AUKEY SK-M31 Palm Size Bluetooth Speaker Upward Firing

Friday, August 17, 2018

A mini speaker like the AUKEY SK-M31 is dead easy to throw in a jacket pocket for taking it around on holiday vacation and good for listening to music in a room. The SK-M31 mini speaker delivers good sound in a palm-size form factor while looking stylish anywhere you put it.

The SK-M31 mini speaker is so discreet that it doesn't even shout "powering on, powering off" when your turn it on and off, which is good as startup voice sounds (specially loud ones) can be annoying for some users.

If small footprint and compact form is what you want from a mini speaker, the AUKEY SK-M31 is the mini speaker for you as it only weighs 178 grams and measures 67mm long, 67mm wide and 67mm deep.

The AUKEY SK-M31 wireless mini speaker housing is made of aluminum with a matte black finish and rubberized bottom for grip.

The SK-M31 speaker manages to be both quirky and functional with the volume and play/pause buttons strategically spaced out along the circumference of the speaker.

Towards the bottom of the AUKEY SK-M31 palm size speaker, you find a power on/off switch and a Mode button to toggle between the different playback options.

You can listen to audio via the built-in microSD card slot, FM radio and 3.5mm audio jack so you can connect the AUKEY SK-M31 wireless mini speaker to headphones, mp3 player or bluetooth amplifier.

the AUKEY SK-M31 wireless mini speaker automatically reconnects to the last-paired device

The 5W speaker driver faces upwards and it is protected by a straight-line speaker grill as opposed to the usual grill mesh or cloth mesh. For being a 5-watt speaker, the audio output is pretty big with clear treble and a good amount of bass.

It is interesting to see an upward firing driver setup in such a small speaker but it works. Dolby Atmos is known for the speaker upfiring setup which makes the sound bounce off the ceiling.

Battery life is between 5 hours (100% volume) and 10 hours (50% volume) so you get a decent amount of playback time before you have to recharge the 1800mAh Li-Polymer battery, which takes 3 hours to fully charge.

wireless streaming up to 33 feet

The AUKEY SK-M31 speaker streams audio via bluetooth A2DP bitrate which is bluetooth factory wireless codec. AVRCP bluetooth profile is also integrated so you can remotely adjust the volume, play/ pause tracks, as well as skip to the next and previous track. You can also answer phone calls via the SK-M31 mini speaker so you can use it as a speakerphone.

Bundled with the AUKEY SK-M31 bluetooth 4.2 mini speaker is a micro-USB data and charging cable that you can use to charge the built-in battery and transfer music files when the microSD card is inserted in.