Tribit Stormbox Micro 3 review

We’ve always rather liked Tribit’s Stormbox Micro line of Bluetooth speakers. Tribit isn’t an established name in the same vein as Sony or JBL, yet it has produced a couple of charming, affordable portable speakers which, especially the Micro 2, exhibit real talent in the midrange frequencies. Plus, “Stormbox” sounds like it was named by Thor.

The problem with making a good budget Bluetooth speaker is that you’ve got to follow it up while meeting the challenge of newer, more capable rivals.

It’s no secret that JBL is the name ruling the Bluetooth speaker roost, and with the pocket-sized Go 5 recently earning a glowing five-star appraisal, the third-gen Stormbox Micro is going to have to work even harder than its predecessors if it doesn’t want to be out-muscled by the ever-advancing competition.

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Price

You can get your hands on a Tribit Stormbox Micro 3 for around £63 / $65 / AU$130 approx, the same price at which the outgoing second-gen model started life.

At this more budget-friendly end of the cost ladder, the five-star JBL Go 5 clocks in at around £40 / $50 / AU$59 at the time of writing, and if you want to go even cheaper, you can get an older Go 4 for as low as £25 / $30 during sales events.

If you seek something a little more premium, the JBL Flip 7 tends to sit at roughly £110 / $150 / AU$170 at the time of writing, but again, it tends to enjoy decent discounts when the time is right.

Build

Build-wise, the Stormbox Micro 3 hasn’t deviated hugely from its five-star predecessor. Its flat, coaster-like design remains generally unchanged, with the top half of the speaker dominated by a woven textured grille and the bottom half clad in rubber to give you plenty of non-slip grip.

Large, bold volume buttons flank a circular play/pause toggle, which can also be used to summon Siri if held down for a few seconds. Those big, bold buttons do give the Tribit a clean and simple interface, but during our tests at least, we do find that they require quite a forceful press to elicit a response.

Backlit buttons for power, Bluetooth pairing, toggling XBoom and managing stereo mode/party mode are neatly housed on the speaker’s thin front-end, and thankfully, don’t require the same levels of brutish force for us to get them to cooperate.

View it from the top-down, and the new Stormbox is a bit chunkier than its outgoing ancestor, though the difference is slight – you’ll still manage to slide it into a backpack, perch it on the side of your bathtub (it’s waterproof, don’t worry!) or hold it in the palm of your hand without too much trouble. Thankfully, portability is still the name of the game here.

That said, we would’ve liked some kind of carry loop for taking the Tribit on your travels, such as you’d find adorning the side of the JBL Go 4 or larger Bose SoundLink Plus, although the Stormbox Micro 3 does have an elastic rubber strap at its base which Tribit bills as being attachable to bikes, bags and the like.

Forget the elastic strap, though, because what that base also has is magnetic powers. Yes, you can stick the Stormbox to pretty much any magnetic metallic surface you can find, and the novelty never wears off as we spend our time roving our office looking for places to stick our test sample. On the side of the fridge, attached to our boardroom whiteboard, stuck to a metal pillar outside… oh, the fun you can have.

Let’s return to the more technical side for a moment. Within, the Tribit boasts 13 watts of power driving a 48mm driver and dual coaxial passive radiators for producing what the brand describes as "crisp clarity and deep, punchy bass". More on that in a moment.

Features

Credit where it's due, Tribit has really bolstered the battery life for its third-gen Stormbox Micro. The Micro 2 gave you a very admirable 12 hours of playtime on a single charge, but that’s been doubled to a whopping 24 hours, a figure which trounces the roughly 10 hours of the JBL Go 5 and the 16 or so hours of the more expensive JBL Flip 7.

A big bonus for the Tribit and, we envisage, a major part of its potential appeal.

Speaking of battery, the Micro 3 also doubles as a powerbank, meaning you can juice up your smartphone on the go via USB-C – akin to the charging feature you’d find on the likes of the chunky JBL Charge 6. To have charging capabilities on a speaker this small is not something we’ve often seen, so kudos to Tribit for implementing it with the Micro 3.

