The new Devialet Mania is Devialet’s smallest and least expensive speaker yet, and has a 10 hour battery on board so you can carry the great Devialet sound outside.

If you have not heard about Devialet, they are headquartered in France and have been around since 2007. Their first products were Expert Pro Amplifiers that had features no one had ever even thought about before. Later, they shocked the audio world with their line of Phantom speakers that sound like a speaker almost 20 times its size. While Devialet is all about great sound, they also want their products to be a proud part of your home environment. They have partnerships with Louis Vuitton and the Paris Opera, and Devialet gear looks like no other audio component you have ever seen. Their unique designs change the way people envision audio equipment in a home.

What we like most about the Devialet Mania is the fact you can now get into the incredible Devialet sound and design for far less than any of their products in the past. While the Devialet Mania is categorized as a battery powered portable speaker, its performance inside the house for its size and the cool design impressed us the most!

Let’s take a look at the design and then dive into the tech Devialet used to make this little guy sound so good.

Design & Build Quality

When you first look at the Devialet Mania, you can see that it takes a lot from its bigger Phantom brothers. To learn more about the full range of Devialet Phantom Wireless Speakers, be sure to watch our full review & explore our buying guide.

There are two basic versions of the Devialet Mania that come in a gray or black finish. Like all of the Phantoms, there is also a fancier Opera finish that gets you a white exterior with real gold banding. The exterior finish is a woven material that feels like fine wool. There are four sections tied together by a super cool color matched handle that wraps around the speaker. The handles design was actually inspired by luxury watches & everyone who has seen this little speaker has been taken aback by how great it looks.

The Devialet Mania has an IPx4 weather resistant rating. This is an international standard for outdoor durability. This rating means the Devialet Mania will be fine in some light rain, but you can not drop it in the lake or a pool. For extra protection, Devilat includes a soft tie bag you can easily carry the speaker in.

The Devialet Mania weighs in at 5 pounds and the way you grip the carrying handle seems to perfectly balance it as you carry it around.

We like the way Devialet embedded some controls into the side of the handle. You get track skip and volume up/down on one side, and power, bluetooth connect, and a battery status button on the other. We could not figure out why they have the battery light display on the other side of the handle from the button that activates it though. There is also a smaller slider to turn off the microphones and a USB C charging port.

Features & Technology

Devialet gives you Bluetooth 5.0, Airplay 2, and Spotify Connect for music streaming. If you have an iOs device, Airplay 2 will get you the best sound if you are on a wireless network. For outdoor use away from a network, Bluetooth will be the choice. When you are on wifi, you can ask Alexa to control the speaker for you.

As we mentioned earlier, it has a 10 hour battery life. You can recharge the battery one of two ways. Like many battery powered speakers, there is an optional charging base you can purchase. This base does come standard on the Opera version. Or, you can simply use the included USB C wall charger.

The Devialet Phantom speakers use two side firing woofers in a Push Push configuration. Devialet uses the patented SAM technology to enable this type of woofer configuration to produce an incredible amount of bass for a small speaker. The Devialet Mania uses this exact same woofer tech and we just love the way you can see the drivers moving when the music gets pumping. On the top of each of the four sections are four full range drivers.

Ok, so this is where things get really interesting. Devialet developed another new tech called ASC, which stands for Active Stereo Calibration. There are 4 microphones on the speaker that can sense how close the speaker is to a wall. When the system senses the Devialet Mania is closer to a wall, the left and right rear drivers get a matching left and right feed designed to bounce off the rear wall to give you the best stereo experience. If the speaker is out in the room, this completely changes and you have a Cross Stereo pattern to give you the best stereo feeling. We should point out that you need to have the microphone button in the on position for this to work as it should. You will also get the best sound if the carrying handle is parallel to the back wall.

How does this work? Well, the little Devialet Mania produced the biggest and widest stereo sounding effect of any speaker like this we have ever heard. It is just amazing.

Setting up the Devialet Mania was very easy. You can just push the Bluetooth button and pair it to your phone… but you will have access to some cool stuff if you download the Devialet app and set it up on WiFi. This only takes about a minute as it finds your network. The app gives you great visuals on the battery status, but the best part is the EQ section. This is where you can adjust the levels of the woofers and the full range drivers. There is a flat setting, which is how it comes out of the box, and a custom setting it will remember.

Performance

We put the Devialet Mania through its paces both indoors and outside. We started off with some party music with a new song from the Black Eyed Peas, “Simply the Best”. With the Devialet Mania inside and pretty close to a back wall, we felt there was actually almost too much bass in this position. This is where the Devialet app for the Devialet Mania adds a great touch. We turned the woofers down 3 clicks and everything sounded much more balanced. The soundfield it was throwing out was just huge for a single speaker of this small size. We then tried the Devialet Mania out in the middle of a large room. We set the EQ back to flat here and it sounded great. You could walk all around the speaker and get that big room filling effect no matter where you were. We will say the sound was the biggest when the handle was parallel to us.

We then took it outside. Here, as you might expect, the bass dropped off some as you are trying to fill up the entire outdoors. The stereo imaging was great with the tiny little Devialet Mania sounding far bigger than you would expect. We had a chance to put it outdoors closer to a brick wall which, not surprisingly, improved the bass a lot.

Next we tried out the title track, the “Horses and the Hounds” from James McMurtry. This is another big full track. Once again the Devialet Mania really impressed us with the sound this beautiful little round box was putting out.

We did some testing on the absolute volume limits of the Devialet Mania. We were able to turn the volume up to 100%, and even on some music with a lot of deep bass, the Devialet Mania never ever sounded strained, it always had an easy flowing open sound with lots of good dynamics. There are some portable speakers that can outdo it in absolute total volume output, but there are none this size that come even close. We used an SPL app and with it out in the middle of a large 20 by 30 foot room with 10 foot ceilings, We measured about 85 db on peaks from about 6’ away. Devialet states it can produce 95 db, but that is probably from about 3 feet away, which we were able to replicate. For most people, the Devialet Mania will fill up their room with a lot of sound. As a matter of fact, when we had the first Black Eyed Peas cut on, a couple of coworkers came in and said it sounded like there was a party going on!

Overall Recommendation

The Devialet Mania looks like it is going to cover a lot of bases. If you are already a Devialet fan, it is a no brainer for a great outdoor portable speaker. Or, you may have admired the Devialet design but felt they were priced too high for your budget. The Devialet Mania will let you get into Devialet tech, beauty, and sound for their lowest price of entry ever. There are also people who carefully chose the objects in their home who would never consider conventional looking home audio gear. The Devialet Mania most certainly checks off that box as well. We actually think this is going to be the best selling product Devialet has ever made!