Wireless speakers are all the rage: just visit your local Harvey Norman or similar store and there is plenty of choice.
Today we are testing the biggest sibling in this range from Ultimate Ears, the Megaboom.
It is arguably one of the better Bluetooth speakers around and it is not unreasonably priced either.
(Officially well over the $300 mark but online as low as AUD255).
Let’s have a look and listen.
The Megaboom has some very distinctive packaging, primarily dictated by its cylinder shape. Normally, I throw away a lot of the packaging as it is just functional enough to get the product to the consumer but here you can see that a lot of thought has gone into designing the best possible enclosure for the speaker.
Initially I thought that the Megaboom would also be mega size but it is easily less than half the size of the cylindrical packaging.
There is no chance you will ever lose the fluro adapter. A hideous but effective colour.
Fortunately the unit itself can have a range of colours and ours was an electric blue.
What stands out are the oversized but very handy plus and minus buttons for the volume control and a small UE logo in contrasting red. The unit is meant to be standing upright for better all-around sound but if you put it down horizontally it won’t roll away into the swimming pool if you’re sitting poolside with your friends. Even if it did, no worries as the unit is waterproof up to IPX7 standard.
Charging the unit might take a while but you will get close to 20 hours of battery life. With the bare minimum of four hours of sleep you can keep on partying just about all day and all night, if that is your thing. It is more useful for the average user that he or she doesn’t need to have it plugged in all the time.
The Sound That Matters
Initial impressions are very good on this score as well. There is quite a deep bass with a good surround sound. Volume, as expected with this party animal, is LOUD. Even at the highest volumes there is not much discernible distortion.
We’ve tested it out with pop, country, film music, songs where the lyrics are quite important, and also some light classical.
The two 4-inch bass radiators, coupled with twin 2-inch drivers even give a degree of stereo feeling. Need more separation? Get someone else’s Megaboom and they will play well together.
Important in this case is the app which allows you to really personalise the settings, like EQ, setting alarms and tells you the battery life (pressing both volume buttons gives the same info but spoken as in: “60% charge”).
I did not go by my own experiences alone either so family members have contributed to the overall assessment. Even though sound and looks are highly subjective I think we can get to a fairly objective conclusion on this one.
Conclusion
The UE Boom series have garnered a solid reputation for quality and design and the Megaboom unit just put an exclamation mark behind that assessment. Bass is greatly improved and so is the waterproofing.
Is it worth the nearly 380 Aussie bucks? It’s rather pricey but I love the design, flexibility and sound.
Shop around and if you can get it below the 300 mark you have a bargain!
So we’ll give this bluetooth/NFC speaker from the House of Logitech, purveyor of all things for our digital lifestyle, a top score of 8 out 10.
Highly recommended.
Here’s the official store to see the whole range.
