We've got used to Parrot swooping along with wireless solutions to wired problems over the last year, the most noticeable of which include photo frames, car stereos and speakers. Bluetooth aficionados seem unperturbed by the fact that the technology itself can still be notoriously glitchy, and in its latest offering we see yet another solution for the audio market.

The Parrot Boombox is a high-end, bass-oriented sound system, offering a woofer and two wideband speakers with a total of 60W power output. In addition to the headline Bluetooth connectivity, you'll also find standard audio in ports, which helps the kit to double up nicely as a conventional speaker.

With Bluetooth being the focus of the device we'll kick off here. The first issue users might encounter is that you'll need an audio source (be it a phone, media player or Bluetooth dongle for a PC) that supports the A2DP Bluetooth profile. If you're not sure whether you have this, a list of compatible products can be found at the Parrot Web site). Parrot also sells a USB Bluetooth dongle which you might want to pick up at the same time as the speakers, to guarantee compatibility.

Once you're over this potential stumbling block, the setup procedure is simply a case of pairing the speaker unit with the source device in the traditional manner. If you want to use the speakers through a PC, you'll find a separate audio profile set up when you install the Bluetooth dongle that pushes any PC audio through the Bluetooth connection rather than your standard speakers. Although a few little issues might crop up when first establishing the connection, it's generally quite a straightforward process.

You can expect an effective range of up to 10m from such a device: we tested it at a number of distances and, although not flawless, it generally works very well without degradation, which is good news.

Of course it's vitally important that the Boombox performs from an audio standpoint, and pleasingly this is an area that shouldn't let anyone down. As indicated by the name and speaker arrangement, this is more of a power solution that'd go down great at parties but perhaps doesn't offer the subtlety to do justice to Beethoven's 5th at a sophisticated gathering.

We can't see this being an issue though, and were very impressed by some cracking bass and clean mid-tones that don't distort much even at higher volumes. There are no options for audio adjustment on the unit itself save for volume control, so you'll have to do your tweaking from the graphic equaliser on the source device. It would have been nice to at least see a bass control here for added convenience.

Considering the typically high asking price for Bluetooth-enabled products, we're pleased to see that Parrot has been pretty reasonable with its Boombox. You can pick one up for a whisker under £150 at the moment but we'd expect to see prices drop a little over the coming months. Given the speaker's abilities and audio performance alone it's not overpriced, and if you think you'll get a decent amount of use from the Bluetooth support it comes in as a bit of a bargain.

The Parrot Boombox is a powerful set of party speakers that offer clean sound and thumping bass. Although not particularly accessible in terms of additional audio control, the performance and added advantage of Bluetooth make this a reasonably priced solution.