We Put Altec Lansing's Everythingproof Bluetooth Speakers To The Test—Will They Break?

Altec Lansing has been in the speaker game for a long time. One of my first ever sets of PC speakers came from Altec Lansing. Skip forward to today, and Altec Lansing is still in the speaker game, and among its offerings are the Hydra speakers. These speakers cross a number of different use cases, but they all have one thing in common. According to the company, these speakers are "Everythingproof". Heat, cold, water, sand, impact — you name it, the speaker can live through it.

So, we decided to put that to the test. Altec Lansing sent us four speakers to test out — The Hydra Blast 2.0 (the biggest one and mostly black), the Hydra Jolt 2.0 (black with blue accents), the Hydra Mini 2.0 (red), and the Hydra Trek (blue and white). I put them to the test in common indoor/outdoor scenarios, and some less common outdoor scenarios. But first, let's take a look at what the speakers bring to the table.

These speakers range in price from $19.99 up to $99.99 which is a fairly good range for Bluetooth speakers in general. You can find a lot of budgets with that range. All the speakers sound good, but not amazing. The Hydra Blast 2.0 is my favorite. With the largest case, it had the best sound and the most bass to it. The Hydra Jolt 2.0 is my second favorite in terms of sound quality.

All of the speakers have controls across the top of them for power, Bluetooth connectivity, and some play controls. The larger the speaker, the more controls there are. Each speaker also has magnets embedded in them, so they can be mounted to anything metal. The magnets are either on the bottom of the speaker or the back, depending on the model. Speaking of mounting, all the speakers come with a clamp mount, so you can attach the speakers to your bike or your car's dashboard if you want.

The Hydra Blast 2.0 also has a built-in Qi charger on the top of it, so you can wirelessly charge your phone, which was a nice surprise. All told, these speakers sound good and have useful features. So, how did they hold up?

All of the speakers are rated IP67 for ingress protection from dust and water. That means sand should not be a problem should you fancy a day at the beach. I don't have many beaches around me in Chicago, so instead I headed over to a local park with a beach volleyball pit.

After playing around in the sand for a bit including throwing the speakers, burying them, and stepping on them — all things that could happen at a beach, I tested each one, and it came out just fine. There was no degradation in sound quality, and they all functioned perfectly.

I noticed that the magnets both in the mounts and the speakers themselves tended to grab on to any metallic particles that were found in the sand and were a bear to clean off, so keep that in mind before you head out to the beach.

Next up was the cold test. I wanted to test both cold and heat, but it doesn't get that hot in Chicago, so I relied only on testing cold — as in sitting in my freezer playing music for 30 minutes. That got the speakers down to around 15 degrees Fahrenheit. The main concern here is with battery integrity, but I don't have a way to test that, so I wanted to make sure the speaker itself could perform adequately even in the harshest of Chicago winters. I found the bass was a little muted, but overall, the sound quality was just fine. I'm not saying I want to store these speakers in my garage in the winter, but if you take them out with you while you shovel your walk, it should be just fine.

One funny thing about these Everythingproof speakers is the company used to have a video on its site touting their durability. Unfortunately, that video is no longer there. When it was, it showed the speakers going through normal wear and tear situations, but it also showed a clip of a speaker in a kitchen covered with eggs and flour. So I decided to test that out, even though "eggs and flour" aren't part of any kind of ingress protection checklist that I'm aware of.

It was a little gross, but the speakers worked afterward. But they required an additional step — one that is covered under ingress protection.

Of course, after dealing with the eggs and flour, the speakers had to be washed off with soap, water, and a sponge. The funny thing about ingress protection is, depending on who you're talking to, you can get different definitions about what the IP rating actually means. In some circles, it means absolute ingress protection — nothing gets in, period. To others, it means even if something gets in, the speaker will be fine.

In this case, it seemed to be decidedly the latter. The Hydra Blast 2.0 and the Hydra Mini 2.0 both seemed to have some water leak in after this treatment, because playback sounded a bit muffled. After laying them out to dry, they returned to proper function (and sound) so I'm going to call this one a push.

Officially, Altec Lansing says its speakers can survive falls from 39-inches onto carpet covered concrete. Instead, I tested 8-foot falls onto my wooden deck. I tested a number of different heights, but I maxed out at 8 feet. On the Hydra Jolt, the speaker grille got a little loose, but that was the only casualty. It's also worth mentioning that I almost tripled the height the speaker was supposed to survive, so it definitely gets credit here. 

My main concern was for a situation like a construction site where a speaker might get knocked off the top of a ladder. 39 inches is nice — it'll be safe falling off a table, but if you want to call your speaker "Everythingproof" I'm going to need a little bit more.

Ultimately, I did get one of the speakers — the Hydra Blast 2.0 — to break, but not during any of my normal testing. Instead, I got a bit too ambitious and chucked the speaker about 25 feet into the air and let it land on my concrete driveway. This did not end well for the speaker. The back grill popped off completely, and suddenly something started rattling around inside the speaker. I took it apart to find the battery completely dislodged, but still powering the speaker. The problem was that the speaker had basically no volume any longer.

This is 100% my fault, and not the fault of Altec Lansing. If you need a speaker that can survive a 25' fall onto concrete, then you need to learn how to properly tether your speaker lest you inadvertently injure someone, but that's a different conversation.

Overall, I came away impressed with what Altec Lansing accomplished here. Building a speaker that sounds good and is Everythingproof is no small feat. Not only that, but "Everythingproof" turned out to be not just a marketing name; Altec Lansing really did build these speakers to last. So, if you're looking for speakers that can stand up to the rigors of an active lifestyle, you can get the Hydra Blast 2.0, the Hydra Jolt 2.0, the Hydra Mini 2.0, and the Hydra Trek on Amazon or at Altec Lansing's website.