
It comes with five extra hours of battery life, for 20 hours total, and the richness and bass response in its sound makes it easily the best-sounding, best-looking, and most well-rounded portable speaker you can buy. Now, with the Megaboom 3 costing just about $50 more than the standard model, it’s a no-brainer to pick the larger model. A couple of years ago, the standard Boom felt like UE’s marquee product.

Syncing is still super simple, and there’s also a mobile app with a built-in equalizer and UE’s PartyUp feature for syncing numerous speakers together.īut where the Megaboom 3 shines is in how superior it is to UE’s standard Boom 3. The volume buttons are now extra large and designed more to make an aesthetic statement than serve a functional purpose, while the charging port has been moved to the side so the speaker can be played and charged simultaneously. The Megaboom 3 is a vastly superior pick over the standard Boom 3 The best Bluetooth speaker right now: UE Megaboom 3

Older devices may have pros, cons, and scores adjusted to reflect new information. This article will be continually updated as new devices are released, so be sure to check back if you’re not buying a Bluetooth speaker right now.

What you should be asking yourself is how much design and color choice, sound quality, and water resistance matters to you since those are the factors that push the price higher. A good thing to remember: if you just want something that works, there are models out there on Amazon for well under $50, and they’re surprisingly capable. So the questions now are: what are you going to use this speaker for, and how much are you willing to spend on a new one?Īfter going through last year’s roundup, updating our product list, and including the latest and greatest models from UE, JBL, and others, we’re now even better equipped to help you understand all the benefits and trade-offs involved with purchasing the right Bluetooth speaker. It’d be too extreme to call them a necessity of modern life, but portable speakers are almost like headphones now: a thing you can live without, but you will always wish you had them on you when the need arises. You’ve seen them at parties, probably used them at the beach or park, and chances are you’ve owned one before and will want to continue owning one for the foreseeable future. Unlike, say, a smartwatch or a home security camera, portable speakers are devices that almost anyone can benefit from, so long as you have a smartphone and access to any kind of digital music. In other words, you’re not going into a new purchase blindly, and you probably have assumptions about this category of gadgets and how much you’re willing to spend on one. If you’re reading this, it’s a fair assumption that you have, at some point in your life, owned or interacted with a portable Bluetooth speaker.
