JBL - Boombox

My charge 3 lasted nearly 5 years of outdoors use in the Midwest. Summer, winter, forgotten about overnight, it was a tank. Side story: when it recently broke, I ordered another... Or so I thought. I was a little tipsy and bought the boombox instead. This giant box arrives, and let me tell ya, that thing POUNDS.

What do you mean with portability? Able to transport it with a car? Able to place it with other stuff in a bagpack? Able to carry it on a cart like a fridge? Also depends on where you’d use it and how you’d use it. Obviously, those portable ones (to just fit with your stuff in the backpack), you won’t get dance floor thundering bass and rather a good background sound for a gathering with a few friends. If it’s for the backpack style (cause that’s what I’d consider portable) I wouldn’t go bigger than Jbl charge 6 size. Different brands have different signature sounds. I really like jbls, and the newer Sonys. Pretty much any soundcore speaker and Tribit and so on that I had in my hand, I wanted to tune them over their equalizer cause I didn’t like there profiles (I remember them as muffled) Sony field 1 is a great portable and sounds good. Same for flip 7 and charge 6. also worth looking at features other than sound and robustness. Soundcore motion 300 also one I remember with a really nice sound. From what I heard, if you go for a Jbl charge size speaker, looking at the difference to the next bigger one like Jbl xtreme or soundcore boom size, I would say the sound difference can be named almost irrelevant. There is more bass, yes, but not enough worth mentioning to me. So I’d say go either flip / charge size for spontaneously taking to shower and back, outdoors in your backpack, or Jbl boombox size if it has to be taken sometimes by car and needs a big bass for a lil dance round.

If you need it big, get sth like the jbl boombox If you want something you want to carry, get a minirig setup with 2 mids and one sub

I like the JBL boom box and the Xtreme 2. Excellent deep bass and great volume. Very ruggedly built and waterproof are added bonuses. Great battery life too. 6-8 hours when fully charged.

I've had most of the lineup from JBL. The Go, Clip, flip, charge, extreme, and boombox. The only one I wasn't really happy with was the clip...it was being sold in a two pack and yet lacked the capability of virtually every JBL speaker which is to be able to link up to other JBLs and play in stereo. They're all good for their size/price. Obviously the Go doesn't thump like the boombox does but it's a fraction of the price and size. I think any of them up through the Charge can be charged with a USB cable then the bigger ones like the extreme/boombox have a proprietary charging cord. They're all at least somewhat water resistant and rugged all the way up to the Boombox and the Extreme being submersible. I remember when I first got the Boombox, being at a pool and my brother asked if I was worried about the speaker being so close to said pool. I said it's supposed to be waterproof and I then proceeded to throw it in the pool. It was totally fine. Battery life on them are all respectable, and at least personally, I haven't had a battery fail yet. The extreme and even more so the Boombox, seem to last forever. More recently I bought a Sony xg500 (Boombox equivalent) when it was on sale. Not a bad speaker, has good mids and highs, but the bass was a little lackluster and overall it couldn't get quite as loud as my 5 year old Boombox. It has an inferior IP rating compared to the Boombox as well. The only thing it really has over the Boombox, that I didn't even realize for a while, and it may or may not be a positive depending on the person, is it has some lighting effects on the side that strobe with music. Overall the Boombox is really the better buy for sure. The only other speakers I've heard that were as good or better were some bose ones, but they didn't have much bass, and the ones I saw didn't seem too rugged. The UE speakers I've heard were fine but not as good as JBLs

A lot larger than you want to. Nothing which you can just toss into your sports bag is going to do the trick (even the JBL xtreme which you think is massive). It’s jbl boombox or Sony ULT field 7 at a bare minimum.

I’ve had numerous bluetooth speakers and my skullcandy barrel xt beats them all. For the price too! Its sorta tied with jbl boombox but because of the huge price difference, skullcandy takes the cake!

The JBL Boom box is probably among your best bets, but it won't play a full weekend on full blast.

I use the JBL boombox to record/play sets in public spaces. Sounds great, if you don't mind latency (I mix mostly in headphones to counter). To soften the blow of latency, try an alternative with an "instrument in" channel.

For sure, I have a boombox 1 and I've loved it and have used it EASILY over 100 times at university house parties in the last couple of years. The only thing stopping me getting a boombox 3 is the fact I already have more powerful party speakers, and a plethora of subwoofers which I now use for much larger house parties and ive gone a bit more up market with subs and pa speakers for parties now. But the boombox closes that gap between actual portability and performance for daily use or smaller gatherings Partybox's are great but they look a bit tacky for general home use, they really are just for parties and they weight significantly more than the boombox. They are 'portable' but not really, once you get to the 310 territory and above (17kg), its not that practicaly lugging it around. Whereas I can happily carry a boombox with me wherever I want and not break a sweat since its only around 5-6kg and can still output a lot of noise.