Battery Powered PA Systems

To begin with, the budget you describe won’t get you a decent set of PA speakers for indoor, let alone outdoor. QTX and many other such brands produce speakers that, based on price alone, can not be any good. Especially if you calculate they not only are a powered speaker, but they have bluetooth, built-in mixer and even two handheld microphones. Just to give you an idea, a SINGLE wireless handheld mic from a somewhat decent manufacturer will cost about 150 euros and that is really the bottom of the barrel. Anything from renowned brands like shure and sennheiser will start in the 350 euro range and quickly go upwards.

If you plan on charging for a gig and the gear you bring, the customer -imho- has a right to get the best possible quality for his money. These speakers cost about the same as the rental of 2 professional quality speakers 2 times. That should tell you something.

The golden rule in PA is “you get what you pay for” and there are no shortcuts to that. Recent years have seen an explosion in 2.1 systems (small sub with two also relatively small satellites) and 2.2 systems (two subs with matching tops, often in so-called array setup). These systems give a relatively high bang for the buck, while still being compact. They outperform their size effectively.

Now, the QTX speakers are 100W RMS output. Leaving the sound quality out of it (which I would have serious doubts about) as well as build quality (another troubling thing) and just looking at the numbers, you’d have two for 200W. You need 5W rms per person on average for regular indoor use (so no headbanging loud stuff, just party level). That would give you enough “power” to play for about 40 people. Outdoor is at least DOUBLE that, so you’d have power to play for 20 people.

The site claims up to 10 hours battery life. But I can tell you from experience that -even with new batteries- the battery life quickly drops as power consumption goes up. At full power you could be looking at less than 2 hours.

There is one brand of mobile speakers I know, from Germany, called Fohhn that produces high end gear. Good battery life even at full volume, but no big bass speakers (these soak up power). Sound quality is great and especially for speech and BACKGROUND music they are hard to beat. Their speakers start at 1200+ euro a piece or so.

Putting all that info together, I’d say you are not ready to own your own PA yet. Go play out, make some money, set it apart and figure out how often you need them, what features and power they should have and then start shopping.
Even then, I’d still opt for generator and normal powered speakers, all you need is to keep the tank topped off to keep them going, no matter how long the party. No chance of forgetting to charge them properly and showing up with empty speakers.

Til that moment, either rent (battery-powered or with a generator) the PA that matches the size and location of your party. You’ll show up with pro-quality gear and can make a buck or two from the kick-back you can negotiate with the rental company. Generally you can get between 10-25% discount/kick-back. And all that without investing a dime of yourself.

Just my 3 cents as usual.

And having a “power bar” which is usually a power conditioner with surge protection is handy to have as well. Keeps the voltage more or less stable and prevents power surges that could potentially hurt your gear (especially the network/link connections are pretty sensitive to spikes/surges).