I’ve tested a lot — and I mean a lot — of the best Bluetooth speakers. More than 50 to be exact. And if we’re talking about sheer popularity, then one brand is the clear and obvious top dog: JBL. For good reason too. In my years of testing, I’ve found that JBL regularly delivers the ideal blend of quality and affordability, regularly producing Bluetooth speakers with great sound and impressive durability at an easy-to-stomach price.

JBL also makes loads of different options, so I though I'd help you narrow things down a bit, and have picked out three JBL speakers I’d actually spend my own money on — with speakers for all budgets.

I’ve selected a small, budget-friendly speaker, a mid-priced maestro, and a premium pick that’s ideal for parties — there really is something here for everyone. If a speaker hasn't make this list, it’s by no means a vote of no confidence; this is simply a list of the three I’d personally grab right now.

1. JBL Go 5

Let’s start with the small yet mighty JBL Go 5, which I recently reviewed and rated five stars. The Go 5 is, in my view, the best small speaker on the market right now, offering clear, precise, and well-balanced sound, alongside an extremely hardy build, and a stellar feature-set.

As a mini speaker, the Go 5 won’t be able to belt out earth-shaking bass, but it plays to its strengths. Low-end sound is agile and punchy rather than ‘boomy’ and uncontrolled. Meanwhile, mids are clear and composed, and treble is highly articulate, resulting in great sound within a small package.

There’s also USB-C audio for lossless playback and EQ options to tailor audio to your specific tastes. The Go 5 has a more layered, full sound than its predecessor, the JBL Go 4, so if you own that model, I’d still recommend upgrading.

Another reason to opt for the Go 5 over the Go 4 is its design. The newer variant is equipped with edge lighting that makes listening to music even more immersive — especially in low-lit rooms if you want a bit of ambience. Waterproofing also got a boost to IP68, meaning the Go 5 is fully dustproof and capable of surviving a 1.5 meter dunking underwater for as long as 30 minutes — ideal for beach trips and pool parties.

Mix in solid battery life, Auracast compatibility, as well as a drop proof exterior, and the JBL Go 5 really is the full package — albeit a small-sized one. It’s typically available for $54.95 / £39.99 (about AU$75) as well, meaning it’s an absolute bargain.

2. JBL Flip 7

If we’re talking about value for money, then the JBL Flip 7 might just be the greatest Bluetooth speaker I’ve ever tested. Big statement, I know.

The reason for this is actually fairly simple: the sound it produces defies belief — not only based on the speaker’s low price, but also on its low footprint. Yes, the five-star Flip 7 is very compact, but it produces big, impactful sound, with strikingly impactful bass that demands your attention. But this doesn’t come at the expense of the rest of the frequency range. Mids are layered and intricate with vocals sounding especially well-defined, while treble sounds exert a level of expressiveness that’s beyond expectation.

Elsewhere, the Flip 7 carries over a lot of the Go 5’s greatest features, like an IP68 rating, USB-C audio, Auracast, and PlayTime Boost if you need a bit more battery life — though the standard 14 hours should get you a decent way. Sure, there’s no edge lighting on this one, but it's a clear step-up in terms of sound quality and power — it has a 35W maximum power output compared to the Go 5’s humble 4.8W.

At $149 / £129 / AU$179, the Flip 7 already overdelivers against its asking price, but I’ve seen it pop up on sale plenty of times, so keep your eye out for a sweet deal.

3. JBL Xtreme 5

Last but most definitely not least, I have the JBL Xtreme 5. If you’re working with a larger budget, want massive sound, or want a speaker for parties, then this one’s for you. This model was released alongside the Go 5, so I also reviewed it very recently, and like its small counterpart, it earned a glowing five-star review.

But what makes the Xtreme 5 so special? Of course it has all of the aforementioned features, whether that be IP68 dust and waterproofing, wired lossless playback or personalizable EQ. But the big difference is made in the audio department.

The Xtreme 5 has a massive maximum power output of 130W, meaning it can supply seismic sound, with thumping bass, driven and direct mids, and vibrant highs. Although it's a great performer all-round, it really is the low-end that wows. I described this model’s bass as “mesmerizing” in my review, and during testing I was blown away by the sheer might of its low-end output, which was significantly improved from the JBL Xtreme 4.

