Victrola’s Bluetooth garden speaker is ready to (be a) rock

Now that's what we call rock music: Victrola's new outdoor Bluetooth speakers are designed to look like rocks. With a choice of three stone-effect colours, the Victrola Rock Speaker Connect is designed to make outdoor audio fuss-free. You don't even need to take them in to recharge them.

If you're familiar with rock-shaped solar lights you'll know what to expect here. The Rock Speaker Connect looks almost identical, albeit a bit bigger. They're slightly pyramidal with a flat top that houses a solar panel, and there's an almost vertical speaker grille where you'd normally see the solar light. 

The unique selling point is that these speakers should be hassle free, requiring as much care and attention as any other rock: the combination of wireless audio and solar recharging means you should be able to pair them, place them and forget about them until it's time for some tunes.

Victrola Rock Speaker Connect: key specifications and pricing

The specifications aren't bad for a rock: you can expect to get about 22 hours of listening time, so the sun will start topping up the battery before the rock runs out of steam, and if you happen to live in a gloomier climate then there's USB-C charging too. 

The Bluetooth here is Bluetooth 5.3 and it has multi-speaker connectivity, so you can connect up to 20 Rock speakers at the same time and really annoy the neighbours. Range is about 10m from your audio source.

The Rock has IP54 certification for water resistance (some reports say IP65, but Victrola's website says IP54) but it's worth noting that that means it's okay with the odd spray; you should still situate these speakers so that they're sheltered from serious downpours and store them inside during the wetter months.

The one thing Victrola doesn't mention is the sound quality, so it's probably safe to assume that these speakers aren't going to be up there with our best weatherproof speakers – a guide that currently recommends Sonos Outdoor speakers. But only one of the outdoor speakers in that guide comes anywhere close to the price of the Rock Speaker Connect, and it isn't wireless and doesn't look like a rock.

The Rock Speaker Connect is on sale now in the US for a fairly hefty $99, and while Victrola products usually make their way to the UK there's no indication of a launch date or UK price just yet.