The Braven BRV-XXL is the biggest Bluetooth speaker I’ve ever seen (review)

I’ve seen my fair share of products come across my desk for review in the time I’ve been writing. Not very often can I say that the product has taken up my entire desk. The Braven BRV-XXL Bluetooth Speaker is definitely in this category.

First, here are the nuts and bolts of what we’re talking about.

Specs

• 4 HD drivers, 1 subwoofer
• 14-hour playtime (15,600 mAh battery)
• 10 meter Bluetooth range
• IP5X Certified
• Dimensions: 20.25in x 8.25in x 9.5in
• Weight: 18lbs

Yep. You read that right. 18lbs. This puppy is huge. When I see something that big, my first thought is “there is plenty of room to fit in quality components. This thing is going to sound great.” Does it? Read on to find out.

Physical Overview

The Braven BRV-XXL has an imposing design. With black hard plastic, black screws, and gray metal grills, this thing wouldn’t look out of place at any work site. The buttons rest on the ends of the device and are flush with the body. This makes them impossible to make out unless you’re looking directly at them, a problem we’ve mentioned in previous reviews, but it does get a nice flush look to the body. All of the ports sit under a flap to keep them protected.

Sitting just above the grill is the smartest part of the BRV-XXL’s design: a handle. This speaker would basically be impossible to carry around without it due to its size and weight. Luckily, the handle is part of the body and not removable. It’s not coming off or getting lost anytime soon.

Braven made some interesting choices regarding the sides of the device. It houses all the controls for the device and smartly uses a softer material instead of the hard plastic on the handle, but not all is good news.

I previously mentioned the flap that covers the ports on the exterior of the body. There are a generous amount of ports including a DC input to charge the battery (sorry, no microUSB charging), a full-size USB port that you can use to charge up your phone (5V/1A), and two AUX ports (one for a microphone and one for a phone or other audio device).

The opposite side of the BRV-XXL houses our control buttons. This is where you’ll find the power, play, and audio up and down buttons. It isn’t hard to memorize which button is where, thus negating the confusing design. Each button does have a cut-out symbol for its purpose, but its more for aesthetics than practicality. You probably won’t be able to tell which button you’re running your finger over in the dark on feel alone.

Above the Braven logo on this side of the speaker is an NFC hotspot where you can place your phone to pair it with the speaker. I find that Bluetooth connections work better than NFC for speakers, so I don’t know if I’d recommend using it. In the middle is a string of LED lights that indicate volume or how high or low your Bass or Treble are set.

The grill covers both long sides of the speaker, as well as the bottom. It feels hard and industrial. I love how it looks and I have zero doubt it’s going to hold up to some abuse.

Sound

I have two words to describe how loud the Braven BRV-XXL gets: Holy. Crap.

My previous experience with the high-end Bluetooth speakers includes the UE Megaboom, Braven BRV-HD, and the Fugoo XL series. This absolutely dusts every one of them in terms of pure knock-your-socks-off volume. I have a pretty big, open living room and try to use that as my purely unscientific test on how loud a speaker can get. If I can crank it up and it fills the room, I’m happy. I had the Braven BRV-XXL at a quarter volume and it filled the room. Half its volume was too loud for the space.

Holy cow.

The Braven BRV-XXL is one of the best sounding Bluetooth speakers I’ve heard. It outperforms all of the previously mentioned speakers in terms of low-end kick. The bass is satisfying at higher volumes, but I can see where someone listening at lower volumes might feel a bit let down. It definitely improves as the volume rises.

Vocals sound great too. I love listening to powerful female vocalists and their voices come through feeling rich and full. The high ends aren’t too forward, which can happen from time to time on other speakers, so you won’t be troubled by piercing audio.

While the volume can get extremely loud, it does distort just the smallest amount at the highest volumes. If you’re getting into the highest 10% or so of volume, you can pick up some slight distortions. But, honestly, I don’t know how many people are going to get there. Using this as the music system at an outdoor birthday party, we still kept the speaker around half volume and it filled the rather large yard we were hosting the party in. It’s just impressive.

Odds and Ends

Battery life is dead on the estimates given by Braven. I’ve listened through about four battery cycles and hit within an hour on either side of the 14-hour estimate every time. While 14 hours is enough to get you through a couple of parties, I felt a bit lacking in this department. Speakers like the Fugoo XL and UE Megaboom have significantly longer battery life in significantly smaller packages.

In the box, you’ll find adapters for other outlet types from around the world, in addition to a shoulder strap for even easier transportation.

One of the standout features that most people are glossing over is the ability to turn the BRV-XXL into a mobile PA system. The second AUX input for a microphone takes this from just a very loud speaker to a very loud PA system that shouldn’t have any issue cutting through crowd noise at large events. If you’re the owner of a business that regularly goes to places like street fairs, this would be a really great option to draw people to your booth or establishment.

