Sprout Immerse 2 review: It’s three products in one, and two of them work really well

Three products in one. That's the pitch for the Sprout Immerse 2, a 50W Bluetooth speaker from Australian accessories brand Sprout that also doubles as a Qi2 wireless charger and a 37Wh power bank.

On paper, it sounds brilliant. One device that handles your music, keeps your phone topped up overnight, and covers you as a portable charger when you need it.

It's the kind of thing you read about and think, “why has nobody done this before?”

In practice, I ended up using the Immerse 2 as a bedside speaker with the power cord plugged in most of the time. It weighs 2.6 kilos, making it too cumbersome to use as a portable device. After a few weeks of living with it, I stopped trying.

The all-in-one concept is solid. Some of the execution isn't.

What makes the Sprout Immerse 2 stand out?

The Immerse 2 sits in a niche that's still fairly small: the speaker-and-charger combination. Most Bluetooth speakers in this price range do one thing. The JBL Charge 5 includes a power bank but no wireless charging. Dedicated Qi2 devices like the Belkin UltraCharge Pro handle charging but nothing else.

Sprout's proposition is to cover all three at once at a price that's meant to represent value compared to buying the components separately.

Qi2 is the current standard for magnetic wireless charging, meaning any MagSafe-compatible iPhone snaps on the disc at the top of the speaker and starts charging at up to 15W without any fiddling about with positioning.

Standard Qi devices are backwards compatible, though you lose both the magnetic alignment and the faster speeds. There is also a 10W USB-C port at the back for wired charging or non-wireless devices.

The speaker array uses two 70 mm drivers, two 25 mm tweeters, and dual passive radiators, all housed in an inverted trapezoid-shaped enclosure that channels sound through a gap at the base.

That gap lifts the driver array slightly off the surface below and gives the Immerse 2 its distinctive silhouette: longer across the top than the base, with that slot running underneath.

At first glance, it looks like it might work as a carry handle. It doesn't. It's too deep to get your hand in to actually use it, which is a real missed opportunity.

Sprout Immerse 2 specs

Design and build quality

The Immerse 2 is a black speaker with chrome edging around the frame, a charcoal grey fabric across the front, and a hard plastic surface across the top where the Qi2 charging disc sits.

The build feels solid: nothing rattles when you pick it up, and the weight itself is part of that reassurance. It looks clean sitting on a bedside table or desk.

The recessed touch buttons along the top front are laid out logically enough: power, Bluetooth pairing, UNISYNC, volume up and down, and play/pause/call. Around the back there is the power input to charge the speaker, the 3.5 mm aux input, and the USB-C output port for wired charging of external devices.

Where the design starts to fall down is those touch controls. I found them unresponsive when I was playing around with it. You often have to press multiple times or long press to actually get it to respond to what you're trying to make it do.

I accidentally skipped tracks a few times while trying to adjust volume because of it.

There is also no IP rating mentioned in the spec sheet, which isn't necessarily a dealbreaker for a desk or bedroom speaker, but it is worth calling out given Sprout positions the Immerse 2 as portable.

Take it outdoors, and you need to keep it well away from any moisture. Poolside probably isn't an option.

Performance

Audio

The 50 watts of output is adequate, and you can get a good level of volume from the Immerse 2 without running into obvious distortion. Plenty of speakers in this price range start to break up when you push them to high volume.

But from the start I found it too light on the bass, regardless of what I was listening to.

The bass just feels hollow. When you crank the volume up, it doesn't distort because of that lack of bass, but it does feel like the mid-range just kind of gets a bit washed out.

I'm not the biggest fan of the audio quality here. I don’t think the balance is there.

The type of music you listen to does make a difference, though. Female artists in particular tend to sound better than male artists.

Alanis Morissette's "You Oughta Know" vocals sound good on this speaker, and Hayley Williams vocals in almost any Paramore track sounds great. Florence and the Machine was similarly good.

The Immerse 2 has clarity in the upper register, and voices with that kind of presence in the higher frequencies come through well.

The accompanying music, though, does just feel hollow in the middle and light on the bass, but female vocalists can carry it.

Switch to something heavier and it's a different story. I listened to the Mumford and Sons Prizefighter album, which I'm a big fan of, and while the music isn’t overly bass heavy, it's not really picked up all that well with the Immerse 2.

The new Foo Fighters album, which is heavier, felt like there was something missing. It truly lacks at the lower end.

