JBL Minigon (Late 2010s)
Under the hood, the Minigon packed dual 45mm drivers and dual passive radiators, rated at 12W, with a 2200mAh battery good for about 8 hours of playback. It charged over USB-C, carried an IPX7 waterproof rating, and weighed 551g at 48mm tall by 94mm wide. On paper, that's a respectable little speaker — the IPX7 rating, in particular, was one of the few genuinely good features noted by reviewers. The original JBL Minigon, introduced in 1959, was a radically different product: a compact loudspeaker enclosure measuring just 32 inches wide (Audio, August 1959, p.55).
The problem was the sound. Reviews were decidedly negative. The speaker was described as sounding thin and lacking bass — remarkable, given the passive radiators — with the midrange coming across as muddy and muffled. It distorted at high volume levels, and the build quality was criticized as cheap and plasticky. The verdict was blunt: poor value for money, and not recommended.
Unsurprisingly, the Minigon was discontinued quickly and has no notable collectible value today. It's a rare speaker, but for all the wrong reasons — a budget product that leaned on the JBL name without delivering the JBL experience. Used units appear infrequently on secondhand markets and command very low prices. There's no documented production window, original retail price, or frequency response data in the record — the story of this model is told almost entirely by its reception, which was not kind.
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