Sony Rolly Review

It dances better than I do

It spins, swirls, throws its arms in the air and moves to the music. All this, from an egg. The Sony Rolly is, without doubt, one of the most bizarre things I have ever seen. I say thing because it is hard to categorise the Rolly. It could be called an mp3 player, as it has almost 2GB of memory onboard to save music. It could also be called a speaker, as the Bluetooth syncs the Rolly with anything from a phone to laptop with which to play your music through. It is also a strange shape that dances. So what is it?

Sony calls it a ‘new dimension mp3’ player that brings you closer to your music. It’s true that the Rolly is something different. The speaker quality is incredible for its size, with flawless playback over Bluetooth. The dancing in time to the music isn’t just novelty, and if you put it somewhere dark, it has a very impressive light display while it moves and dances perfectly in time to the music.

Out of the box, the Rolly comes with software to choreograph the dance moves. Although this is pretty cool at first, the time taken making sure the Rolly dances the way you want in no way compares to whatever feeling of pride you feel after playing dance coordinator. The Rolly dances fine on its own.

It isn’t perfect. There are a lot of almost obvious extras that it doesn’t have. There is no external display, so no way of seeing which track you are playing or which is next. It’s also missing a headphone socket, so no way of listening to the music without playing it through the speakers. The controls can also be quite temperamental, using two roll wheels to change track and volume.

After a while you get used to the Rolly. It works great and sounds even better, and with up to 4 hours of battery life it works as a great chargeable Bluetooth speaker. The price is steep. At £250 a pop, it’s an expensive toy. However, the Sony Rolly is a fantastic bit of kit. If you want portable Bluetooth speakers and don’t mind shelling out for something cool rather than functional, then the Sony Rolly is the way to go.