Wednesday, August 31, 2016

BC-01 multimedia bluetooth speaker with alarm clock and FM radio

I have purchased a BC-01 multimedia bluetooth speaker with alarm clock and FM radio for my kid. This made-in-China gadget is pretty cheap, with the price of around RM60 only, and its quality is not too bad.


The BC-01 has 2 colour options: white and black. It is pretty small, with surface about the size of the palm of an adult. This small footprint, together with its built-in 1,500 mAh Li-ion rechargeable battery, makes it very portable and easy to carry long, especially when travelling.

With a low power consumption of around 3W, the battery is good enough to support for many hours of continuous music playback. It can operate in clock display and alarm mode for a few days at a single charge cycle.


It has a pair of stereo speakers, which is pretty decent with sufficient loudness in volume. Do not unfairly compete it with Hi-Fi speakers, but its sound quality can really beat the speakers of most of the smartphones and tablets nowadays. However, probably due to the use of internal antenna, you'll probably be disturbed with some hissing sound when using it as a radio.

So, what can this small gadget do?

First of all, it is an alarm clock with pretty large LED time display, as you can see from its photo above.

Then, it is a Bluetooth wireless speaker for any multimedia devices that support Bluetooth pairing. It also has a built-in microphone and can act as Bluetooth hands free speaker for mobile phone, able to pick up calls and have phone conversation with it.

The phone recognizes it for phone audio (to handle phone calls) as well as media audio (to play music streaming from the phone).


It also has a micro SD slot that supports micro SD up to 32GB. You can store music files of MP3, WAV, APE or WMA format in a micro SD card, slot in the card into its slot, and use it as a music player.

It comes with a special USB cable with 2 split connectors. One of it is the USB connector used as external power source and for battery charging, another is an audio jack which you can plug into another music device, computer, handphone, etc. and use it as an external speaker for such device.

Lastly, it is also an FM radio with internal antenna. It is able to automatically search for radio stations and remember their frequency.

Despite its multiple functions and features, it only has 6 control buttons, as shown in its photo above. Therefore, it takes some time to figure out how to use it. It comes with a paper User Manual and I highly recommend you to RTFM before you start using it.

One thing I dislike about this device is that, it only uses a single button to sequentially rotate and switch among its functions as Bluetooth speaker, micro SD card multimedia player, FM radio, AUX line-in speaker, and alarm clock. So you need to keep on pressing its right button until you reach your desired function.

All in all, this is a pretty cool device for bedroom radio and alarm. It is a good candidate as Christmas or birthday present too.

9 comments:

Peter Yew said... Reply To This Comment

Nice gadget. May I know where you bought it from?

Voyager8 said... Reply To This Comment

@Peter Yew

Bought from one of the sellers in Lelong.

Peter Yew said... Reply To This Comment

Can it run off the main power supply through an adapter? How bright is the LED display?

Voyager8 said... Reply To This Comment

@Peter Yew

It can be powered by a handphone charger.

It has 2 battery power indicators on the screen: power is sufficient, power is low. I only recharge its internal battery when power is low.

It is not recommended to connect it to the wall power supply 24x7, might affect the lifespan of its internal battery.

The LED brightness is OK, not too bright and not too dim.

Peter Yew said... Reply To This Comment

Thank you.

Unknown said... Reply To This Comment

Hi, Thanks for the very informative writeup. I decided to buy one too and just received it today. Unfortunately, the manual is not included. Appreciate if you can post a copy of your manual for me to down load and use?
Thanks
Johnny Ling

Voyager8 said... Reply To This Comment

@Johnny SK Ling


You can find some review/instruction of this radio in Youtube. Just search for keyword "leadstar radio".

Unknown said... Reply To This Comment

Why my bluetooth speaker the clock stays at 15:00, it's not moving

Voyager8 said... Reply To This Comment

@Fachrudin Hidayat

You can try completely drain off the battery, then reset everything again.

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