Edifier MS50A Bluetooth & WLAN Speaker Review – Not quite as smart, but tap-proof and with a nice sound

1 - Einführung, Unboxing und Technik 2 - Verbinden und Bedienen 3 - Sound-Check und Zusammenfassung

The Edifier MS50A tested today already seems a bit anachronistic. In the meantime, the Bluetooth speaker offers are overflowing and every provider wants to be even smarter than the others. And then Edifier comes snotty with a very conservative-looking, textile-covered walnut box and brazenly refuses the trend of smart listening furniture. What looks about as excited as assisted listening can definitely reach buyer groups for such devices that are rather skeptical by nature and suspiciously reject every microphone with distrust. Come on, you really don’t need Alexa that everywhere. And so you can even say Alexandria in a quiz without the spy lamp blinking blithely along.

Yeah, no, I gave up on smart speakers in the office a long time ago, and after we recently tested the sustainable KIDZ AUDIO Music Box for Kids (what a long name), today we have the number two from my special hit list. While this is primarily a mono speaker, it can also do stereo with a secondary unit. However, you will have to pay 140 Euros per sound column, so you might want to reconsider the stereo. After all, you can get an Edifier R1280DB from just over 110 Euros, where the double pack of sound speakers with more connectivity options then even costs less than an MS50A single pack. You don’t have to understand that now, but it is so.

Scope of delivery and unboxing

You get the speaker in a cardboard box as outer packaging, plus two foam inserts for protection, a manageable manual and a power cord. That’s it. The beauty of being unsmart is that you don’t have to explain what’s not on it or in it. From this point of view, Grandma Hilde would still be able to handle it after grandson Jaden-Jill-Joel fully coupled her smartphone with it. But I’ll get to that in a moment, because dear Grandma is of course hopelessly out of the loop when it comes to WLAN at the latest.

At 2.3 kilos, the part weighs a lot, so the molded MDF is not a light cardboard case. The edge length in the horizontal is 14.5 cm in the center, i.e. at the bulbous point to the opposite side, and in the vertical (height) then 21 cm including feet. The workmanship is on the usual high level and the walnut veneer is really valuable. Visually, this fits more into grandma’s closet wall, because unlike other models, there are no color variations, but walnut is still better than birch imitation. Whereby an exciting anthracite would also have been successful.

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The front cannot be removed and the covering hides a quite potent two-way system. A 19 mm tweeter with silk dome and a 102 mm mid-woofer with an output power of 15 W (tweeter) and 25 W (mid-woofer) each provide the right sound, while the frequency response is specified as 52 Hz-18 kHz. Purely subjectively, based on the presence of the big bass drum (55 to 56 Hz), I would agree that the level is still sufficient. You won’t get real low bass with such a tiny device, but it still sounds surprisingly full and rich. But also for this there is the next page with further details.

The control in the form of a multifunctional ring is located in the center of the speaker. The button in the center is real, tactile and also gives visual feedback, the rest is touch and takes some getting used to. In the dark, you almost don’t recognize anything, but those who interpret the ring as an analog volume control aren’t that wrong. The rest is on the next page, especially since the symbols are all self-explanatory. Only the granny must be internalized once.

From below, you can see five rubber feet that give a very secure grip. You can also see the power connector as well as the necessary cutout in the rear part to be able to pass the cable through cleanly. However, I have to criticize a bit here, because there is unfortunately no strain relief! The cable is quite smooth and it slipped out (despite checking the end stop when plugging it in) in the installed state just by the weight of the hanging cable behind the sideboard and the vibrations of about 30 minutes of bass thunderstorm. I thickened the relevant area with electrical tape so it was tight in the recess. Then it also held perfectly.

Before we connect and take care of Grandma Hilde in the acoustic orbit, let’s have a quick look at the specs, which are a bit sparse, but still cover almost everything: