Wireless. Not tasteless.

Black. Rectangular. That’s it. The most visually flamboyant these speakers get is a subtle woodgrain texture on the sides and a raised-profile tweeter up top. Otherwise, they just concentrate on their job: delivering 20 watts of sound from any audio source, via Bluetooth or aux-in.

Seems simple. And yet, when it comes to Bluetooth speakers, it apparently takes heroic feats of self-restraint for manufacturers not to lose their damn minds. We don’t know how or why Bluetooth induces this visual mania. We just know that it does.

Can you think of any other explanation for this?

More typically, garish Bluetooth speakers are less about grotesque visions of madness, and more about plain old bad taste:

SUNGLASSES because COOL!

Another favorite design strategy is gratuitous glowing shit all over the place, like this:

And this:

Others are the result of licensing deals gone out-of-control:

Or licensing deals that were bizarre and unnecessary from the start:

We’ve certainly been guilty of midwifing some of these atrocities at you. You may remember this one, if your memory is particularly merciless:

Or this one, which takes another common Bluetooth speaker motif - space - to hideous new extremes of sheer bulk:

Sorry. But even we have our limits. This one treads where we would fear to go, combining three of the above themes (space, glowing, and grotesquerie) into a truly tacky monument to Bluetooth repulsiveness:

There’s certainly more effort going on, at least, than in this lazy stoner’s-notebook level of artistic expression. Why so shitty?

Or in this half-assed “ironic” sweater design that can barely rouse itself into a semi-smirk:

Yes, when you’ve endured the soul-deadening parade of obnoxious cheese that is contemporary Bluetooth speaker design, the button-down basic black of these Philips Bluetooth Bookshelf Speakers feels sober, reassuring, even relaxing. To us, anyway. If you find it “boring”, there’s always this: