Creative Announces Sound Blaster FRee Portable Bluetooth Speaker

Carry your music everywhere you go, in public

Creative Technology announced the Soundblaster FRee, being its latest portable Bluetooth speaker with Neodymium drivers and twin passive radiators that offer full range audio with powerful bass.

Featuring dual-orientation playback, the speaker can be placed either horizontally or vertically for various docking emplacements and, most importantly, 360-degree sound. Being light and in a cylindrical form, the FRee can be easily transportable and offers the ability to play music anywhere through the Bluetooth connectivity. The FRee is also splash-proof and so it can be brought near the pool or at seaside to delight bystanders with your great music tastes.

The Sound Blaster FRee includes connectivity options like Bluetooth for smartphone or tablets, USB for PCs and Macs and Aux-in for analog devices. It can also play music from an microSD card reader with its built-in MP3 player. The music can be organized in folders and skipped at the push of a button. Also microSD cards can be swapped easily when mood demands it. The FRee can act as a hands-free Bluetooth speaker when paired with a phone nearby.

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The USB connectivity will offer lossless high-fidelity digital audio streaming from Mac or PCs using the SBX Pro Studio suite of technologies. When connected with a PC the SBX Pro Studio will also allow the user to create profiles and to use full audio customization settings to be easily employed when pairing your speaker to any device.

However impressive this machine is, it's quite possible that all these specs and available functionalities to come down hard on its battery. The FRee it's advertised to last up to 10 hours of battery life but it's very likely to be only five. Having an internal MP3 player and doubling as a hands-free will easily drain your battery in a couple of hours. That's why it probably won't act as a phone charger either as it needs every bit of battery life it has available.

The SoundBlaster FRee will be available on worldwide markets in this July at around £79 (€110).