In addition, the Xtreme can squeeze out up to 28 hours of playtime, has JBL EasySing Mic compatibility for karaoke, and like the Go 5 it has customizable LED lighting. If you want the ultimate portable party speaker, look no further than this. The Xtreme 5 usually sells for $399.95 / £329.99 (about AU$560), which is very competitive in the upper echelons of the Bluetooth speaker market, although it's undoubtedly quite the investment.

Summer is here, and there’s one thing you need to take your barbecues, beach trips, and festivals to the next level: a Bluetooth speaker.

That’s right, a portable speaker is sure to bring the vibe up — well, if you’ve got one that’s actually good. And believe me, there are a lot of models out there that really aren’t worth your time. Whether it’s an unbranded speaker that only costs $15 / £15 and produces distorted sound, or an overpriced luxurious alternative, you’ll want to steer clear of the slop.

Luckily, I’ve tested more than 50 Bluetooth speakers, so I know good value when I see it. And today, I’m here to share three of my very favorite portable speakers with you, all of which are well worth their asking price, and excel in crucial areas like sound quality, design, and feature-set. So, want to ensure you get a high quality audio companion for the summer? Look no further than these top picks.

1. The ultra-cheap option: Tribit Stormbox Micro 3

I could’ve easily given this one to the JBL Go 5, but spoiler alert: JBL is featuring later on in this list — and hey, it’s good to get a bit of variety in there, right? And so, enter the Tribit Stormbox Micro 3, which is easily among the best Bluetooth speakers in the ultra-cheap category.

This palm-sized speaker offers a lot more quality than you’d expect at its moderate price point. What grabs you first is its seismic bass output. But don’t be fooled: this isn’t the bloated, overstated low-end that a lot of budget speakers produce — it’s impactful and commanding. This is great for genres with pumping bass like House and other electronic genres, for instance.

What’s more, this speaker is IP68-rated, meaning that it’s fully dustproof, and can survive a 30-minute-long dunking in a meter and a half of water. It's also made of a rough and ready fabric material, and is drop-proof, which, paired with its compact size, makes the Stormbox Micro 3 the ultimate speaker to take out and about.

Another real highlight is the Stormbox Micro 3’s 24-hour battery life, which is absolutely exceptional. For reference, that’s double the amount you’d get with the Bose SoundLink Micro Gen 2, and while that model may offer slightly more detailed mids and more expressive treble, its underwhelming bass and high price means I’d pick the Stormbox Micro 3 every time.

2. The mid-range maestro: JBL Flip 7

The JBL Flip 7 is one of those pieces of tech that seems too good to be true — except it isn’t.

It supplies sound far greater than you’d expect for its size, with huge yet controlled bass, powerful yet detailed mids, and vibrant yet articulate highs. The Flip 7’s dual-driver configuration and 35W max power output also helps it to get surprisingly loud, making it a versatile option for either bedroom listening or a party environment.

In addition, the Flip 7 is compatible with Auracast, enabling you to easily connect to other JBL speakers, there’s USB-C lossless audio support, and again, IP68 dust and waterproofing for on-the-go use. Sprinkle in a high-quality build, AI Sound analysis for optimized audio, and a neat array of color options, and the Flip 7 really does feel like the full package.

Usually, the Flip 7 will cost you about $149 / £129 / AU$179, but it goes on sale quite a lot of the time — even when writing this article, I spotted it going for less than $100 / £100 / AU$150, which is unspeakably good value for money.

3. The premium powerhouse: Marshall Kilburn III

Let’s finish up with the speaker I always reach for at my desk: the Marshall Kilburn III. This beautiful amp-inspired model is a true work of art, with faux-leather casing, a gorgeous metallic speaker grille, and eye-catching golden details. But it’s a lot more than a pretty face.

Yes, the Kilburn III sounds exceptional even with the lack of higher-res Bluetooth codecs like LDAC or aptX Adaptive. It serves up deep, regimented, almost moving bass, well-separated mids, and controlled highs, and there’s a great sense of balance right across the frequency range. The Kilburn III also makes use of Marshall’s “true” 360-degree stereophonic sound, which means the speaker has no real sweet spot — it sounds fantastic from all angles.

