With the connector on this speaker, you can connect to a mobile phone or mobile player that is compatible, and then stream the tunes out loud. This speaker is a step up from the closely related SP-A1M in that it has a pair of 30mm drivers (as opposed to just one), runs on 2 AA batteries as opposed to 2 AAA batteries, and has 2x 160milliWatt output. However, the SP-A1M speaker gets 30 hours of audio playback out of a pair of batteries, whereas the SP-A230 only gets 25. There are color options available for the JVC SP-A230 portable speaker.