happening to these colours during playback).
A black cloth grille covers most of the speaker. Underneath, there are two 12.5-watt drivers that make sounds from 80Hz to 16kHz. At each end are passive radiators that help round out the sound. On the top are buttons for power/pairing, plus/minus, play/pause, and call management.
The volume and playback are both controlled by the plus and minus buttons. This makes it easy to skip a track when you meant to turn up the volume. Most of the time, it’s a little easier to use something when the play button also lets you move between tracks (with multiple taps).
The HD77 has a 5200mAh battery and can play music for 20 hours at a low volume, 12 hours at a moderate volume, and 9 hours at a high volume. This time can be extended by playing music through an aux cord. The charging time is four hours, so if you remember to plug it in overnight or at least when you wake up in the morning, you won’t run out of battery during the day.
But if you don’t keep track, it’s hard to know how much battery is left… until it’s gone. When the HD77’s battery gets down to about 3 percent, which is a fairly low level for shutting down, loud warnings will play every 30 seconds. If you took this portable speaker somewhere where you can’t plug it in right away, it won’t be worth it to play music for the last 20–30 minutes of charge. But the speaker can still play music while it’s charging, so you can keep the party going if you happen to be home.