The Fender x Teufel Rockster Cross ($249) is a powerful outdoor speaker bringing ample sound for small gatherings, a water-resistant build, useful portability, decent battery life, and some of the iconic stylings of Fender amps. Its sound isn’t impeccable, and it’s lacking in extra features. Plus, its price tag opens it up to some serious competition, especially when its specs and feature list are met by even our favorite budget boombox, the Anker Soundcore Boom 2 ($129.99). For the money, you can get the beefier Soundcore Boom Plus 2 ($249.99), which is more powerful, offers more customizable sound, and has some fun lighting effects to boot. And if you were eyeing the Rockster Cross for its classic stylings, the Editors' Choice Marshall’s Middleton II ($329.99) pulls off the retro look better while offering a competitive set of features and sound quality in a smaller package. 

Design: Blending Portability With Style

(Credit: Mark Knapp)

The Fender x Teufel Rockster Cross is large for a portable Bluetooth speaker, measuring 6.3 by 15 by 5.1 inches (HWD) and weighing 5.3 pounds. But it’s reasonable compared with the boomboxes of yore that it’s filling the role of, and it sits between the Middleton II and Soundcore Boom Plus 2 in size and weight. It makes good use of its size to fit a pair of tweeters, a single five-inch woofer, and dual passive radiators, letting it provide proper stereo sound with some extra bass extension down to a claimed 50Hz.

(Credit: Mark Knapp)

Since the Rockster Cross is designed for on-the-go use, it has built-in anchor points on top to connect to the included shoulder strap. That strap is a touch stretchy and has sturdy little locking carabiners to handle the link. You can adjust the length of the strap as well, so it’s not dangling too low to comfortably walk with. The rear of the speaker is smartly curved to better hug your body when it is slung over your shoulder, too. Each side of the Rockster Cross also has a scooped-out hollow, providing a good grip for carrying the speaker by hand.

The speaker feels pretty rugged with its hard plastic frame and lightly rubberized finish. It's IPX5-rated against water ingress, so you don’t need to worry too much about getting caught in the rain or splashed at the side of a pool. That falls short of the IP67 rating of the Middleton II and IPX7 of the Soundcore Boom Plus 2, though. Part of that ingress protection is coming from rubber covers over the ports on the back of the speaker. These covers unfortunately lack a good lip to grab onto, and I’ve found this makes it tough to open them by hand. If you have short fingernails, you may need to resort to pliers or a screwdriver to get them open.

(Credit: Mark Knapp)

Underneath those covers, you’ll find a 3.5mm aux input, a USB-A port to charge other devices (at just 2.5 watts), a micro USB service port, and a DC barrel jack. That’s right: Charging this speaker comes by way of a laptop-style charging brick and not USB. That may allow faster charging speeds from the 65-watt adapter, but it will also entail bringing the charger with you more often since you won’t easily find a matching charger everywhere you go, as you would with USB-C.

The top of the speaker includes all the buttons you’ll need regular access to: volume, play/pause, and a shortcut to call up your phone’s voice assistant. Meanwhile, around back there’s a smaller row of buttons. There you’ll find the power button with a small set of lights to roughly indicate battery level. There’s also the Bluetooth pairing button, a stereo pairing button, and a toggle for the bass-boosting Outdoor Mode.

The speaker has a few clever design elements. Its front angles out at the ends, letting it aim its tweeters slightly outward to create a wider soundstage. The base has rubber feet that allow it to face directly forward or lean back slightly, directing sound upward and offering better directivity toward your ears if the speaker is placed low down.

The Rockster Cross is rated to run for 16 hours at medium volume, which is pretty loud for a speaker this size. That’s a fair battery life, but it falls short of both the Middleton II at 30 hours and the Soundcore Boom Plus 2 at 20 hours. The speaker supports Bluetooth 5.0 connections and the aptX codec on top of the SBC standard. Though the Rockster Cross doesn’t claim to work with Bluetooth Multipoint, I have confirmed it will connect to two devices at the same time and switch back and forth between audio sources. But it’s not perfectly seamless, occasionally hanging up for a while when switching or not readily allowing a second device to connect. It also has a built-in microphone for speakerphone capability and use with a connected device’s voice assistant.  

