Dear manufacturers of affordable Bluetooth speakers: Ikea just completely upended your game.
Yes, that's right, Ikea.
You probably wouldn't be surprised if we told you that Ikea designed a stylish, affordable Bluetooth speaker—pretty much everything the company makes is relatively inexpensive and visually pleasing.
But excellent audio? To be completely honest, we weren't expecting it.
The Eneby comes in two sizes—here we review the larger 12-inch speaker, which rings up at a very affordable $89.
(The smaller 8-inch model costs $49.) When we think of sub-$100 Bluetooth speakers, most of them are small, portable, and don't get terribly loud or offer real bass depth.
So the price and size of the 12-inch Eneby made us skeptical, but this was erased within ten seconds of playing the first track through its very capable drivers.
Simply put, this speaker sounds awesome for the price, and outperforms models that are significantly more expensive.
That makes it our Editors' Choice for affordable Bluetooth speakers.
Design
The Eneby measures 12.0 by 12.0 by 4.0 inches (HWD) and weighs 8.3 pounds.
Its front face is covered in a tweed-like dark gray material that will blend well in most rooms around the house.
The enclosure itself is black or white, and the grille is removable, revealing a single 1-inch soft-dome tweeter and dual 4-inch woofers.
The speaker looks cool either way—the cloth of the grille is attractive, but the exposed drivers are also alluring.
The tweeter gets 12 watts and each woofer 15 watts, delivering a frequency range of 48Hz to 20kHz.
On the bottom panel, silicone rubber feet keep the Eneby from scooting around flat surfaces.
An included (but optional) handle on top makes for easy carrying or hanging, and also acts as the bass port for air moved by the drivers to escape through.
Because it's Ikea, the design is about as minimal as it gets.
There's a single knob with a white status LED in its center.
Press it to power up, hold it in to pair, and press it again to power down.
The knob is a volume dial, as well, and its levels are independent of the volume levels on your mobile device.
It's too bad there aren't playback controls—you'll be skipping tracks and playing and pausing on your mobile device.
There's also no speakerphone functionality—not that we really expect it from a speaker this size that isn't portable.
The back panel houses the connection for the included power cable, as well as a 3.5mm aux input.
There's no cable included for the aux input, however.
The back panel has two threaded screw holes for wall mounting, as well.
Ikea also sells cool, minimal speaker stands for $10.
And for what it's worth, the Eneby is made to fit inside Ikea's Kallax shelving unit.
You can pair up to eight devices to the speaker, but unfortunately, you can't link two Eneby speakers as a left and right stereo pair.
Even so, the Eneby delivers tremendous value as a standalone unit.
Performance
Ikea's decision to include dual large drivers and only a single tweeter is an interesting choice that pays off.
The woofers, obviously, deliver double the low-end a single woofer would.
Not only does this allow the Eneby to seem more powerful in terms of bass response, it allows the speaker to get quite loud without distorting on deep bass tracks, as each woofer needs to work a little less hard on its own.
At top volumes on both the speaker and our sound source (in this case, an iPhone 6s), the Eneby got quite loud, and never succumbed to distortion, even on tracks with intense sub-bass content, like The Knife's "Silent Shout." Not only is the audio clean at high volumes, but the bass depth is impressive: It's some of the most powerful audio performance we've heard in a wireless speaker below $100.
Heck, it's got more bass depth than plenty of $175 speakers.
That said, many of those speakers are portable, so they naturally have smaller woofers and less overall power.
See How We Test Speakers
Bill Callahan's "Drover," a track with far less deep bass in the mix, gives us a better sense of the Eneby's overall sound signature.
The drums on this track sound full and round, with some added bass depth, but nothing so over the top that it upsets the balance of the mix.
We've tested plenty of speakers in this price range that can't really muster the bass response required to give these drums a naturally round, rich depth, but the Eneby does it quite well.
Callahan's baritone vocals also receive the ideal mix of rich low-mid presence and crisp high-mids edge.
The acoustic guitar strums are crisp enough, too, and the higher register percussive hits have a nice high frequency presence to them.
Overall, the is a bass-forward sound signature that will probably turn off purists seeking a flat response, but the lows aren't obscenely boosted.
On Jay-Z and Kanye West's "No Church in the Wild," the kick drum loop receives an ideal high-mid presence, allowing its attack to remain punchy and push through the layers of the mix.
There's also a prominent low frequency presence to the loop that sounds heavy and powerful.
The sub-bass synth hits that punctuate the beat are delivered with decent depth, but you need a subwoofer to really reach down and deliver their deepest lows.
The vocals on this track are all exceptionally crisp and clear, and there's no hint of added sibilance.
It's a somewhat bass-forward, but balanced, sound signature.
Orchestral tracks, like the opening scene from John Adams' The Gospel According to the Other Mary, are delivered with a solid balance.
The lower register instrumentation isn't pushed too far out into the spotlight.
Instead, it remains in its supporting role, anchoring the higher register brass, strings, and vocals.
This isn't to say things sound thin—this is a rich, full sound signature, but there's not much bass depth here to push forward (compared with pop music), so this style of track sounds far closer to flat response.
If you're thinking that the output must be slathered in digital signal processing (DSP) that kills the dynamics in order to avoid distortion, think again.
At top volumes on both sound source and the speaker, the DSP's presence is subtle.
The speaker can sound like it's teetering on the edge of distortion at the absolute highest volumes, but we never observed it getting there.
We did see the drivers push so hard on "No Church in the Wild" that the grille was visibly vibrating, but the dynamics didn't sound flattened like they often do on speakers that employ DSP to avoid distortion.
Conclusions
If the look of the Ikea Eneby appeals to you, you'll also probably be interested in the Urbanears Baggen and the Tivoli Audio ART Speaker, both of which cost more than twice as much.
The Eneby obviously isn't as powerful as the $449 Baggen, but it offers a pretty good fight for its far lower price, and it actually surpasses the sound quality of the $249 Tivoli ART.
The Marshall Kilburn and the Klipsch The One both sound better than the Eneby, but cost quite a bit more.
The 8-inch Eneby packs the same 1-inch tweeter but a single, smaller woofer.
It also sounds quite good for its size and price, but it's not on the same level as the 12-inch model.
For $100, or even $150, you're going to be hard-pressed to find a better-sounding Bluetooth speaker than the 12-inch Eneby.
Sure, a second tweeter could provide a true stereo experience, but the same criticism can be thrown at nearly every other sub-$100 speaker.
And the ability to link with another Eneby to create a stereo pair would also be nice, but perhaps that can be an upgrade down the road.
As is, the Eneby is shockingly good.
The bar has been raised for affordable Bluetooth audio, and Ikea earns our Editors' Choice.
Pros
The Bottom Line
The impressive 12-inch Ikea Eneby has the beauty and power of a Bluetooth speaker twice its price.
