Monster Rockin' Roller 270X Speaker Review

The Monster Rockin' Roller 270X is a large, rectangular party speaker. Like the ION Pathfinder 280, it comes with a telescopic handle and wheels to help you transport the party with you wherever you go. It also has triangular LED lights on either side of its controls, and you can adjust their brightness level to your liking. However, the lights don't change colors as they do for the ION.

The Monster Rockin' Roller 270X has alright portability. Like most party speakers, it's large, bulky, and heavy, making it difficult to carry. Thankfully, like the ION Pathfinder 280 and the JBL PartyBox 310, it has a built-in telescopic handle and wheels to help you wheel it around to your next gathering. It's also battery-powered, so you don't need to worry about connecting it to a power source for it to work, so you can place it anywhere convenient.

The Monster 270X has decent build quality. It's mostly made of robust-feeling plastic, and there are metal grilles on the front and sides of the speaker. There's a foldable carrying handle to help you carry the speaker, and there's also a separate telescopic handle and wheels built into the speaker to help you wheel it to your next party. There's even a bottle opener built into its rear so you can enjoy drinks with friends. It's rated IPX4 for water resistance, meaning it's certified to withstand small splashes of water, so you don't have to worry about it getting a bit wet outdoors. Its inputs are protected by small flaps, and there are two velcro strips on its rear to attach the included accessory bag to the speaker. This speaker also comes with an external microphone that's mainly made of plastic, though it doesn't feel very premium. On top of the speaker, there's an anti-skid Qi wireless charging pad you can use to charge your Qi-compatible devices like your smartphone or earbud case.

The Monster Rockin' Roller 270X has a wide selection of well-identified, easy-to-use controls. There's a large volume knob you press when you want to set the speaker to standby mode, which causes the power light to turn green. You can press the light button to turn its LED lights on and control its brightness level. There's a source button to switch between Bluetooth, AUX-IN, and FM Radio, and the speaker emits audible feedback to inform you when you switch sources.

You can use the BASS/TREBLE button to manually adjust its sound profile to your liking. This speaker also features a TWS button, which they call 'True Wireless System'. It lets you connect the speaker to another Monster 270X to play audio simultaneously, though this feature doesn't allow you to create a stereo pair. You can use the buttons numbered 1 to 5 to switch between presets and radio stations, and you can press and hold each button to set your preferred stations.

There are Mic and Mic/Guitar inputs, each with their own gain and echo knobs. There's also Qi wireless charging pad atop the speaker, which you can use to charge your Qi-compatible devices, and the speaker emits audible feedback to let you know when it begins to charge your device. Unfortunately, there's no physical play/pause button, so you need to play and pause your audio via your connected device.

• Monster Rockin' Roller 270X
• User Manual and Quick Start guide
• Microphone
• Attachable pouch
• AC power cable

The Monster 270X's frequency response accuracy is alright. With its default settings enabled, there's some boom in the bass range that adds extra punch and bass to the mix, which is great for fans of bass-heavy music like hip-hop and EDM. However, it still lacks some low-bass, so you can't feel the deep thump and rumble typically present in bass-heavy music. There's also some unevenness in the mid and treble ranges that causes vocals and lead instruments to sound alternately honky and muddy at times. Fortunately, this isn't very noticeable to more casual listeners, and you can tweak its sound profile to your liking using the EQ presets and the bass and treble adjustments featured in its companion app. This isn't enough to boost the low-bass to feel any thump and rumble.

The Monster 270X's soundstage performance is disappointing. It downmixes stereo content to mono to play it since there aren't separate speakers for its left and right channels. As a result, instruments and sound effects in your audio aren’t localized to a pinpoint location. Instead, they sound like they’re coming from the front of the speaker, which doesn't sound as immersive. For instance, if you play a song that usually has the drums on the left and the guitar on the right, the speaker doesn’t playback that distinction. Despite having grilles on its sides, its soundstage is also somewhat directional-sounding since it projects its sound only from the front of the speaker. As a result, sound doesn’t stretch around the Monster 270X as it would with a speaker with a 360-degree design. Instead, your audio sounds a bit different when listening from different angles, like when listening from behind the speaker.

The Monster 270X has a good dynamics performance. This party speaker gets loud enough to fill a large crowded room with sound, making it great for parties. It even gets 3dB louder when plugged into a power source. However, there's a bit of compression present at max volume that degrades the quality of your audio as you bump up the volume, so your audio doesn't sound as clean and clear when the volume is maxed out.

The Monster 270X has excellent battery performance. It lasts almost 65 hours on a single charge. While this is significantly less than the 100 hours of advertised playtime, it's still enough for multiple long listening sessions before needing to recharge it again. Also, battery life varies depending on your usage habits and chosen settings, so your real-world experience may vary. When the Monster 270X is left idle for around 20 minutes, it goes into standby mode, and you can wake it up again through its app or by pressing one of its buttons. If you want a party speaker with a battery life closer to 100 hours, check out the ION Pathfinder 320.

Note: While the Monster 270X comes with an external microphone, there's no built-in microphone for accepting and declining calls or for voice assistant capabilities.

The Monster 270X's Monster Zone Control app isn't bad. It's compatible with both iOS and Android devices and features EQ presets and bass and treble adjustments to tweak the speaker's sound profile to your liking. While you can't pair the Monster 270X to another speaker to create a stereo pair, you can use the speaker's 'True Wireless System' (TWS) feature to connect the speaker to another speaker when you want to amplify its sound across larger areas.

The Monster 270X features an AUX input you can use to wire your devices to the speaker. There's a USB port you can use to charge your devices and an output to connect the speaker to another Rockin' Roller 270X. There's a mic port and a mic/guitar port to connect an external microphone or guitar to the speaker.

The Monster Rockin' Roller 270X has fair Bluetooth connectivity. It has a fantastic range, so your paired device remains connected to the speaker from far away. However, it has poor latency performance with iOS and Android devices, which causes syncing issues between audio and visuals when using the Monster 270X to watch movies and videos. Some apps compensate for latency differently, and your real-world experience may differ.