Philips The Roller review

What do you miss most about the 1980s?

You don’t have to have actually been around during that heady period to know just what the decade gave us, from classic action cinema to New Wave tunes and the rise of hip-hop. Maybe you miss the Yuppies, the shoulder pads and the big hair, or maybe the cosy family sitcoms accompanied by a piping hot chicken Kiev.

Or maybe you miss the tech. More specifically, you miss the audio trends of the decade, from stacked hi-fi systems to portable cassette players, boomboxes and foam-capped on-ear headphones. Those were the days.

If you do find yourself hankering for that bygone era, Philips might have just the thing. To mark its centenary last year, the Dutch manufacturer announced it would be reviving its classic Moving Sound range of products from the 1980s, with the new ‘The Roller’ emulating the radio-and-cassette design of the original model, now repurposed as a Bluetooth speaker.

Modern streaming and sleek, feature-laden designs are all well and good, but Philips is looking to put the fun back into audio – and what’s so wrong with that?

Price

The Roller (MS60) will set you back £169 in the UK and $229 when it launches in the USA later this year. This, for UK buyers, is the same launch price as the five-star JBL Charge 6 (£170 / $199 / AU$200). The Charge 6 has seen a few price drops in the intervening months, however, and at the time of writing you can pick one up for £129 in the UK and $160 in the US.

If you want something that’s about the same size but costs a good deal more and comes with our firm recommendation, the JBL Xtreme 5 can currently be yours for £300 / $300.

Build

The 1980s never really went away, at least not for Philips.

The Roller’s design takes direct influence from Philips’ combined radio and cassette player of the same name (the D8007 and its D8008 sequel to be specific), whereby a central body is flanked by integrated circular speakers built into the casework, topped by a rigid carry handle.

Naturally, changes have been made to see The Roller keep up with the demands of the 21st century. The cassette deck and radio display housed at the centre of the original have been replaced by a crisp, clear LCD colour screen, while an array of control buttons is found directly above. Around the back, charging and physical audio playback are handled by a USB-C port, and we’re pretty sure they didn’t have those in 1987.

Despite its relative portability, The Roller is not a particularly small speaker – it’s about the size of an elongated shoebox. While its price puts it in more direct competition with the JBL Charge 6, Philips’ colourful throwback is closer to JBL’s burly Xtreme 5 in terms of its size. In essence, it’s a Bluetooth boombox with a retro design and a modern feature set.

It is, however, a little lighter, weighing in at a more reasonable 2.3kg when compared with the 2.9kg of the current-gen Xtreme, and while it isn’t lightweight, it’s not a chore to lug from place to place if you’ve been to the gym a few times this year.

It’s well-made, too. While some may baulk at its novel aesthetics, The Roller feels far more substantial and robust than a mere toy. The speaker’s IP67 rating will keep it properly protected from dust ingress, water splashes and even some light liquid submersion, and as we run our hands across its exterior, tapping and probing as we go, we’re struck by how substantial and well-made everything feels.

There are no rubberised bumpers or shock absorbers to speak of, so we wouldn’t feel confident dropping our test speaker from any great height, but the overall quality of construction is impressive given The Roller’s fun-focused aesthetic and reasonable price. The plastic body and metal speaker grilles are of an admirably weighty standard, while a quick spray with a garden hose proves that those waterproofing credentials check out.

Whether we’re actively using it or just admiring its show-off retro aesthetics, we very much enjoy our time with The Roller. It looks particularly fresh and funky when sporting its bright yellow finish (you can go for black if you’re more conservative), and while there’s a touch of the Fisher-Price here, we don’t mind. The Roller is supposed to be fun, and that’s just what it is.

The various controls are chunky and respond with a satisfying click, and we particularly enjoy the customisation options available for the colour display. It’s not often that a Bluetooth speaker comes with an actual display screen, but with Philips’ retro offering, your display will show the song you’re playing and the speaker’s current battery life. You can even add novel animated widgets – like a spinning virtual cassette deck – in a nod to The Roller’s heritage.

The good times don’t stop there. The Roller comes with customisable lighting effects which can be cycled through or switched on/off either via the app or using the on-unit buttons. Are they strictly necessary? No. Are they a nice touch that adds a dollop of fun to an already exciting recipe, like a few colourful sprinkles dusted over an already-eye-catching sundae? We think so.

Features

Despite its retro appearance, Philips’ The Roller has been kitted out with a number of modern-day features.

The Roller boasts Bluetooth 6.0, and while there isn’t any hi-res codec support to speak of – you’ll have to make do with standard SBC – Auracast is available, meaning you can connect it to any number of Auracast-enabled speakers at once. That includes most of JBL’s current-gen offerings and other members of Philips’ Moving Sound range.

