Review: Morel Biggie Bluetooth Speaker

Thanks to the relative affordability (and ubiquity) of brands such as JBL, Amazon Alexa, Sonos and Bose, Bluetooth speakers have gotten a little, well, boring. Aside from the occasional poppy colorway and retro aesthetic from brands such as Marshall, it’s a sea of cylindrical similarity.

Heritage Israeli audio brand Morel, better known for its hand-assembled, audiophile-grade speakers, has applied its experience to create two interior-friendly portable Bluetooth speakers. One is Högtalare, a $400 design, ingeniously built to slot seamlessly into an IKEA Kallax bookshelf, and Biggie, a smaller, cuter $300 wireless design. The bigger, older brother has been designed to blend in, while the smaller option has a refreshing mix of eye-catching aesthetics, fun colorways, and traditional speaker construction.

I’ve spent the past month with the Morel Biggie as my office speaker, and while it won’t be replacing my default $1,000 Naim Mu-so Qb2, it has been a hugely likable and refreshingly simple speaker.

Quality Build

Available in nine attractive finishes, the Biggie looks great, with something approaching a modern take on a traditional hi-fi speaker. I didn’t specify a sample color and received the Oak Wood finish, which is arguably the most boring of the bunch, but the construction of the wood veneer is flawless.

Courtesy of Morel

Yes, I’d have preferred the punchy Olive Green or Midnight Blue designs, but the way the textured wood veneer is finished feels anything but mass produced. Beveled edges sit flush with magnetic speaker grilles, and from the right angle it looks like a classic bookshelf speaker. The 4-inch woofer and 1-inch soft dome tweeter are mounted in a classic cabinet style, complete with screws. It all looks and feels, well, like a hi-fi speaker—which is a rarity these days.

That said, the classic aesthetic is slightly undone by the headphone-style leather handle. It’s a great carry handle but does rather dominate the design. For me it gives a touch too much “personality,” but it can be removed (although you will be left with two unsightly screw holes).

Controls are mounted in a line on the right of the speaker. They’re not especially high-tech, but I like that the button LEDs shine through the grille and enable control through it. Time will tell if the thin fabric wears down from grubby finger prods, but as I use my smartphone to control it 90 percent of the time, it has not been an issue.

Features

Continuing the classic theme, the Morel Biggie is not a complicated speaker. It has a 20-hour battery (at 50 percent volume), Bluetooth 5.3 (so it's good for high-definition codecs like LDAC and aptX HD, plus a 165-foot range), and there’s a 3.5-mm input. And that’s basically it. Two speakers can also be connected together for stereo pairing using TWS, but I was unable to test this.

Photograph: Chris Haslam

Internally, there’s a 60-watt Class D (45-W woofer + 15-W tweeter) amplifier with a frequency response of 40 Hz to 20 kHz. Morel uses a customized DSP with dynamic EQ, but there’s no smartphone app, no Wi-Fi streaming, no room calibration, no Dolby Atmos, no voice control, no EQ tweaking. And day-to-day I didn’t miss any of it.

The controls will feel a bit antiquated to app-control lovers, with plenty of press-and-hold options to access TWS and change sources. But silly battery level indicator control aside (you have to press and hold both volume buttons to light up a percentage of said buttons to show you the remaining juice), they’re easy to ignore.

Sound Quality

Setup was as simple as you’d expect from a Bluetooth speaker without smarts, and remained rock solid throughout many hours of testing. As a consumer tech journalist I know I should be aghast at the lack of bells and whistles here, but the combination of solid audio performance and a complete lack of technological friction was a joy. Insert your own Sonos joke here.

The Biggie is not going to unearth sonic subtleties from your favorite Blue Note recordings, but it won’t offend you either. It’s an impressively punchy sounding mono speaker with real presence and volume. Given that it weighs just 5.7 pounds and measures a mere H7 x W7 x D4.5 inches, its room-filling abilities are seriously impressive.

Listening to “The Look” by Metronomy, there’s an appealing crispness to the high end, with a well-organized middle that thrives on the track’s enthusiasm. Bass is controlled here, too, but the speaker does favor lower frequencies. Kick drums and bass guitars can sound a little too forward in the mix, but it is controlled—helped, no doubt, by the quality cabinetry and drivers.

Courtesy of Morel

This profile sounded great listening to the classic rat-a-tat opening to Paul Simon’s “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover.” However, with dance and hip-hop, it could feel a touch thunderous in a small space. Take it outside though and the punch works on the patio. It’s not IP-rated, mind you , so watch for pool parties and showers.

Would a smartphone app with adjustable EQ help here? Maybe, but if you like your bass forward in the mix, you’ll probably love listening to “Juicy” on the aptly named Biggie.

Alternatives

The Biggie’s construction is a revelation, offering classic hi-fi bookshelf build quality in a compact Bluetooth design. This is where your money is being spent. It is portable, and the battery life is acceptable, but it looks more at home on a desk than being carried around.

While it lacks the bass-forward presentation, the stylish Audio Pro T3+ ($200) offers a better battery life and more balanced sound quality, plus it has Airplay for iPhone users. This might be better if you’re looking for a more nuanced performance and still want to avoid smart features.

If portability isn’t an issue, the Sonos Era (9/10 WIRED Recommends) and JBL Authentics 200 (9/10 WIRED Recommends) take up a similar amount of space, sound superb, and come stuffed full of smart controls. But if you want to keep things simple and have a healthy respect for both bass and build quality, you’ll love the Biggie.