Conclusion

There is nothing about the Braven BRV-XXL that isn’t big. Big sound, big body, big price tag. The $350 price tag (Amazon) is nothing to blush at. It runs at a higher price than competitors from UE and Fugoo, but you do gain truly superior volume with Braven. I’ll definitely be taking this to the beach this summer and tailgating in the fall due to the fact that it’s very versatile. Is it big and unwieldy? Yeah, sure, but it’s nothing I can’t handle with the attached handle or the shoulder strap that Braven included.

You can pick up the Braven BRV-XXL on Braven’s website or on Amazon.

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Ninja Pug: The name sounds cooler than the game (Review)

When I first saw Ninja Pug in the Play Store, I said to myself, “Yes, I want to be an awesome ninja pug and kick the crap out of other ninja dogs.” But no, that is not at all what this game is about.

Ninja Pug, by developer Taldius, is a game about a ninja who is doing his best to save a pug from cannon balls that are being launched from a pirate (looking) ship. Now, other than the fact that the name is very misleading regarding the story of the game, I have a few issues with the basis of this game. First, I understand that both ninjas and pirates are cool but, why would a pirate be firing cannonballs at a single ninja on a beach? Second, why would the pug go stand directly below each cannonball as to need saving? And finally, THE PUG IS NOT THE NINJA!!!

Gameplay

Gameplay is simple, almost to a fault. Swipe from your character towards the cannonball to watch your ninja jump through the air to protect his pug friend. There are no menus to select, no buttons to click on, and no in-app purchases. All you can do is play!

Unfortunately, there is no diversity in gameplay at all. I quickly got my score up above 120 and became bored with the game. Some different skill challenges would be nice.

On the bright side, this game has no ads and is completely free. Great for children who like to tap the entire screen.

Start

Gameplay

Score

Graphics

The graphics here are nothing to write home about. They’re standard retro graphics with an average pixelated feel. These could be spiced up a bit with a few bright colors or some additional details.

The animations appear smooth. The streak that appears behind the ninja as he flies from ball to ball is enough to let you know what is happening but nothing special.

Conclusion

Ninja Pug, while being repetitive, is a decent game. It’s a great way to have your kids pass the time when you need them to stay stationary and relatively quiet. With the lack of interesting graphics or any sense of increased difficulty, I would not recommend it to the adult audience.

Download and install Ninja Pug from the Google Play Store.

Which is the best password manager on Android?

When it comes to passwords, we all have a lot of them. I even have one to allow me to log in to AndroidGuys and talk to you about passwords. The most secure thing that you can do with all of those passwords is have every single one of them be different. If I’m honest, I’m pretty bad about that because I have never been willing to write my passwords down somewhere. At this point, my entire digital life would be taken to my grave with me.

However, as more and more services take security more seriously, they are asking me for more complicated passwords and at a certain point I’m going to start forgetting them (that certain point has already happened). The best way to do this would be to literally write down each password onto a page in a binder and put that binder into a safe that you have secured to the floor of your bank vault. If you don’t have a bank vault handy, password managers are a pretty good alternative.

What is a password manager? Are they safe?

Password managers are exactly what they sound like. They’re applications that securely store all of your passwords in a database so that you only have to remember one password; that of the password manager. All you have to do is have the app installed on whatever machine you plan on signing into apps/websites with and it will do all of the work for you!

There is deserved concern over whether password managers are safe because it seems ill-advised to keep all of your digital world in one place and it’s not unreasonable to think that way. Just last year LastPass was subject to a security breach that resulted in hackers getting away with user email addresses, password reminders, server per user salts, and authentication hashes, according to LastPass.

That having been said, the hackers weren’t able to secure any users’ password vaults, which are the silos/databases that contain all of the encrypted password information. Additionally, one security expert told Ars Technica that he’s so confident in LastPass’ hashing that he doesn’t even feel compelled to change his master password.

Still, it could have been much worse and given the rate of failure it’s still much better than using the same password for everything or using the still most popular password on earth, 123456.

So where does all of this leave us? Well, there are many options when it comes to password managing services and I want to quickly give a rundown of my favorites and what I like about them. I’m not going to pretend to have any knowledge as to whether each service has a secure algorithm, so we’re going to assume that they’re all equal in that regard and judge them based on ease of use, features, and overall value pertaining to cost.

1. LastPass

LastPass, by coincidence was the last password manager that I tried of the five here. Admittedly, I was a little turned off by the fact that they have been hacked twice and had a major security flaw discovered at one point and purely on a cost aspect, I really liked that you could buy everything you needed from 1Password in one shot and be done. The subscription model is taking over everything these days and one less yearly cost is one tick of sanity that I get to keep.

