Sound is expensive. Well, in a way. Even cheap headphones and speakers sound worlds better than the average setups from the 20th century, so in a way sound has never been so affordable.

But good sound still costs money. Those no-name AirPods knock-offs you bought out of an airport vending machine might cost $11, but they’ll make your favorite album sound like the frontman is singing into your ears through a straw.

The StormBox Blast doesn’t pretend to be high-end audio royalty. It’s a straight-up value proposition. When I bought one last year for a summer of park hangs and courtyard parties, I was pleasantly surprised at how good it sounded for the money. And as long as you remember to click the coupon code at checkout, you can pay a little less than I did.

big, booming bass on a budget

Activating the XBass does indeed produce a noticeably more bass-heavy sound. Whether you want that for or not depends on your priorities. With mine, I tended to leave it off when working around the apartment, because I wanted the sound to remain as true to how the studio mixed each song.

Outdoors, though, when I had a bunch of noisy people chatting and slamming cooler lids and dropping Solo cups, I’d turn XBass on just so people could hear it cut through the background noise more easily.

Tribit says you can get up to 30 hours of playtime between charges, but like any speaker that depends on the StormBox Blast’s volume during that time, not to mention whether you engage XBass or the RGB lighting.

In practice, I had no trouble getting a day’s worth of life from one charge, even with XBass and the 32 LED lights activated, although there’s no way it would’ve made it to 30 hours.

Sound quality was surprisingly good for a budget brand, and while I didn’t get to test its claimed 150 feet of Bluetooth range, it didn’t drop out constantly when I went inside and put a very solid prewar apartment wall between my phone (from which I was streaming the music) and the Tribit.

Will it dethrone the priciest Bluetooth party speakers? Doubt it. But for those who want good sound without heading to the poor house, the StormBox Blast is the best bang for my buck that I’ve found.