One of the things I love most about the Kilburn III, however, is its S-tier battery life. You get a mammoth 50 hours of playtime here, and there are also battery health options that you can activate in the Marshall Bluetooth app. On top of this, you get a 3.5mm port for wired listening, a USB-C port that enables you to charge external devices, and there’s even a placement compensation feature for getting optimized audio, no matter where your speaker sits.

At $379 / £299 / AU$599, this is by no means the cheapest speaker on the market, but I’ve seen it go on sale for less than $300 / £250 / AU$500 before. And if you’re looking for something with a touch of class, then it really doesn’t get much better than the Marshall Kilburn III.

Sonos Era 100 SL: two-minute review

The Sonos Era 100 SL is a wireless speaker that features nearly all the strengths of 2023’s original Sonos Era 100, but at a cheaper price. While it isn't a surprise that there have been some trade-offs to get that cost down, I doubt they'll be a dealbreaker for most people.

Sonically speaking, there aren’t many sacrifices at all. In the mid-range, the Era 100 SL is capable of impressive detail. When I played I Want You by Moloko, I was impressed by how well its funky guitar noises, strings and acidy synth line cut through the mix, without interfering with the wonderfully polished vocals.

However, I found the high end a little more cluttered on occasion: listening to The Gloaming by Radiohead, I did feel that the rhythmic pulsing static was a bit too forward, treading on the toes of the granular synth. It sounds great for the price, but you do get a finer presentation if you pay more.

Bass was always the original Era 100’s achilles heel. It often tipped into being brash, slightly swamping the rest of the mix. When I played Six Days (Machinedrum remix) by DJ Shadow on the SL, the low-end appeared slightly more dynamic when compared to the original Era 100, leading me to wonder if a software tweak to rein in bass was responsible, or whether it's part of the re-engineering inside that Sonos CEO Tom Conrad told us the company had done, to hit the lower price.

Either way, it still isn't great with sub, though: it falls away just when it hits the drop, that swelling bassline feeling nowhere near as substantial as it sounds on the best wireless speakers that are pricier.

Generally, though, the SL offers a spacious presentation, especially when fed high-quality recordings. Playing Wasting My Young Years by London Grammar from Tidal’s hi-res tier, I was struck by the airiness of the mix, which allowed the silvery vocals to stand apart from the piano and drums.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t quite extend to the speaker’s stereo field — as with its predecessor, I found it hard to differentiate a clear stereo separation unless I was very close. As such, you’re unlikely to get a clear sense of left and right from halfway across the room — but then, at this price, you could actually buy two happily.

So the Era 100 SL is as easy on the ear as its predecessor, albeit with some of the same drawbacks. But how does it look?

Given it’s largely decked out in the same getup as the Era 100, there really are few surprises here. It’s the same dimensions and has the same wraparound grille and matte-plastic top surface. The touch-capacitive control scheme is also largely identical — with the voice control button being the only real omission, because Sonos removed that feature. Otherwise, Sonos has stuck with what works for the SL, and I’d say that was the right instinct.

In fact, probably the only area where the SL makes a real departure from its namesake is in its feature set. Connectivity remains solid, offering Wi-Fi 6, AirPlay 2 and a whole host of built-in streaming services — although the only wired input you’ll get is if you splash extra cash on its USB-C to 3.5mm analog converter. EQ options are identical to those on the Era 100, offering just the option to boost or duck bass or treble.

But there are two significant differences. First off, as I alluded to above, voice control has been stripped out of the SL. This feels like a reasonable sacrifice to lower that price — and I’d rather that than weaker sound quality.

Slightly more an issue for me is the omission of Trueplay room correction for Android users (which is a consequence of dropping the microphones, since the Android solution relies on them). Those with an iPhone can still tailor the SL’s sound to their space using their device to track calibration sound as they walk around the room. Given how well this feature polishes its sound, it is a shame that you'll miss out if you're on an Android device.

Despite this though, the Sonos Era 100 SL is well worth it. You get the quality sound plus classic design of Sonos’s pricier speaker, for the reduced price of $189 / £169 / AU$289. That’s a pretty great bargain and ameliorates our biggest hesitation with its pricier predecessor. Yes, it's a shame that Android users miss out on a great feature but it's still the best home speaker you'll get for this price.

Sonos Era 100 SL review: specs

Sonos Era 100 SL review: price & availability

• Launched on March 31, 2026
• Costs $189 / £169 / AU$289
• Available in black or white

Having launched on March 31, 2026, the Sonos Era 100 SL is available now, at a cheaper price than its predecessor, the Era 100.