However, at only $12/year LastPass is the cheapest yearly subscription on this list (apart from KeePass, of course) and the overall usabliity of their app just blew me away. Using the accessability super powers that you grant it, it can recognize whenever you’re about to type into a password field, scans the screen to see if it has information with a corresponding account, and presents you with the option to click a single button and fill in the password. Of course you’ll need to authenticate first, but since LastPass will authenticate using your fingerprint, it’s a snap and you never need to type a single letter.

As overall usability to cost is concerned, LastPass is absolutely the password manager that I would recoommend to my mom or anyone else who isn’t as technologically savvy as I am. It makes the entire process dead simple, which makes it a better experience for anyone.

Download: LastPass

2. KeePass

KeePass was my favorite app to use, but it isn’t necessarily going to be for everyone. The reason that I like it so much is because it’s Open Source and because it lets you store the database on your own terms. I, being an IT professional, am increasingly paranoid when it comes to the storage and security of personal information. KeePass being open source means that anyone can scrutinize the code and be sure that it’s not falling into the wrong hands. Perhaps more importantly, from my perspective, is that I can store and sync the database file however I want – that means it can be stored on Dropbox or I can use any open transfer protocol (FTP, SFTP/SSH, Webdav, etc) to sync it between my phone and PC.

The major downside is that without money backing the project, there isn’t an official Android app. Since it’s an open source project, there are plenty of options in the Play Store, though, and I chose to go with KeePass2Android. It’s a fairly attractive implementation and allowed me to use the syncing option that I wanted. It doesn’t allow for fingerprint authentication and while it’s a little less convenient, that’s probably a good thing. Much like all of the paid services, KeePass offers the option to generate complex passwords for you and rates their effectiveness on a scale of bits rather than a subjective percentage scale. KeePass differs from all of the other password managers in that it doesn’t store your credit card or bank information like the others do. I don’t really want/need this feature, but maybe some people would.

Download: KeePass2Android

3. 1Password

First things first: I think that their pricing model is utterly ridiculous and poorly marketed. You can subscribe for a family plan for $5 per month, which includes up to 5 people and all of the apps, which is not bad. However, if you’re a single user you’ll probably not want to do this because you’ll end up spending about $60/year when the competition is generally about half that.

Well, what if you want this just for yourself? You can opt for the the “One-Time Purchase” and pay $64.99 for a lifetime license of the desktop apps (not the mobile apps), so you’ll then have an app for both Windows and Mac and nothing for your phone without dishing out another $10 (per platform). Of course, you can just buy this for your phone but it’s not going to be nearly as useful that way.

Right about now you may be starting to swing back to idea of just buying the subscription. After all, you’ve already spent $75 on something that you don’t know very much about and for some reason even though most of us only have one PC OS, you have a license for both Windows and OS X.

Once you have 1Password on your phone, though, things become a lot less stressful. As features go, it is pretty much lines up with what its competition offers. You can store nearly any kind of sensitive information: bank accounts, credit cards, drivers licenses, software licenses, secure notes, and, of course, logins (and a lot more). You can also set the application to be unlocked using your fingerprint, which is majorly convenient. There’s a little more of a learning curve for this one, which is why it fell to number three on my list.

What I really liked (before I started digging) about 1Password is that it allows you to choose to keep the database in a variety of locations. Currently the options are local storage (on your phone), WiFi Sync (sync between your PC and phone over WiFi), Dropbox, and iCloud (iOS/OS X only). For some inexplicable reason, though, when you buy the family plan you lose the option to store your database on your own terms and have to store the database in their cloud server.

Download: 1Password

4. Keeper

At first glance, Keeper looked like it was going to be one of my favorites because of one killer feature: the ability to share entries with one click. If your family has shared accounts (eg – cable, internet, Netflix) or you’re in a situation with your job where you would need to share login credentials with coworkers, this is an excellent feature so that you never need to write down/email password information. I also really liked that after I set my account up on my phone, it offered to set up two-factor authentication whenever I signed in on a new device in the “DNA” section of the app.

What I found to be curious/concerning was how long it took for the vault to automatically relock when you left the app (and unlike other apps, didn’t give a persistent notification to remind you that it was unlocked). I also didn’t like how agressive they are with trying to upsell you to the subscription service. There is a free version of the service, but within the first few minutes of signing up for the service, they essentially prompt you to pay for it, making it look like a pay wall, and send a pop-up notification to remind me to pay for the service before my trial of the premium version ends in 30 days!

Keeper seemed to be one of the apps that was better at using its powers of accessibility to make filling in a password more streamlined. It has a small overlay that displays whenever you’re on the web that you can tap and it will try to find a place to put password information. This seemed to be a marked improvement over what other apps preferred, which is to have a special keyboard with magical password filling-in features (though it has one of those too). For $30/year Keeper is not a bad deal, especially if you need to share entries with someone, but if you’re on your own you might want to look elsewhere.

