Fender ELIE 6 Bluetooth Speaker Review: Big Sound, App on the Way

The ELIE 6 stands 7.7 x 4.8 x 4.1 inches and weighs 4 pounds. It’s not fully dunkable like the new Sonos Play, but it offers basic dust and water resistance (IP54). Like the Play, you can stereo-pair it with a second speaker over Bluetooth, or group multiple Fender speakers together.

On the top panel, analog volume dials for both the speaker and amplifier modes give the ELIE a retro vibe, but they can be a bit of a hindrance in daily use. This isn’t the first portable speaker with the Fender name (see the Fender Tuefel collaboration speakers), but it’s the brand’s first solo attempt, and it shows.

Photograph: Ryan Waniata

The main dial controls both volume and power, and I had to crank it near full volume to fill out my room. Its analog design means you can’t control it from your phone or other source device, so you’ve got to adjust both volume settings separately. There’s also no auto-shutoff, unlike most speakers I test. Luckily, the ELIE 6 offers up to 18 hours of battery life, equating to around 17 hours in my marathon test at around 75 percent volume, so that’s not much of an issue.

A play/pause key set between the dials keeps playback control simple, but there’s a limitation in that you can’t skip forward or backward with double or triple taps like most competitors.

The input switch is a control you won’t see in most other speakers, letting you adjust the amplifier side of things for a microphone or guitar (or digital devices like a synthesizer using line-in mode). Swivel around the back, and you’ll find multiple inputs, including a USB port to power the speaker or your phone, the microphone/instrument input, a headphone output, and even a 48-volt phantom power key that lets you plug in and power studio-quality microphones. It’s a pretty loaded package for the musically inclined.

Unfinished Business

Musicians will be less impressed with the ELIE 6’s digital chops. Rivals like the Positive Grid Spark Mini portable amplifier showcase the power of digital processing, with an app that lets you explore a labyrinth of plug-ins to add every color of distortion, reverb, and echo effects to your guitar or bass. The Fender offers zero plug-ins and doesn’t even include an app for basics like EQ controls—pretty crucial for dialing in guitar tone.

Fender’s reps say an app is in the works for “later this year” with features like an EQ and plug-ins, citing a timeline of Q2 or Q3, and when that happens it will dramatically improve the experience. Since the speaker is only currently available for preorder, I am hoping that it drops on launch, but I wasn’t given any concrete timelines. After multiple launch pushbacks, the speaker still feels like something of a work in progress without the app improvements, but I have to test it as what it is right now, not what it could be.

Power Block

Photograph: Ryan Waniata

It was hard to be too perturbed about the ELIE 6’s digital drawbacks once I cranked it up and hit Play. I unboxed the speaker on the same day as Bruno Mars’ first solo album release in a decade, The Romantic, and spent the night jamming to the speaker’s impressive interpretation of its Latin beats and incredibly catchy melodies while shaking up some homemade mai tais. It was a great vibe.