The Pure Woodland Glow is a Bluetooth speaker and camping lantern. Pure are best known for their range of home radios and speakers, so this is something a little different from them. We've been impressed with their products in the past- but how does this one stack up? Let's take a closer look!
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Design & build
Pure are best known for their wooden radios, so the Woodland Glow is quite the departure from their usual style. Here, they've taken a standard camping lantern as their starting point, and then made the base into a the Bluetooth speaker. This is a smart move, as it gives a bit of weight to the bottom of the unit, so it's less likely to get knocked or blow over. There's also a little rubber tread on the bottom to give some extra stability, too.
On the top, you've got the controls. There's a nice chunky volume wheel in the centre, which makes it really easy to use. Around that are the other controls: buttons for the speaker at the bottom, and another wheel for controlling the light at the top. All in all, it's nice and easy to use, which is just what you want from camping kit.
Something else that's always handy with outdoor gear is some degree of waterproofing. The Woodland Glow is IPX6-rated, which means that it's fully rainproof. You couldn't submerge the speaker in water, but it will comfortably survive being left out in the rain- idea for camping in the UK.
Lastly, it's worth mentioning here that Pure (like many other brands nowadays) are actively moving their packaging away from plastic. Almost everything about the packaging of the Woodland Glow is paper or cardboard. The only exception is a plastic wrapper around the speaker itself to keep it protected in transit, but even this is "100% compostable" according to the bag itself.
Sound performance
We know that the Woodland Glow is more than just a speaker. With its extra functionality, you'd be forgiven for it compromising a little on sound quality. But we were pleasantly surprised during testing. In fact, the sound quality is among the best we've heard from speakers around the £50-£100 mark. The audio is rich and nicely balanced, and with a whopping 20W maximum output, it can go seriously loud without sacrificing on quality.
Because the speaker takes up the whole bottom half of the Woodland Glow, Pure have rather cleverly chosen to have it wrap all the way around. This gives you, as they put it, "360-degree sound". Some home speakers offer this feature, where it's generally wasted since most people won't have a speaker in the middle of a room. With an outdoor speaker, though, it's a completely different story. If you've got a group of people all sat around a campsite, or if you're moving around, then you'll always be able to hear the speaker wherever you are.
Additional features
With most Bluetooth speakers, there's not that much in terms of additional features. That's certainly not the case here, though. Obviously, the big feature to mention here is the "Glow" part of the name- it's also a camping lantern. With this, you've got the choice of either white light or a warmer orange- the lantern switches between the two when the dial goes past the midway point. It's nice to have the choice between these for setting a mood, and while not exceptionally bright, the lantern is plenty powerful enough for seeing your way around the immediate vicinity.
The Pure Woodland Glow can also be used as a portable powerbank. Naturally, this eats into the battery life of the speaker and lantern modes (which is up to 14 hours), but it's undoubtedly a very useful feature to have when camping (or even if you're just sitting out in the garden away from a plug socket). There's a USB-A and a USB-C port for charging (the latter of which is also used to power up the Woodland Glow itself) hidden beneath a little rubber flap on the side of the speaker, to ensure they don't get damaged in the rain.
Pure Woodland Glow: The Verdict
This is a great little speaker in its own right, but the addition of lantern and powerbank functionality takes it up a whole extra level. Whether you're looking for the ideal camping companion or a speaker for al fresco evenings in the garden, the Woodland Glow is a fantastic choice.