Thanks to its rear-mounted USB-C port, The Roller can double as a portable power bank for charging your phone or similar portable device. You can also use the USB-C port for direct listening, but only via USB-A to USB-C rather than USB-C to USB-C, which seems odd considering we can’t imagine many listeners using their laptop, say, as a source for a portable speaker. No matter how you listen, audio processing is capped at 16-bit/48kHz.

Battery life is decent for a speaker of this size and type. The Roller will grant you around 24 hours of playtime from a single charge, which is the same as the standard runtime offered by the rival JBL Charge 6 and the larger Xtreme 5.

Glance at the array of rectangular controls at the top of Philips’ 1980s-inspired speaker and you’ll notice a bright pink button etched with the letters ‘M/S’. Give it a press and you’ll activate The Roller’s ‘Moving Sound’ mode, which adjusts the digital signal processing by shifting the bass to a higher frequency and reducing its deepest low-end output, increasing the resultant dynamic headroom and allowing sound to travel more convincingly in outdoor environments.

In our experience, activating the mode has its trade-offs. It’s undoubtedly better for outdoor listening by granting a more forward, muscular and entertaining presentation, but you do lose a little clarity and refinement as part of the deal. A matter of taste and context, then.

Beyond the physical buttons, controlling your speaker is performed via the Philips app. It’s a useful platform for making certain tweaks to your experience, such as selecting the widget you want displayed on the display screen or adjusting the pattern of the speaker’s light modes, but we’re disappointed to see that no customisable equaliser, or indeed any sound profile presets, are included.

Sound

With our mature adult hat on, we’ll get our po-faced caveat out of the way and reveal that, perhaps unsurprisingly, you can buy more sonically sophisticated Bluetooth speakers at this level.

The five-star Charge 6 doesn’t go as loud as The Roller, but the JBL class-leader puts music together in a more convincing manner. It’s clearer, more detailed and far more musically nuanced, with a layered, cohesive performance that can make The Philips speaker seem somewhat unrefined by comparison. For outright sound quality, the Charge 6 remains the one to pick.

When we remove our businessman’s bowler and don the backwards baseball cap of youth, however, we’re far more inclined to take The Roller for what it is: a brash, bold–looking speaker that makes a similarly brash, bold sound. Thanks to its 60 watts of RMS power feeding a pair of 25mm tweeters alongside twin 9cm woofers, Philips’ substantial Roller really is capable of putting the “boom” into boombox.

With the volume dialled up towards the higher reaches of social acceptability (sorry, neighbours), the opening bars of System Of A Down’s Highway Song nearly take our ears off. Power and punch are not in short supply, and while that extends across the entire frequency range, there’s a particularly large helping of muscular bass to really give the tune some kick.

Hard rock and hip-hop appear to be where The Roller is the most comfortable, and again, that isn’t much of a surprise given its fun-focused, boombox-esque nature. Turnstile’s SLOWDIVE sounds big, bold and suitably crunchy – enough to get heads banging – while Black Veil Brides’ epic Saviour II and Eminem’s hard-edged The Way I Am are given similarly powerful treatment.

Those qualities remain no matter how or where we use our bright yellow test speaker. Thanks to its assertive presentation – and that handy ‘Moving Sound’ mode – The Roller’s rich, full-bodied reproduction carries confidently when we take the speaker outside for some fun in the sun.

Big dynamic swings are generally communicated with the appropriate heft, as evidenced by the crashing thumps peppered across Rosalía’s ever-dramatic Berghain, even if The Roller can struggle fully to tease out the subtler shifts bubbling away in the background.

On the subject of The Roller’s blind spots, detail levels are adequate but not outstanding, with subtler nuances generally lost at the expense of that irrepressibly ‘have at ’em’ approach. Listen to subtler fare, such as alt-J’s Every Other Freckle or Agnes Obel’s The Curse, and the JBL Charge 6 will handle such delicate tunes with a lighter, more skilful touch.

Such relative weaknesses aren’t quite enough to temper our affections for Philips’ fun-focused ‘80s-inspired Bluetooth boombox. Subtlety and nuance may tend to fall somewhat by the wayside, but in terms of pure fun factor, The Roller really knocks it out of the park.

Verdict

If you’re serious about getting the best-sounding Bluetooth speaker at this price, buy the JBL Charge 6. It’s smaller and not as enjoyable to look at, but musically, it’s in a league of its own.

If you want something that’s a bit off the beaten track, though, The Roller is a cheerful charmer. Its funky design will likely appeal to younger listeners who want something quirky and unique, as well as audio veterans who still hanker to have their '80s boombox held proudly upon their shoulders.

All told, Philips has done a marvellous job in putting the fun back into portable audio.

Review published: 11th August 2026

SCORES

• Sound 4
• Build 5
• Features 4

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