Outdoor Tech Buckshot Pro Review

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Outdoor Tech Buckshot Pro

When it comes to electronic gadgets, I am the person that most people turn to for advice and help. I started collecting electronics, gadgets and computers since the early age of nine and haven’t stopped yet, I won’t disclose my age, but let’s just say I have a collection that spans well over 20 years. Most of my “allowance” goes in the direction of the latest and greatest new electronic toy out there. So if I don’t own, it usually means, it is not worth owning (complete junk) or it was too expensive to justify the usefulness versus dollar ration. So is the Outdoor Tech Buckshot Pro a device worth owning? Let’s take a look.

Contents of the Outdoor Tech Buckshot Pro Box

Contents of the Outdoor Tech Buckshot Pro box

Here is what you get when you purchase the Outdoor Tech Buckshot Pro. The hero of the package which is the Buckshot Pro itself, more on that in a minute. The USB flashlight accessory, the rubber handlebar bike mount, your standard micro USB cable (for charging), two cool Outdoor Tech logo stickers and the all important Buckshot Pro manual. Let’s see what this thing can do.

Testing the Outdoor Tech Buckshot Pro

Outdoor Tech Buckshot Pro Speaker and Eyelet for hanging

Here is the hero of the package, the Buckshot Pro. It is a 2600 mAh battery pack with a built in bluetooth speaker and passive bass port. The first thing to do with most new electronic devices is to get them charged up. The Buckshot Pro didn’t come with a charger, only the USB charging cable, so you can use your computer to charge it up or if you are like most people, by now you have a collection of USB wall chargers laying around and any of those will do. Depending on the output of your wall charger or computer, the charge time can vary, to get a full charge it will take right around 3 hours.

USB output port and Micro USB charging

The Buckshot Pro makes charging easy, plug in your USB charging cable and a red indicator light comes on during charging, when the red light goes out, the unit is fully charged.

Passive Bass Port, Microphone, Blue and Red LED light indicator

Now that we are all charged up, let’s see how easy it is to pair with an Android phone and an iPhone. First, power on the the Buckshot Pro by holding down its multifunction button for 2-3 seconds. The blue LED indicator light flashes and a voice prompt comes on stating “Power on, pairing”.  Then turn on the bluetooth on the Android phone and hit scan. Within a matter of 2 seconds, the Android phone found and paired with the speaker and a voice came over the speaker that stated “Successful”. I love when technology talks to me. Can the iPhone do it just as quickly? It sure did and with the same audio cues. Time to listen to some tunes.

Skip backward / Volume down , Multifunction Button, and Skip forward / Volume up buttons

Then speaker measures just under an 1 1/2″ in diameter, so I was not expecting home theater entertainment quality sound. I was, however, pleasantly surprised at the volume and good range of music that it was able to produce. With the volume at 85% or under the speaker had no problem handling any song that I could throw at it. The high, mid and low bass tones all came over the speaker with a nice and clear crispness, the volume was respectable enough to be heard around a campfire gathering of ten people. When I pushed the volume up over 85% some of the music would become distorted, I didn’t really seem to gain anything volume wise, so there wasn’t much of a point to crank it all the way up.

Outdoor Tech gives the bluetooth speaker an operating range of 32 feet, that might be a bit on the generous side. If I was in a clear field with no other electronic signals or interference than maybe. In reality with buildings, trees, people, and all kinds of electronic interference we are probably closer to a 20 foot range. They also give the Buckshot Pro a play time of 10 hours, this is pretty comparable to what I came up with. I left the speaker playing at room temperature and at a very low volume and managed to squeak out 10 hours 22 minutes. Keep in mind your environment always affects all of these readings some to the good and some to the bad.

There were no real specs giving on the charging ability of the battery pack, again this all has to be taken with a grain of salt. Here is what I was able to squeeze out of the pack from a full charge. I could charge an iPhone 4s to just shy of full at 98% and a Galaxy Note 4 to 74%, again age of the battery, size and different charging systems all determine different times. Generally speaking a 2600 mAh battery pack will charge the average phone to full one time.

The Buckshot Pro also manages to incorporate a speaker phone into itself. I did a couple of test calls with it and it is about what you would expect with most speakerphones, if you have a lot of background noise the caller has to listen very carefully to hear you as do you to hear the caller. In a quiet room with no background noise it is a nice little feature to have and the call clarity was good on both ends.

Now for the part that puts the Buckshot Pro into the category of cool. It comes with a USB flashlight accessory.

Flashlight Accessory

You simple plug in the USB flashlight port right into the USB output port on the Buckshot Pro. At the bottom of the flashlight accessory you can see some threading. Once the USB plug is secure, rotate the orange lock ring counter clockwise so the piece moves upwards and it ends up flush with the flashlight. Viola you now have a flashlight and bluetooth speaker.

Flashlight Accessory attached

With the rubber handlebar mount you are able to attach it in a number of different ways to your bike, a shoulder strap on your backpack, a branch in a tree or just about anywhere that you can imagine. I have so many extra accessories on my bike, that I hardly have room for anything, but with the universality of the rubber mount, I was able to attach it on the Go Pro mount with ease. The Buckshot Pro is also water resistant (IPX5 Rating – Bring on the Super Soakers) and very rugged, so you will never have to fear getting caught in a downpour or hitting those bumps with your bike.

Handlebar Mount

The flashlight accessory has four different settings, to turn it on you have to hold down the power button on the flashlight accessory for three seconds and it will start off in a bright torch mode, pictured below. It is quite incredible how bright this little LED was able to light up the surrounding area. It could definitely be used as a camping lantern in a pinch. WOW!

Bright Torch Mode

Push the button again and it dims down the torch mode a notch, perfect for reading a map or a book without bothering your camp mates. Push the button again and it goes into lamp mode or normal flashlight mode.

Lamp Mode

Lamp mode is not nearly as intense as the torch mode, but it will get you where you need to go in the dark.

Lamp Mode

Push the flashlight button one last time and it goes into flash mode or a strobe effect mode. Great if you want to draw attention to yourself or have your own little dance party.

Final Thoughts on the Outdoor Tech Buckshot Pro

So do I think the Buckshot Pro is a worthy tech gadget? Yes, I do. I will put it like this; cost of a good Bluetooth speaker $40, cost of a 2600 mAH battery pack $15, cost of a similar flashlight $15, and a camping lantern $20, giving you a total of $90. But the simple fact that you can get all of these in one tiny little package….unbeatable. For more information go to www.amazon.com/outdoortech.