Ryobi has come out with a new 18V cordless Bluetooth speaker system, and they called it SCORE.
The new Ryobi Score speakers are compatible with their 18V One+ Li-ion batteries, and also come with AC adapters.
Ryobi Score is a linked-together system where you have one transmitter and up to 4 receivers, for up to 5 speakers playing at once.
The starter set, P765, comes with a primary speaker and transmitter (P760) and receiver (P761), shown above, giving you 2 speakers, and you can buy additional speakers separately, P761.
Ryobi sent over a starter set and one additional speaker. I have all 3 playing right now, and it is GLORIOUS. I have a lot of testing to do, and welcome any questions you might have!
Setup was quick and easy. I had the pair of speakers from the starter set playing some music in under a minute, and that includes time to pop 2 Ryobi 18V batteries in.
Getting the third speaker going required a quick consult with the user manual. I think I might have done something to interrupt the exploration process. In any case, it too was playing music quickly.
The transmitter has an LCD display, and the receiver speakers LED color codes. It’s pretty easy to figure things out.
Oh, and it’s not just a Bluetooth speaker. You can connect an aux input cable to the transmitter, in case you have some other music player you want connected, and there’s also a radio tuner.
The music transmits to the receivers via SKAA wireless technology. I’m not at all familiar with the SKAA wireless tech at all, but I can tell you that the speakers are all in perfect sync and as mentioned earlier, it sounds fantastic.
There are more advanced settings that I need to look into, such as “clustering” the speakers to act as one. This is what the manual says about it:
A Cluster is a product with two or more pieces which behave as one, such as a left and right speaker pair.
If you have more than one transmitter, you can choose one as the transmitter and set the others to receiver mode.
There’s a note included in the manual that’s worth mentioning:
If your speaker turns itself off during the first few minutes while using a charged P103 or P104 battery pack, please use the included AC adapter or install a different battery pack.
There is also a slip-in page that talks about tool and battery compatibility.
P103 is Ryobi’s compact Lithium+ battery, and P104 is their high capacity Li-ion (basic, non-Lithium+) battery. If you’re buying everything new, you’ll probably want to look at their rather budget-friendly 4Ah 2-pack, which sells for $99.
- 2.25″ driver size
- Up to 150 ft range between primary and secondary speakers
- Handle doubles as a hanging mount and smartphone stand
- Independent volume controls for each speaker
- FM tuner
- Aux input (cord not included)
- Included AC adapters
The controls are intuitive and easy to manipulate. The tuner and aux input is only on the primary speaker.
I’ve got more fiddling around to do, but here’s my early take:
They’re compact, and sound great. The wireless music sounds far better than I had anticipated. The overall music is fairly pleasing too, with no readily detectable distortions. The bass response is decent for a compact portable Bluetooth speaker.
I need to explore the mounting potential. I’m able to hang it off my 3/4″ thick desk without difficulty, although it’s not very secure. I’m happy to support them on a flat surface.
I have all 3 speakers relatively close to me, and so I balanced the volume to avoid directionality bias. In a larger workshop setting (I’m in my small office workspace at the moment), I wouldn’t feel as compelled to do this. Or I would try clustering the speakers and placing them equidistant to my listening location.
That’s one of the things I hope clustering the speakers will do. Maybe I’ll have the primary speaker independent controllable and set the 2 others to be controlled the same, which I would think is something a cluster allows for.
Overall, I think that Ryobi “scored” with the SCORE. It seems to be a nicely designed system that works exactly as advertised. It’s easy to use and sounds great!
I think I would like to see a more premium version in the future, with a smartphone app that can control the speakers, but that might be asking for too much.
Pricing information is not available yet.
Thank you to Ryobi for providing the review samples unconditionally.