For anyone who listens to a lot of music with prominent male vocals or heavier instruments, the Immerse 2 will be a frustrating listen.

There's no way to adjust the equaliser for this speaker, and there's no companion app. What you hear is what you get. Some phones allow you to apply their EQ settings, and that may help at the margins, but it's not a fix.

One other thing that really frustrated me: when you have it cranked up to full volume, and you try to turn it louder, it temporarily stops the music and beeps twice to tell you can’t increase the volume.

In most speakers I’ve tested, it will overlay the beep or indicator sound on top of the music. I don’t understand why a speaker would ever stop the music for something like that.

Charging

The Qi2 pad on top works as advertised. A MagSafe-compatible iPhone snaps on magnetically and starts charging at up to 15W, with no guesswork about placement.

Older Qi devices are backwards compatible, though you lose the magnetic alignment and the faster speeds.

The USB-C port at the rear outputs at 10W for wired charging, which is actually slower than the wireless pad at its maximum rate. That feels a bit backwards to me, but it is what it is.

Battery

The speaker itself was full in just over two hours from flat, which is pretty quick for a battery this size. Sprout claims eight hours of playback at 50% volume, and that broadly tracks.

I spent most of my time with the Immerse 2 plugged in, though, so I didn't run it down regularly enough to get a precise read on the battery life in real-world use.

Portability

It's not only bulky, it's also a little awkward to carry. The gap along the bottom of the unit looks like it could be used as a handle, but if I'm honest with you, it's not actually usable in that way.

It's too deep to get your hand in to use it to carry the speaker comfortably. If portability is a real priority for you, there are much better options out there at this price point, and they weigh less.

UNISYNC

UNISYNC is Sprout's multi-speaker feature, with a dedicated button on the unit that lets you link up to 50 compatible Sprout speakers together.

Without any compatible UNISYNC speakers in my home, I wasn't able to test that feature.

There's a possibility that linking multiple units together creates a better overall sound collectively than the Immerse 2 does on its own, but I can't speak to it from experience.

Verdict

The Immerse 2's three-in-one concept is appealing, and if what you want is a bedside or desk speaker that also keeps your phone charged overnight, the pitch makes sense.

The Qi2 charging is well-implemented, the two-hour top-up is fast, and it's good to see an Australian brand doing something beyond a generic Bluetooth cylinder.

But for $349, the audio performance is underwhelming. The bass is too light, the mid-range gets washed out when you push the volume, and outside female vocals, the speaker doesn't deliver the well-rounded listening experience you'd expect from something this size.

The touch controls are intermittently unresponsive. And the max-volume behaviour that stops your music mid-track to beep at you just shouldn't exist in a product at this price.

The Immerse 2 is not a bad speaker. It's a decent one built around a clever idea, but there are enough rough edges that it's difficult to recommend ahead of alternatives that do fewer things and do them better.

The ideal buyer is someone who primarily wants a charging hub and is happy with background music at moderate volume. If the audio is the main event, look elsewhere.

Buy the Sprout Immerse 2 if

• You want a bedside or desk speaker that also charges your phone overnight. The Qi2 pad is well-implemented, MagSafe-compatible iPhones snap on effortlessly, and it covers that use case well.
• You mostly listen to pop or vocal-led music, particularly female artists. Clarity in the upper register is where the Immerse 2 does its best work, and tracks like "You Oughta Know" genuinely sound strong on it.
• You're already in the Sprout UNISYNC ecosystem. Linking multiple compatible speakers together may offset the single-unit audio limitations, though I wasn't able to test this directly.

Skip the Sprout Immerse 2 if

• You listen to anything bass-heavy or guitar-driven. Heavier rock and music with prominent male vocals exposed the hollow low end, and with no EQ to compensate, there's nothing to be done about it.
• You need a speaker you can actually take places. At 2.6 kg with no real carry handle and no water resistance, it's not built for life on the move.
• You're comparing it purely on audio against dedicated speakers at this price. Options like the JBL Charge 5 or the Ultimate Ears BOOM 4 don't charge your phone, but they're lighter, more portable, and sound better.

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Nick Broughall

Nick Broughall is an award-winning technology journalist with 20+ years experience, previously Editor at Finder, Gizmodo and TechRadar. He founded BTTR Reviews and regularly contributes to News.com.au's Checkout section.