Pros & Cons
-
- Compact and lightweight
- Surprisingly loud volume
- 20-hour battery life
- Waterproof and buoyant
- Affordable
-
- Mono audio with overemphasized mids
- Bland design
Tribit PocketGo Specs
| Bluetooth | |
| Built-In Voice Assistant | None |
| Channels | Mono |
| Physical Connections | microSD |
| Physical Connections | USB-C |
| Portable | |
| Speakerphone | |
| Water-Resistant |
The Tribit PocketGo ($29.99) is a potent little Bluetooth speaker that’s made with portability in mind. It’s compact, lightweight, and can shrug off water. It delivers an energetic, mid-focused sound with a surprising amount of volume. It also has impressively long battery life considering its size. It's an excellent choice if you want a speaker that's small enough to fit in your pocket, though if you're willing to sacrifice some portability, the Tribit Stormbox Mini+ ($39.99) offers better sound all around, making it our Editors' Choice.
Design: Truly Tiny
As the name suggests, the Tribit PocketGo is a compact Bluetooth speaker that’s ready to ride in tight confines. It’s not going to be a perfect fit in every pocket at 3.19 by 4.25 by 1.65 inches (HWD), but it’s pretty close to the size of some overstuffed wallets. And at just 7.8 ounces, it’s plenty light—and less than the weight and thickness of the still-small StormBox Mini+ (1.2 pounds). I was able to walk around with it in a sweatpants pocket without any bother. It has a small carrying loop as well, which you can fit with a clip for convenient portability.
(Credit: Mark Knapp)The design is simple and plain-looking. It fits a single 45mm driver, good for 7 watts, on its front face alongside a passive radiator. That’s it. It’s a mono speaker. The unit is almost entirely wrapped in a fabric knit, except for the top and bottom edges and a small portion of one side. The bottom and rear have little rubber feet that do a good job of minimizing bouncing on hard surfaces.
(Credit: Mark Knapp)Along the top edge, the PocketGo includes buttons for power, Bluetooth pairing, volume, and playback control. There’s an indicator light there as well, and a small mic hole for speakerphone and voice assistant use. The right edge hides a USB-C charging port behind a thick gasket. That port can charge the speaker up in three hours. The speaker is rated to run for 20 hours at 50% volume, and testing supports that claim.
(Credit: Mark Knapp)Interestingly enough, the PocketGo isn’t just a Bluetooth speaker. Tucked away under its gasket, next to the USB-C charging port, is a microSD card slot that supports up to 128GB of storage and MP3, WAV, or WMA files. With a microSD card slotted in, the speaker will automatically start playing music when powered on. There’s no easy way to navigate a huge library, but if you fill the storage with a playlist, you’ve got a backup to spare your phone’s battery life or continue to jam in the backcountry where cell signals won’t let you access a streaming library.
Since the speaker is meant for use on the go, it’s built to handle that with IP68-level protection against dust and water, though you probably don’t have to worry much about submersion since it floats. It’s also built to withstand drops per the MIL-STD-810H standard, which means a four-foot fall onto a hard surface shouldn't be a problem.
Though the PocketGo isn’t the most feature-rich device, it supports Bluetooth 6.0 and AAC, which is a healthy bump over SBC. It can also work in a stereo pair with a second PocketGo. And even though Tribit doesn’t mention it, the speaker also supports Bluetooth Multipoint.
App Experience: Simple, With Custom EQ
(Credit: Tribit)The PocketGo works with Tribit’s app, which doesn’t require an account but will prompt you to create one. This provides simple playback controls (which can work for Bluetooth audio or microSD card files), clearer battery level information, several EQ presets, and a custom nine-band equalizer. The app also lets you update the firmware, but I have had issues getting the update process to complete on this speaker and other Tribit products in the past, like the StormBox Mini+. Still, the app is fairly simple and not as essential to the PocketGo as it can be for many speakers and earbuds.
Similar Products
Our Current Picks for The Best Outdoor Speakers for 2026
Sound: Energetic and Loud for the Size
As you can imagine, don’t expect perfection from this tiny, lightweight Bluetooth speaker. What you’ll get is rather standard, mono sound, which takes a lot of the dynamics out of music, although it's boisterous for its size. At the 50% volume at which its 20-hour battery life is tied, it delivers decent volume for a small room or picnic, and more than necessary for listening with the speaker clipped to a backpack. And even when cranked to max volume, it doesn’t suffer from dramatic DSP ducking, though the mids get a little harsh.
The presentation largely sticks to the mids, with extra emphasis on the low-mids. In The Knife’s “Silent Shout,” the PocketGo sounds energetic thanks to that emphasis, making the synth melody plenty lively. But other elements of the track come up lacking. The lower vocal harmony isn’t well balanced with the upper harmony, and the lack of stereo also reduces the phasing effect of the voices. The bass triplets don’t have their full impact, and the sub-bass quarter notes only appear as overtones that lack any real heft. The higher frequencies aren’t very present either under the emphasized mids.
Kendrick Lamar’s “Loyalty” opens with a high-frequency Bruno Mars sample that lacks some of its sparkle because of the weak high frequencies. The drums hit firmly, and the vocals are clear, though the lack of stereo still makes for a congested soundstage that can affect clarity. Cymbals don’t ring out with fine detail, likely further impacted by the limitations of the AAC codec. And naturally, with just one small speaker, the PocketGo has almost no ability to touch the notes in the deep sub-bass line introduced about 35 seconds into the track. There’s a shadow of those low notes, but none of their substance.
Bill Callahan’s “Drover” loses a lot of its luster from a speaker like this. His baritone vocals are well presented, falling neatly into the frequency range the speaker likes to emphasize, though they are unnaturally boosted in some of his lowest notes. The drums suffer from a lack of presence, not feeling quite lifelike. They also end up a bit muddy toward the climax, where the constant patter simply can’t stand out in the mix. The bass largely sits in the background of this track, but when it comes out of the PocketGo, its notes sometimes fade in and out. The acoustic rhythm guitar’s higher strings are overly faint next to the lower mids, while the root notes of its chords are too loud.
Busy orchestral tracks like John Adams’ The Gospel According to the Other Mary are simply out. The PocketGo lacks the depth for many instruments, doesn’t have a precise enough high end to bring the strings and brass to life, and is too congested in mono to provide any clarity to the performance.
All told, the PocketGo works best for energetic tracks with minimal instrumentation. With too much going on, its presentation can become muddled, and there’s a chance different sections of the track won’t come through clearly. Fortunately, vocals tend to get extra emphasis, so you’ll generally get the melody, which, given its intended purpose of providing a lot of sound out of a tiny, inexpensive speaker, may be just fine.
For calls and voice assistant commands, the PocketGo's mic is surprisingly good. Whether the speaker is in your hands or set down nearby, it picks up voices clearly, without much echo or disturbing compression.