How to tell if Sony XB21 wireless Bluetooth speaker is charging? This desktop speaker has an orange LED light in its rear button and panel, just to the right of the micro USB charger input port, as shown in the next photo. This light, labeled as the CHARGE lamp, flashes orange when the battery is about dead. So it does tell battery level (to a degree). When the speaker is not on the charge and this lamp pulses ON and OFF in slow flashes it’s telling you to CHARGE the speaker. The blinking means that the speaker will soon shut down. But also, to see if the XB21 is in fact charging, check out this LED for this as well. We explain how to interpret it next.
Of course, you can rest assured that the speaker is NOT charging with no power cable feeding the speaker.
When the speaker is OFF, you can tell if the Sony XB21 is charging if this light glows a constant orange. This steady glow happens while charging, when the speaker is either ON, paired, or, OFF. But when no charger is powering the unit, this light blinks when the battery has about run all the way out of power.
If the SRS XB21 CHARGE lamp flashes when the power cord is connected, then the speaker is likely NOT charging. So you should check that your USB cable, adapter charger, and power source are in working order. Try a new power supply or a known good cable. You want this light glowing without blinking to know for sure that the XB21 is charging.
The button panel on the XB21 may warm a little to boot as the speaker recharges. Plus, most adapters for car and household with will also heat up too. This warming is a great sign that speaker charging is happening, so long as there’s not too much heating, or none at all.
As speaker recharging advances, the CHARGE LED persists with its glowing. But unlike some of the more expensive wireless speakers, the XB21 gives no visual reading of just how far along the charging is, just that it is still in progress.
But you can hear how charging is progressing by pressing the BATT button, also found in the back button panel. Pressing the BATT pushbutton gets the XB21 to speak the current percentage of charge in the battery, in a female voice.
The battery charge cycle is finished when the CHARGE LED goes dark.
Even with the charger cord still juicing the unit, and when the speaker is OFF or ON, the CHARGE lamp stops glowing when the battery hits the full mark. We see this in the last picture above. The speaker indeed no longer recharges when the light goes out, signifying that the battery has reached full charge condition.
With the micro USB cable disconnected, we cannot know just by reading the CHARGE or Status LEDs, just how much the SRS XB21 actually recharged, only that it did charge some. It typically does charge to full though, as long as we wait until the CHARGE lamp goes out before unplugging the external power supply. Note that if this lamp does not flash when you next boot the speaker, then the battery likely did charge.
Again though, we can press the BATT button when the speaker is running, and if charging completed properly, it will say, “Battery fully charged,” to us in the lady’s voice.
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