Gadgetory

for as loud as they can be portable Bluetooth speakers are surprisingly subtle gadgets you don't think you really need one until you've tried one or in my case about ten of them but once you start bringing a speaker with you to the beach in the park and yes even the shower you'll be shocked how much you enjoy having crisp clear music at a moment's notice pretty much every consumer electronics brand with an audio department has slept or logo on a tube shaped speaker and there are hundreds upon hundreds of super cheap ones with subpar sound finding the best one one that will last and sounds good and basically any situation that involves a little bit of research and maybe a bit of compromising at around a hundred to two hundred fifty bucks for a decent Bluetooth speaker it's not a trivial purchase but there's good news your choice isn't all that hard two years ago we said the best portable Bluetooth speaker you can buy with the logitech ue boom you wouldn't be too disappointed if that's the one you picked up right now today but there's an even better choice it's the logitech ue boom to the boom - as you're now familiar so intrical design but that gives a great 360 degrees sound plus it comes in a series of neat color combos as for the upgrades the speaker is now more durable and more importantly it's waterproof that means you can stand it up on the side of a hot tub or even take it to the beach without thinking twice that's not to say the boom - is the best sounding portable bluetooth speaker it's a bit lacking in bass response and tends to sound best friend pumping bright pop music or really busy electronic but considering its other perks the boom tube performs well and enough genres and situations to please most people you can also pair it to another ue boom to really fill the gaps it also gets about 15 hours of battery life which is pretty normal yet its range is stellar I walked about 30 feet away from it in a crowded part before the sound began cutting out at $200 it's one of the more expensive options in the field but if you're looking for the most well-rounded speaker with really good sound you can't go wrong with a Logitech UE boom - a close second is the Bo play a1 it's a $250 speaker that kind of looks like an aluminum water canteen but it's still attractive and it's really well made but its looks aren't just what make it special it also sounds incredible the a1 has full rich omnidirectional sound for pretty much every genre of music classical jazz hip-hop rock the a1 can do it all and it's loud like really really loud this link and fill your entire apartment with crisp audio to the point of competing with a surround setup and a subwoofer there are trade-offs the a ones range is on the shorter side and it charges using USB type-c which can be pretty annoying unless you happen to have a few extra type-c cables lying around luckily the a1 has 24 hour battery life to tide you over for long weekend trips another downside it's not very durable nor is it waterproof it could get pretty beat up like mine did if you throw it into a bag with your keys there are countless Bluetooth speakers to choose from but here are two lay you should skip right away the beats pill plus is just overpriced if it were a hundred Reed 50 bucks cheaper it would be a better deal instead you're paying two hundred and thirty dollars that's 30 more than the boom - for a device that doesn't sound anywhere near as good then there's the Amazon tap this speaker has enormous potential but right now I don't recommend spending your money on it it has the Alexa voice assistant built-in except you can't talk to it like you can the echo instead you have to hold down a button on the speaker to activate the voice control oh and one more thing it sounds kind of bad so the bottom line here Amazon may have a killer bluetooth speaker on its hands in a few years with a second or maybe a third generation model but not right now the truth about Bluetooth speakers is that they pretty much all do the same thing connect to your phone and play music if you're not a stickler for sound quality you can just get one that looks cool and doesn't cost you much but if you want the best one the one that isn't gonna bum you out when you turned it on two years from now logitech's latest model is the way to go