Rock 'n' roll will never die – and neither will this modular Bluetooth speaker with an 'unlimited' battery life

A PINE Beat speaker in black, lying on a light colored tartan fabric with an open book and a pair of sunglasses beside it
(Image credit: POCA Audio)

  • The PINE Beat uses swappable, affordable, rechargeable batteries
  • The manufacturer says you'll be able to install better Bluetooth too
  • It costs £170 (about $225 / AU$351)

If you listen to lots of music, you'll know that there are many things that will never die – such as rock 'n' roll (according to both AC/DC and Neil Young), love (The Miracles), hardcore (Mogwai) and many more. But to the best of my knowledge there are no songs claiming that Bluetooth speakers will never die. Maybe someone should write one, because the UK-made Pine Beat speaker wants to do an Oasis and Live Forever.

The idea behind the Pine Beat is simple enough. Most portable Bluetooth speakers are sealed units with rechargeable batteries somewhere inside, and when those batteries wear out it isn't easy or economic to swap them – so when your speaker doesn't have sufficient stamina for Metallica's black album it's less Enter Sandman, more Enter Landfill. So why not make the battery swappable?

This is hardly a new idea: swappable batteries are as old as, well, batteries. But the way it's been implemented in the Pine Beat is smart.

Pine Beat speaker: why you might want your speaker to live forever

A Pine Beat speaker in black, on a pile of sand, in front of a black background

Dun dun dun... DUN DUNNNNNN! (Image credit: POCA Audio)

With the Pine Beat, a 30-hour battery pack only costs £25 – comparable to a budget power bank – and you can swap it instantly, so if you're going on a long trip far from a power socket then packing a spare will give you a week's worth of daytime listening. And because the Pine Beat is also a power bank, you can charge other things, too.

The key goal here is to keep your speaker out of landfill, so when the battery goes you can recycle it without having to put the entire speaker in the trash. And according to creator Poca Audio, the circuit board has also been designed with future upgrades in mind. The example given is swapping in a new, better Bluetooth module when the next generation arrives.

What Poca is offering here is essentially what some luxury hi-fi brands offer, which is the promise that your purchase won't become obsolete in the foreseeable future – although of course to deliver on that promise the manufacturer needs to stay in business and needs to keep on making the relevant parts.

While the unique selling point here is longevity, the Pine Beat is no slouch in the specs department. It's a 40W speaker with a woofer, tweeter and bass radiator, a frequency response of 58Hz to 20KHz and the ability to pair with up to 100 more speakers. There's a custom EQ as well as multiple presets, a range of accessories for hanging it up, attaching it to things and securing it in sand or grass, and a generous 30-month warranty.

The Pine Beat is available now for £170 (about $225 / AU$351) from Poca Audio.

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Carrie Marshall

Contributor

Writer, broadcaster, musician and kitchen gadget obsessive Carrie Marshall has been writing about tech since 1998, contributing sage advice and odd opinions to all kinds of magazines and websites as well as writing more than twenty books. Her latest, a love letter to music titled Small Town Joy, is on sale now. She is the singer in spectacularly obscure Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind.

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