Sony is one of the heaviest hitters in the portable Bluetooth speaker realm, and it's been busy updating its outdoor-friendly lineup for the summer. The SRS-XB23 is the least expensive of the company's three new waterproof models, and at $108, it delivers relatively powerful audio. Those seeking huge bass will likely want to move up in size and price to Sony's $250 SRS-XB43, but if you're looking to cap your spending at around $100, the SRS-XB23 is a good, no-nonsense option with a rugged build and adjustable EQ.

Design

The cylindrical SRS-XB23 measures 3.0 by 8.6 inches (HW) and is available in black, blue, green, red, or white. Beneath the wraparound cloth grille, dual full-range drivers deliver a frequency response of 20Hz to 20kHz. Both ends of the speaker house passive radiators to help pump out extra bass response, and one end of the speaker has a loop with a lanyard tied to it for hanging the speaker from anything that can support its 1.3-pound weight.

The SRS-XB23's IP67 rating is quite good for a portable speaker. The 6 means it’s highly dust-resistant and the 7 means it can withstand splashes, heavy rain, and can even be submerged up to a meter for 30 minutes. Thus, it can be rinsed off under a faucet without issue, so long as the snap-shut cover for the cable connection is fully closed. Furthermore, Sony claims the speaker is even saltwater-resistant, so the speaker is certainly beach-friendly.

A rubberized control panel runs down the back panel, with buttons for power, Bluetooth pairing, play/pause/speakerphone (multiple taps will skip forward or backward a track), and plus and minus for volume. Below this, a battery status button gives you a vocal readout of the remaining battery life. There are also controls for Party Mode (the SRS-XB23 can link up with up to 100 other SRS series speakers) and Stereo Pair (pressing this allows either the left or right channel to be assigned to one speaker in a paired duo).

The Sony Music Center app for Android and iOS is a one-size-fits-all app that offers different features depending on the product you pair with it. The SRS-XB23 links up with the app without issue and gives you access to a few helpful settings. First, if you want stereo audio instead of mono, you have to switch to stereo in the sound settings menu. (Mono seems more useful for scenarios where you pair the SRS-XB23 with another SRS-XB23 and create a stereo pair.) This same section also has a user-adjustable EQ and a way to switch off the bass, which sounds bad but saves battery life. There are also various other power-saving modes you can enable or disable.

The SRS-XB23 connects via Bluetooth 5.0 and supports AAC and SBC Bluetooth codecs, but not AptX.

Sony estimates battery life to be roughly 12 hours, but your results will vary with your volume levels.

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Performance

On tracks with intense sub-bass content, like The Knife’s “Silent Shout,” the SRS-XB23 does its best to deliver deep bass, but that’s just not in the cards. It doesn’t distort, thanks to some pretty strong DSP (digital signal processing) tamping down the deep lows when the volume is raised. Thus, at high volume levels, the bass sounds thinned-out, while at moderate volumes, you get a stronger bass sound. Either way, the SRS-XB23 isn’t capable of fully reproducing sub-bass—and at this price and size, it shouldn’t be expected to. The kind of bass depth it excels at is more in the lows and low-mids—the bass line on Pavement’s “Stereo,” for instance, sounds rich and dynamic here.

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Bill Callahan’s “Drover,” a track with far less deep bass in the mix, gives us a better sense of the SRS-XB23’s general sound signature. The drums on this track can sound overly thunderous on bass-forward speakers, but here, they take a backseat and sound more like subtle tapping than thumping. It’s Callahan’s baritone vocals that get most of the low-mid richness, and thus sound like the primary bass presence in the mix. The high-mids and highs are quite crisp and sculpted, ensuring that the mix retains its clear treble edge. Vocals, acoustic strums, and higher percussive hits all benefit from the sculpted highs here.

On Jay-Z and Kanye West’s “No Church in the Wild,” the kick drum loop receives an ideal amount of high-mid presence, allowing its attack to retain its punchiness. The drum loop can sound slightly thin here, though, and the sub-bass synth hits that punctuate the beat are more implied than delivered—we get their raspy top notes, but nothing that resembles the powerful bass depth you hear on a large speaker system. The vocals on this track are delivered with solid high-mid and high-frequency clarity—there’s also not really any extra sibilance added despite the sculpting in the high-mids. Generally speaking, the SRS-XB23 does a solid job delivering a balanced mix, but its bass depth is rooted in modesty and not in truly deep, sub-bass frequencies. For many genres, this works just fine, but electronic and hip-hop mixes can sometimes sound deprived of the anchoring sub-bass they need.

Orchestral tracks, like the opening scene from John Adams’ The Gospel According to the Other Mary, sound rich and full through the SRS-XB23. The lower-register instrumentation gets plenty of support through the drivers and passive radiators—there’s some added low-mid richness here, but nothing that muddies up the mix. The higher-register brass, strings, and vocals are delivered with crisp clarity.

For speakerphones calls, the mic offers decent intelligibility. Using the Voice Memos app on an iPhone 8, we can understand every recorded word. There's some typical Bluetooth distortion fuzzing up the words, but it’s not overwhelming, and the mic’s levels are solid.

Conclusions

For a speaker this size around $100, the Sony SRS-XB23 delivers on several fronts. Its audio performance is solid, with rich bass depth and solid high-frequency clarity. Those seeking truly deep bass from a portable speaker need to spend more on a larger option like the aforementioned SRS-XB43 or the $400 JBL Boombox 2. In the $75 to $150 realm, we’re fans of the $140 JBL Charge 4 and $150 Sony SRS-XB33. The SRS-XB23 is no slouch with its rugged, waterproof build and app-based EQ controls—but for some, spending a little more on its bigger, more powerful siblings will be worth it.