The marketing photos for portable Bluetooth speakers tend to show them being used at a pool, park, packed party venue or at the beach by young good looking people.
I wonder how many of them actually get used that way?
My Logitech Ultimate Ears Boom 2 speaker hasn’t left home since I got it earlier this year as a review device from a Logitech media event.
That’s not to say it’s been unused. I actually use the UE Boom 2 a lot.
I live in an apartment and have nice Aktimate speakers in the living area attached to the Samsung TV, OXX digital radio and Xiaomi Mi Box.
However those speakers are optimised for listening to while seated on the sofa.
Where portable Bluetooth speakers come in handy is during the day when I’m elsewhere in the house eg enjoying lunch on the balcony table, preparing food in the kitchen or tidying the bathrooms/bedrooms.
Do portable Bluetooth speakers match the audio quality of my Aktimate speakers?
They’re alright for music but obviously one small mono speaker is not as good as dedicated home theatre stereo or 5.1 speakers.
Note that if you have two portable Bluetooth speakers from the same company eg UE, BOSE, JBL then you can usually pair them and get better multi directional sound.
Where portable bluetooth speakers excel for my purposes is for listening to the radio, technology, comedy and business podcasts.
Which brands of portable Bluetooth speakers do you like the best for overall sound quality, battery life, design? (choose one or many options)
We’d love to hear about how you use portable bluetooth speakers in the comments.
Note that I’ve included Google Home in the poll even though it’s not portable because it does have Bluetooth speaker functionality and I’m betting quite a few Ausdroid readers have bought Google Home speaker multipacks and installed them across all the main rooms in their homes.
UE Mini Boom for me. The sound is deceivingly loud And crisp for a speaker that small in size. Also have a Samsung Level Box Mini muti-directional Bluetooth speaker that came with my Galaxy Note 4. But it’s not as loud as the UE Mini Boom
Listening to podcasts whole showering…Logitech X50, cheap enough that i don’t care if it accidentally falls in the bathtub
Got a cheap one from K-Mart for $10. The sound quality; right mix of treble, bass and vocals, beats my cousin’s Beats Pill; heavily focussed on bass and bass only, fair and square.
They are also handy to jam inside jack-o-lanterns and use a Halloween sound board app to scare Trick-or-treaters.
Other places I have used them: kids party at local pool, and for jungle sound effects at school fun run. Also handy for violin practice : kid + violin + speaker in one room, I control the track they are playing to whilst working in another room.
I have 2 × UE Boom 2. One goes on my pushie or in my boat and has had the crap beaten out of it but still works a treat. The other mostly is used around the house and is sometimes taken camping.
Aside from taking one on holiday occasionally, my Bluetooth speakers rarely leave the house. Where they excel is in getting music going around the home with a minimum of fuss.
I have a fondness for Xiaomi and Blitzwolf speakers as they usually punch well above their weight, but I still love the Nokia MD-12 speaker I received as a freebie with one of my previous phones.