Elsewhere, the third-gen speaker boasts an impressive IP68 water and dustproof rating, keeping it in line with the major class leaders at this price. Splash it with water or give it a quick soak in the sink, and that water-repellent body does a fine job of keeping those precious insides dry and working as they should.

Tribit has also granted support for True Wireless Stereo pairing with its latest Stormbox Micro, but note that this can only be done with two models of the same generation, so you won’t be able to dig out your old Stormbox Micro 2 and form a stereo pair with the new third-gen model.

Many of the above features can be managed and monitored by the Tribit app which, while not the most in-depth platform you’ll ever come across, is clearly laid out and easy to navigate thanks to its bold, uncluttered menus.

A nine-band customisable equaliser is nice to have as well, or you can select one of Tribit’s seven genre-led presets if you want the legwork done for you.

Sound

Judged on its own terms, the Stormbox Micro 3 is a reasonably capable performer. It’s quite a personable little speaker, and the sound that it produces does have some appeal, especially if you feed it tunes that play to its relative strengths.

The midrange where the outgoing Stormbox Micro 2 excelled, and as we listen to a slice of Nick Cave’s Into My Arms, we discern that those particular talents haven’t entirely skipped a generation. Cave’s voice is fairly rich and full, with the Tribit spotlighting the Aussie crooner nicely as his emotive sincerity shines through.

Tribit’s promise of a fulsome lower end also rings reasonably true, evidenced by the depth of the opening bass plucks on Noisettes’ Never Forget You. Depth and grip go hand in hand, giving adequate shape and texture to what can be, in the care of lesser speakers, amorphous rumbly tones.

At this price, the Stormbox Micro 3 has enough organisational ability to stop music falling over itself or feeling as jumbled as a load of socks flying around inside a tumble drier.

Detail levels across the frequency range – piercing highs, sweet mids and deep lows – are decent for a speaker of this size, even if we do notice some occasional hardness in the upper reaches, such as when we play Rosalía’s complex, operatic Berghain.

The Micro 3 is a decent Bluetooth speaker, then, but it’s simply not a class leading one, a fact that is spotlighted when put up against the JBL Go 5. Practically everything that the Stormbox Micro 3 can do, the JBL can do at least as well, and that’s a real issue when it comes to recommending the former.

After all, why would you buy a Tribit at around £63 / $65 / AU$130 when you could pick up an equally talented Go 5 for cheaper at £40 / $50 / AU$59?

The Go 5 may be smaller in size and price, but sonically, it matches the Micro 3, even when playing at the highest volumes or pushed to challenge tricky tunes such as Berghain or Tool’s Forty Six & 2.

In fact, the JBL often outshines the Tribit, with its more adept rhythmic and dynamic handling bringing out the underpinning beats of Muse’s Madness with more confidence and skill than the slightly sluggish Stormbox.

JBL’s diminutive class leader is just as clear and detailed, too, and that’s again a problem when you consider the price disparity between the two. Switching back and forth between both while playing Debussy’s Sarabande, we find that we prefer the more rounded, punchy sound of the outstanding JBL.

We do like the Stormbox, but if we’re being honest, we like the JBL Go 5 quite a lot more.

Verdict

We had high hopes for the Stormbox Micro 3, especially considering that the two speakers which preceded it both earned five-star ratings. This is by no means a bad effort, and still feels in some ways like an improvement over its predecessors thanks to its bolstered feature set and solid sound.

Sadly for Tribit, the world has moved on. The JBL Go 5 is currently our top pick if you’re after an ultra-portable, ultra-budget Bluetooth speaker, and when it costs a good deal less than the Stormbox Micro 3 but sounds noticeably better, it makes Tribit’s effort a much tougher sell.

Review published: 29th May 2026

SCORES

• Sound 3
• Build 4
• Features 4

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Read our review of the JBL Go 5

Also consider the JBL Flip 7

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