One thing you won’t find for the Rockster Cross is an app. This makes firmware updates harder and limits custom equalization to whatever EQ software your music player supports.

Audio: Punchy, But Not Precise

The Fender x Teufel Rockster Cross puts on a strong show. It makes great use of its woofer and radiators to deliver low, thumpy bass. In The Knife’s “Silent Shout,” it strikes the right balance, delivering impactful bass triplets to carry the tune forward and pounding out the sub-bass quarter notes that underline the track. Whether the outward-angled tweeters or Dynamore processing deserve the credit is unclear, but the Rockster Cross also delivers an impressive stereo image with a wide soundstage. The vocal harmonies in this track phase nicely from side to side. The synth melody also gets a good amount of bite from the tweeters and aptX codec, helping deliver good high-frequency presence.

(Credit: Mark Knapp)

That thumpy energy carries forward into Kendrick Lamar’s “Loyalty,” where the drums hit hard. The vocals are clear, and the Bruno Mars sample is crisp in the upper registers. This track shows the limits of the Rockster Cross’s low end, though. At the 35-second mark, the song introduces a sub-bass line that many speakers can’t recreate well, and the Rockster Cross largely fails to hit any of the notes, which mostly fall below 50Hz. Occasionally, part of one of the notes will burp out, but it’s not to the benefit of the listening experience. The bass-boosting Outdoor Mode doesn’t remedy this sub-bass shortcoming either.

The Rockster Cross handles Bill Callahan’s “Drover” well, too. While the speaker can deliver thumpy bass, it doesn’t overdo it. As a result, the drums in “Drover” are clear but don’t drown out the rest of the track. Callahan’s baritone vocals have a nice heft and come through loud and clear. The electric guitar and fiddle also benefit from the stereo separation for a more dynamic performance. While presence is good, it’s not excellent, nor is the brilliance, and “Drover” highlights these limits. The acoustic rhythm guitar and cymbal hits simply lack some of the high-frequency nuance that brings them to life.

The Rockster Cross isn’t quite up to the task of compelling orchestral renditions. That limited brilliance hurts the strings and brass in John Adams’ The Gospel According to the Other Mary. Without that high-end to help them stand out, these instruments further blend in with those in the lower octaves, leading to a pretty cacophonous sound. And though the speaker has stereo separation and a decent soundstage for a Bluetooth speaker, that’s a low bar to clear. Wider separation would help different elements stand out better.

The quality of the sound from the Rockster Cross can shift around a bit depending on volume. At low volumes, the bass can feel a little weak in the mix. At 50%, the audio hits its stride, but the Rockster Cross pushes volume levels that are too high for a 100-square-foot room. The sound remains clean up to about 75%. Beyond that, the DSP can hold the bass back at times, and the presentation becomes a bit harsh with emphasized mids. Even then, the bass is perhaps not tamed enough. With the speaker maxed out, the bass distorts plainly through the opening of The Knife’s “Silent Shout.” Not all music will hit the speaker so hard when it’s at full volume, but this isn’t one you should just dial up to the max and let it rip. And though the speaker doesn’t rattle on its own, even at high volumes, the carabiners holding the shoulder strap will. When the bass kicks in at higher volume levels, they rattle obnoxiously. The speaker can also rumble a bit on hard surfaces when at full volume, especially if it’s in its tilted-back position.

In addition to the outbound audio, the speaker features a microphone for calls and voice assistant use. But that mic is not sensitive enough. In a test recording, my voice was very quiet, even though I held the speaker in my hands. The orientation played a part in the volume, but didn’t bring it up to adequate levels. Trying to use my phone’s voice assistant was also tedious. I had to speak especially loud and clearly, and it would frequently miss my first few words.