Charge 5 Wi-Fi SE

Those speakers do have shockingly good sound quality. I was using one on our front patio (synced with the rest of the house through a little HA magic) for years. Just installed some permanent outdoor speakers in the eves a few weeks back but it served us very well for that. And it’s always been an excellent speaker for music before concerts in the parking lot or in hotel rooms etc. All my way of saying- agreed. Good piece of kit!

I just got a JBL Charge 5 Wifi SE on sale at Costco (if you're in the US) and am pleased with its versatility. It does Apple Airplay 2 in addition to Bluetooth, which is nice if you're in the Apple ecosystem (useless otherwise). It also supports Auracast, which is a new one-to-many Bluetooth broadcast standard (a.k.a. LC3 or PBP/public broadcast profile). If it had an Aux input, I'd consider it near perfect. Weirdly, the newer Charge 6 doesn't have the Airplay functionality. Edit: re-reading your post, I see that you didn't mean versatile in terms of connectivity.. never mind then!

I really like the WiFi functionality on my Charge 5 WiFi SE’s, if you’re primarily using at home it’s much better to have the WiFi. I’m sure there’s improvement on the however

Not Advertisement: I just installed this speaker into Home Assistant. I already have Google Cast integration installed. After following the installation instructions with the ability to discover other devices this speaker installed itself into Home Assistant as a Media Player and also a google cast player. The sound depth is unbelievable. Costco has this on sale until the 26th for $139 ($40 off). I highly recommend. I also discovered as many others that there is no charging cable. It's a standard jack so you probably have a charging cable though.

The Auracast feature as I read it was for synching other JBL speakers with this one. They have a huge line of speakers. I literally just unboxed this half an hour ago. I'm dancing. I already had scripts to use the google nest mini's for my playlists. I'll let you know about the battery. I've got so many google nest mini's I really don't need this but wanted something for the patio. I believe it's perfect for that. The bass is unbelievable. I think the base comes out both ends. You can see the ends vibrate. I bet there are at least 3 speakers in this thing. I might get one more for the living/dining room area. There's probably battery information in the reviews.

see i got the clip 5 dual for stereo everywhere i go but then i loved the charge 5 so much i got them in stereo some time ago the skull candy is next in line for that treatment lol