Unless you are going to apply speaker or room correction, no speaker has a universally flat "hifi" or "monitor like" response in all environments. What you hear is a product of both the speaker and the room, not just the speaker. For this reason alone, a portable speaker makes little sense for use as a "monitor" and that's before we get to the pretty terrible stereo channel separation going on with the drivers mere inches apart on a flat surface on this particular model. This is a fairly big part of the reason people working on audio projects tend to rely on headphones to monitor in the field.
There are plenty of battery powered speakers with as close to a "neutral" (monitor) style response curve as just making a plain ole speaker can, but again, not like almost anyone will hear that neutral curve on a portable speaker anyway!
The Sonos units can at least perform sweep tests and some room correction via a phone mic ("Truplay" in their marketing), as one example - even the portable battery powered units like the Move. The Move is also a third cheaper. Room correction will generally provide significantly more accurate or "hifi" as you put it bass response.
I completely agree the design of the OB-4 is more attractive though!
Thx for the move reference, haven't researched in a few years. Tho I need two moves to match stereo need for production so it's quite a lot bigger, I'm sure that helps the sound. I have software for sweeps and eq.
