We may receive a commission on purchases made from links.

Dropping more than $500 on a Bluetooth speaker should translate to great sound quality, solid battery life, and a handful of audio settings and customizations that are easy and entertaining to use. Unfortunately, this isn't always the case, as evidenced by Consumer Reports (CR) after testing the Sony SRS-XV900, a $900 party speaker that ended up delivering a pretty lackluster experience. As a matter of fact, the speaker even made it on CR's list of the 25 worst products of 2025 .

"Hazy, grainy, muffled, sizzly," and "smeared" are just some of the descriptive language CR went with to sell its disdain. It's hard to believe that such a large Bluetooth speaker from a major brand delivers such unimpressive audio, especially when you consider its multiple tweeters, stereo drivers, and its X-Balanced Speaker Unit woofer.…