JBL Boombox - Waterproof Portable Bluetooth Speaker - Black

I have owned many Bluetooth radios through the years. Bose,Klipsch,Altec Lansing. The Bose is great had a internal baterry, it is light, the battery lasted a few hours but the bass was lacking and in a beach if you wanted to blast it it didn’t go i high I wanted to. The Klipsch sound great when I had plugged in with the charger but when I took it to the beach or outside the volume decreased way to low for my liking. The Altec Lansing has great bass and sounded really good at high volume but I had to buy constantly 8 D cell batteries which was way impractical. This JBL Boombox is wonderful the best Bluetooth radio I have ever bought. I tried it in my house with the charger connect to it and the bass was incredible love to see the side woofers moving when playing a song and only had it like 50% of the volume because it was blasting. So I thought to myself hopefully it passes my outside torture. I took it to the beach and was floored on how amazing this boombox sounded. The Bass was impactful you can fill it in your chest if you are close enough. The back bottom works increíble you can change the settings for inside or outside listening( you can tell the bass sound better on this setting if you are outside). My friends where Very impressed on how loud and clean it sounded it had no distortion no matter how loud we force it to. I don’t have to worry on D cell batteries anymore. On a full charge I had playing for 6-7 hours and of the 5 lights that it had when it was fully charged it finished with 3 lights on. So i do believe it can go for 24 hours playing None stop. I even charged my phone and my friends phones while we where in the beach, so now I don’t have to Bring my external battery charger this works great for charging many phones while you listen to music. One less thing I have to worry about is when it rains this is waterproof I’ve seen many videos on YouTube of people throwing the JBL boombox to a pool and it was still working. Now I’m not planing to do this, but what I want to do is get one of those floating things to put my ice , cups whisky or beer and have the JBL boombox on top of that and have a party on the water at the beach. A cool thing that JBL Speakers do is that they can be link together and play at the same time. So if your friends have more JBL speakers you can have a party. One thing to note this thing is heavy. But since imma hometheater buff I know that good quality woofers and magnets are heavy. So if you want to get great bass and loud spl with no distortion this is the way to go. If you find it to heavy try out the one that comes before this one i believe is the JBL extreme( not sure) but if you want to get the best bass, loud clean with no distortion, increíble battery durability for those long outside Beach parties this is the way to go. Read more

Context of this review: observations from testing multiple genres directly after unboxing The speaker fully accomplishes what it was designed to do: deliver maximum volume with maximum bass at minimum distortion in any location. This product is meant for large spaces and parties, and the sound is therefore crafted for this environment. You need to expect a generally warm sound. JBL has produced a chonk speaker which naturally emphasizes bass frequencies through the sheer size of the side speakers. Other devices would be better for appreciating balances and appealing to certain audiophile needs, but this path is not the speaker's main intention, and this needs to be acknowledged. Keep in mind, the sound quality and clarity is still fantastic; it just sounds slightly warmer and less crisp than some of its colleagues because the lower frequencies are more supported. It is a boombox after all, and I honestly haven't yet found a product that better blends volume, clarity, and portability. Consider it like a knight build in an rpg game; very well balanced, but slightly more effort has been invested in health and strength stats than intelligence because it'll need to primarily tank through large enemies but still be versatile. That is this speaker. It is your knight. It outperforms the other knights at knight things. I believe the knight to be better suited for me because of its versatile abilities. Like apple jacks. Other cereals might have brighter colors, but apple jacks is completely superior in flavor, mascots, and general existence. If you disagree about the cereal, I look forward to reading about you in Jane Goodall's next research paper. How certain genres/artists sound on this thing: Adele - absolutely fabulous Andrew Huang - excellent General rock songs - the kicks and lower drums will be heavyish, and crispness may be lost depending on how well the initial track was mixed and the speaker placement 60s Jazz - the walking bass will become pronounced. Everything is very clear in the rest of the parts, but you might notice a difference Voces8 Lux album - excellent Kanye's "Use This Gospel" - slaps Really anything EDM, Hip-Hop, or other electronically produced music - total banger Modern country - actually pretty good, kinda surprised me The pyramid fight scene from Transformers 2: this would make a great bootleg home theater sound system Keep in mind that the sound is affected by where you place the speaker. Bass reverberates, so if you put it in time out in the corner facing towards the center of the room, both side speaker will reverberate off the walls and become amplified; the high frequencies will stand no chance. I found that the best audiophile setup is to place the speaker in the center of a room at mid volume on an elevated, small, hard platform (like a coffee table). If you want max bass and wish to disregard the well-being of nearby living organisms, put it at full volume on outside mode in the corner of a bathroom with tile flooring. Public restrooms also work well for bass testing, and people in stalls will be unable to interfere. If they are the kind of people to immediately get up to confront you, run; the speaker is not worth it. I purchased this product when it was heavily discounted ($270). I could have alternatively purchased 20 shirts, a stained recliner, a college textbook, or 252 chicken quesadilla melts from taco bell. I believe this boombox to be the most worthwhile of these choices. Oh and you can throw it in a tub and it will be fine. The quesadillas would not have been fine. I hope this review and its general babbling are somewhat helpful. Read more

I was looking for a battery powered Bluetooth speaker to use around the pool and social events where using my big plug-in Sony wasn’t appropriate. I have to say this speaker is the perfect compromise on all levels. I’ve learned with battery power, there is always a compromise. If you want a very loud and long lasting speaker, you pretty much have to have extra size, weight, and cost. The Boombox offers extremely good portability, sound quality, volume, and battery life. Obviously battery life will vary, but it handles 5 to 8+ hour pool parties with moderate to full volume with ease. The battery life is really unbelievable! Most of the questions I see about this speaker is how loud it will get. Without getting technical what I can say is it is more than adequate. The Sony speaker I mentioned earlier is an MCH-V11. It’s roughly 3 times larger in size and weight. I’d guess it will get about 15% louder and has to be plugged in at all times. The JBL Boombox annihilates the Sony on sound quality, and it’s slightly less volume has never been an issue. Everyone is always amazed by the sound quality of the JBL. You can also daisy chain multiple JBL speakers with JBL connect which is awesome and takes the sound quality to another level. This speaker is very simple to operate and has had perfect Bluetooth connectivity with all my devices. It’s also very comforting not having to worry about your speaker getting wet! I don’t write many reviews, but I wanted to share my thoughts on this impressive little speaker. I have zero buyers remorse with this one. It’s worth every penny. Read more