A Spiky Outdoor Speaker That Charges Your Gadgets

Image: Outdoor Tech

It’s pretty hard for a Bluetooth speaker to stand out these days, but Outdoor Tech’s Big Turtle Shell commands attention for a few reasons. It’s summertime antics-proof, it keeps your other devices’ batteries topped off while you listen to music, and it will get loud.

The Big Turtle Shell looks like a geometric approximation of the Batmobile Tumbler. It comes in black. And those sharp angles on the speaker’s surface are designed for more than just looking interesting. When the speaker is laid flat, all that choppy terrain helps it push sound in directions other than straight up in the air.

You don’t have to lay the Big Turtle Shell speaker down, though. There’s a flat surface on one side so you can use it as a front-firing speaker too. In that orientation, the power, volume, and track-navigation buttons are on top of it. You can also hang the Turtle Shell on things and use it to aim Christopher Cross cuts in whatever direction you want thanks to large handles built into its sides. It’s about the size of a pound cake.

Not only does the Big Turtle Shell offer impressive battery life—its 7,800 mAh battery gives you up to 16 hours of playtime per charge, according to Outdoor Tech—but it also lets you sip off that high-capacity cell to charge your other devices. There’s a USB port built into the side of it, and the speaker can charge smartphones as well as iPads and other devices that require 2.1-amp charging.

That makes it a useful multi-purpose tool for camping, beach trips, and other outdoor adventures. The Big Turtle Shell is shock proof, sand- and dust-proof, and water-resistant. So you can dump water on it, but it’s not built for complete submersion.

Feature-wise, it seems built to go toe-to-toe with the Big Jambox. Both of them get as loud as a power saw, with a peak loudness of 110 decibels. You can daisy-chain a couple of Big Turtle Shells together via a 3.5mm audio-out port, and the speaker supports Bluetooth 4.0, NFC pairing, and line-in input through a 3.5mm port.

This versatile speaker comes in at a lower price than the Big Jambox, too. It costs $230, and ships in two weeks. Keep in mind that we tested the Big Turtle Shell’s little brother a few years ago, and the sound quality didn’t exactly blow us away. This version is much bigger though, and the amply-sized passive radiator on the bottom offers at least some hope for better sound quality.