BEM Academia Wireless Bluetooth Desk Lamp and Speaker

  • Classy little Bluetooth or aux-in speaker
  • Pop-up LED lamp built right into it
  • Two USB ports for charging devices, including a 2.1-amp port for tablets
  • Perfect for a crowded desk, shelf, or endtable
  • Model: HL2505B
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Too cool for school.

Sometimes it’s a mystery why a well-made, good-looking, highly useful product winds up in our hands at a fraction of its list price. Other times, we can spot the crucial flaw in its marketing straight off. With the BEM Academia, it’s right there in the name.

It’s too nice for a dorm room.

BEM pitched this Bluetooth speaker with a built-in light as a space-saving dorm-room essential. Which makes us wonder if they’d set foot in a dorm room in the last fifty years. Yes, it certainly is stingy with its footprint. But the BEM Academia would fit about as well in those dank, blacklit, sock-strewn, Cheeto-smeared, bong-reeking dens as would a full-grown taxidermied bear. What’s a nice Bluetooth speaker like you doing in a place like this?

Its tasteful, tidy look makes the BEM Academia more at home on a junior executive’s desk fifty years ago: Pete Campbell in the first season of Mad Men, say. And the elegantly engineered pop-up lamp also has a retro quality, like one of those old refrigerators with a radio built in.

Functionally, it earns its desk space. It sounds as good as any other Bluetooth/aux-in speaker its size - hardly a sonic marvel, but perfectly adequate. The lamp is surprisingly bright and swivels smoothly and usefully at your command. And it’s got two USB ports for charging multiple devices, including one with a 2.1 amp output for tablets. From its appearance to its operation, the BEM Academia is, above all, eminently reasonable.

Now, ask yourself: is “reasonable” a quality you associate with college students?

So far today...

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  • (including shipping)

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