Download: Keeper

5. Dashlane

One thing that I really liked about Dashlane was that the first thing it does after you install it (besides essentially forcing you to install it on your PC) is give you suggestions of which other services you might be interested in storing in it. Among the options are Google, Twitter, Facebook, and a few popular banks. Curiously, one of those options is LastPass – I wasn’t able to find a connection between the two companies, but if you know anything tell us about it in the comments section.

As value goes, I can’t really tell you what Dashlane offers that the other guys don’t and would explain the $10/month price increase over what Keeper charges. That having been said, they have a very intuitive and easy to use app (both on the phone and the desktop).

What I didn’t like and honestly can’t explain about the service is that it somehow synced login information that I definitely didn’t give it. I don’t even remember typing some of them on my PC. Whether or not I can trust Dashlane is immaterial, it’s an invasion of privacy for them to automatically store my Facebook or Android login information. That said, considering I have no idea where they got the information from, I have to wonder what other applications are just sitting in the background watching me type…

Download: Dashlane

At the end of the day I chose KeePass for myself because I like the idea of it being open-source and I really prefer to have more control over the storage of such sensitive data. 1Password had similar features, but it wasn’t nearly as easy to use as some of the other options.

LastPass is the best paid password manager that I used in that it was able to recognize when I was looking at a login field and would automatically give me a dialogue with an option to log in using existing credentials or create a new entry to work with the app/site that I was on. Like I mentioned before, LastPass is definitely the one that I would recommend for my mom and therefore anyone else who isn’t as big of a nerd as I am.

Guns and Magic: Surprisingly robust for free-to-play (Review)

Overview

Guns and Magic is a simple, fun and sometimes frustrating tower defense game with a good amount of content for a free game.

Developer: Joyfield Studio

Cost: Free (with ads and microtransactions)

Highlights:

• Fun, simple gameplay
• Short cooldown on time-gate
• Lots of content and levels to play

Impressions

Guns and Magic is a fun, addicting tower defense game with some surprising depth in its content, despite the free-to-play tag. The game has some elements of a story as well, even though it doesn’t do much with it.

Gameplay is simple: just tap and hold the enemies to shoot them, and collect resources
while defending your base. The levels can be repetitive, but occasionally the game throws in a scouting mission to break the monotony, having you dodge and destroy obstacles in an infinite-runner style mode.

There are several planets and 36 different locations and enemy types to experience, as well as some large bosses to defeat. There is some challenge in later levels, forcing you to deal with large hordes and strategically use your powers and choose your targets wisely to minimize damage.

The game offers several weapons and powers to use in combat, such as miniguns, rocket launchers, and snipers. Most of them work rather well, but the sniper is my vote for the best, with high damage and penetration. However, the weapons don’t feel that distinct from one another in the late game, as enemies become bullet sponges that require multiple shots from most weapons to defeat.

Powers, or “spells” (even though they don’t seem very magical), are useful for clearing large groups, but the only one worth using is the firebomb, as the others are expensive and don’t really offer value for their high cost. All of the items in games can be upgraded to increase effectiveness, but they get prohibitively expensive unless you’re willing to farm.

There is the standard time-gate, this being a free-to-play offering, but the refresh rate on the energy required to do missions is mercifully short. You have 5 tanks, and each refills in about fifteen minutes, so you aren’t forced to wait a whole day to keep playing.

And yes, microtransactions are present, but not too intrusive. They can get pricey however, as upgrades are expensive and using real cash for resources often won’t get you more than one at a time.

Also, the game does have ads, which are thankfully skippable and don’t interrupt gameplay.

Visuals in the game are decent, if lacking sometimes. The environments don’t offer much to look at, being mostly flat open areas, but the enemies are fairly diverse in color and shape and the ship itself is visually interesting.

Sounds are fine as well, but the music could match the gameplay a bit more.

One thing that bothers me a lot about the game is the way you collect resources. They don’t automatically go to your inventory when you defeat an enemy. You have to manually touch each one to collect it and they have very short timers before they’re gone. This forces you to stop shooting, or use another hand in an awkward position to ensure you collect them all.

In the more difficult levels, juggling shooting and collecting makes for a frustrating experience, as you struggle to get every piece of crystal and energy as you take damage from the oncoming enemies. I would have liked to see a more intuitive system for the resource collection.

Conclusion

Overall, the game is innocuous enough. It has a surprising amount of depth in its levels and upgrade system, but the gameplay isn’t terribly complex or diverse to warrant extended playtime. I’d recommend it to someone looking for a decent tower defense game that will last them a good while.

Download and install Guns and Magic from the Google Play Store.