Pyle Marine Speaker review – 1 star

Pyle Marine Speaker review. These 8 inch wake board marine speakers have been on test for several years on Fox Morgan's boat. They don't hold back on this 1 star review.

Pyle Marine Speaker review

I’ll begin this Pyle Marine Speaker review by showing you how they looked when they arrived. But it was just a passing phase. A brief moment in their sorry lives.

They have been a blot on the scene ever since I bought my first pair in 2013, then had them replaced in 2014 because the grills rusted despite having never been to sea at that point. Then like a fool, I bought another pair in 2016 because the plastic degraded on the replacements.

Make a mistake once, we learn from it. Make a mistake twice, then that’s just foolish. Make a mistake three times? That’s starts to be a conscious decision doesn’t it? In my defence, at the time I needed some expensive safety gear and that always takes priority. It was a case of choosing to spend £125 to have some music or not having music.

Knowing full well that the speakers would be falling apart within 6 months. Actually, they go nasty looking after just a week of installation. And then what should I do with them? Dispose of and start again?

If you can’t face all the negativity of a 1 star review, then head over to our buyers guide and find some actual decent speakers.

The first pair I had, the grills started to discolour and go rusty, despite never having been used, but simply attached to a sprayhood canopy frame in advance of being used. So these were replaced, with the same thing by the retailer.

The speakers looked quite nice for 48 hours after fitting.

I have run speaker cables out of the boat via a waterproof deck gland on the rear transom. The speaker cables then run up to the pushpit and then down into the top mounted speaker cable connectors.

After one month, during a British summer, the speaker grills started to rust (again) and they took on the distinctive yellow look.

By the end of the summer they were aggressively rusting at me. Mocking my poor choices and limited budget.

At this point, the speakers are just over 3 years old. They are fragile and on their last legs. A big wave might snap one off.

I sit within just a few feet of them most of the time and they are a constant eyesore in the pictures taken facing aft.

They have seen lots of action though, several offshore races, lots of coastal cruising, but even though in the picture above we were heading into a force 9 gale, they rarely get a direct hit from a wave in their seemingly exposed location.

The grills rusted primarily from moisture in the air and not as you might assume from abuse. But sure, since they look like that now, they do get very little sympathy.

They continue to rust at me, but despite appearances they do still play a sound. Albeit with the need to wiggle the cable a bit on the corroded terminal.

Pyle Marine Speaker review – the final verdict

The rusty water drips off the speakers and runs down the transom. I am very familiar with Y-10

And that brings us to where we are now. They’ve taken on a flaky scaly appearance. The grills are thin.

I thought that perhaps the last time I went sailing, if a big enough wave hit them, I’d be left with just the bracket and the speaker housing dangling from the wires… but now I know that the terminals were within a gentle sneeze of snapping off too.

The grills are the many shades of rust that was once popular in hair salons when Ginger Spice/Geri Halliwell was popular.

I like to call this Dystopian Wasteland Chic. The kind of thing you’d see in a Mad Max film. But it would have taken the prop designers hours of careful crafting to get the speakers to look like this.

Terminal illness

The terminals gradually dissolved. Now there’s some self tappers in there, with the speaker wires simply hand wound around them. I gave up on all pretenses of dignity quite some time ago.

Folks think I’m making a statement when I rock up with the tunes banging out of these, or out of one of them if the wire has come loose…

And I guess I am making a statement, perhaps. One that says, here I am with these terrible looking husks of never glorious speakers. It shows a dogged determination to not throw things away just because they’re unsightly.

Let’s face it, these are going in one direction, and that’s not to a recycling centre. I don’t believe there’s anything, other than perhaps the speaker cones that can be salvaged. These are destined for landfill. A toxic pollution. A blight on humanity. A white dusty microplastic pollutant seeping into our water sources. Poisoning wildlife. Killing the planet… one tune at a time.

This cracklature effect might be popular in shabby chic furniture, but honestly, I’m not loving it. The plastic is turning to dust. Now, they say that plastic doesn’t go away, well, it kinda does, when it turns to dust. But that’s just microplastic pollution. The little pieces that fall off if I touch the speaker housings are more environmental pollution, for which I am quite annoyed and embarrassed about.

Maybe I am being over dramatic. But please don’t buy these speakers. They are truly awful. The planet doesn’t deserve this level of stupid.

I give them One star because they still function by making a noise, if suitably agitated by the wire/screw connection, but otherwise they’re an absolute embarrassment of product failure.

Be smart. Shop wisely. Choose a product that will last as long as possible. Choose a product that can be recycled at the end of it’s functioning lifespan.

Try our buyers guide to marine speakers instead

Or, perhaps you fancy something a bit more portable? In which case here’s my 5 star review of a waterproof Bluetooth speaker that is several years older than the Pyle wake speakers.

Note to the wise: All products reviewed in this article were independently purchased and tested by the reviewer. The manufacturer of the product, or any of it’s retailers or representatives, have not had any involvement with this review.