The SL comes in at $189 / £169 / AU$289, compared to the Era 100’s now-reduced price of $219 / £199 / AU$319. While not a huge gulf, it still amounts to a decent saving, especially given the near-identical specs.

And, as is usually the case with Sonos gear, for that price you have the option to pick up the speaker in white or black.

Sonos Era 100 SL review: features

• Good connectivity options and streaming service support
• Room correction only compatible with iPhone
• No voice control of any kind

So how does the Sonos Era 100 SL’s featureset differ from its spendier stablemate? Well, on paper, it’s very similar to the Era 100, with only a couple of key differences.

Let’s start with its drivers. The SL offers the same setup as as the Era 100, with a mid-woofer to handle both mid-range frequencies and bass, while two angled tweeters take care of the treble and help form its stereo field. These are all driven by the speaker’s three class D amplifiers, meaning you get decent volume and low-end heft.

Setting up Sonos products has always been a breeze, and the Era 100 SL is no exception. Simply plug it in, download the Sonos app, and select the system you want to add it to. Tap on your speaker when it appears, and it will play an audio pin to connect it to your system. After installing an update via the app, I was good to go.

The last (optional) step is to set up the SL’s Trueplay room-calibration tuning, which is designed to get you the best possible sound from the speaker, and that works much the same as it did on the Era 100.

Essentially, you point your iPhone’s mic toward the speaker, then walk around the room while whirling it around in slow circles with one arm, like a lopsided propeller.

Following calibration, the sound definitely seemed free of obvious acoustic issues — there wasn’t any boom back from the bass, nor any unfortunate reverberations off the surfaces or walls — so Sonos’ room correction seems as effective as ever.

Unfortunately, there’s a pretty major caveat here: unlike on the Era 100, the SL’s Trueplay tuning is only compatible with iOS. And that is a real shame, given it does help unlock the SL's best sound. However, it still offers great performance for Android users, even if the lack of Trueplay does add an asterisk there.

Trueplay for Android users isn’t the only feature removed to help reduce the SL’s price. The voice control offered by the full Era 100 has been omitted, too, saving you the price of the mic module and controls. Personally, it takes me far longer to horsewhip my thoughts into a spoken command than it does to simply pull out my phone, so I’m not all that bothered about the lack of voice assistant. But if you are, you’ll probably prefer the Era 100.

While I’ve mentioned how much I rate the Era 100 SL’s room-correction tech, I can’t really say the same for its EQ options. The Sonos app only offers the ability to boost or duck the treble or bass by up to 10 levels. While I do think Sonos’s speakers sound a lot better than some wireless speakers out of the box, plenty of rivals now offer nine-band or even parametric EQ — which makes the SL’s bass and treble sliders feel like old hat.

As far as connectivity options are concerned, the Era 100 SL offers a decent range. Using Wi-Fi 6, you can stream tunes directly from your devices using AirPlay 2, or from the speaker using built-in apps including Amazon Music, Apple Music, Deezer, Soundcloud, Spotify, Tidal and a whole heap more. Meanwhile, Bluetooth 5.3 will allow you to hook up all your non-Apple devices, although there’s no support for higher-res formats such as aptX HD.

Sadly, the Era 100 SL is less well equipped when it comes to physical connections. Its USB-C port is only for plugging in adapters, so banish any thoughts of hooking up wired digital audio. So while it does allow you the option for plugging in either a 3.5mm jack for analog audio or an Ethernet cable, each of these requires you to buy a separate adapter. It’s a world away from the wealth of ports that a speaker such as the Bluesound Pulse Flex offers.

• Features score: 4 / 5

Sonos Era 100 SL review: sound quality

• Impressive detail
• Rich mids, and bass feels slightly less muddy
• Relatively weak stereo field

My big worry when preparing to test the Sonos Era 100 SL was that in trying to hit the cheaper price point, there would have been a negative impact on the quality of its sound. Fortunately, I’m pleased to reveal this isn't the case — the Era 100 SL happily holds its own against its predecessor and, in some areas, I actually wonder if software tweaks have reined in some of the Era 100’s worst impulses.

First, let’s start with the mid-range. When listening to Venera by George Fitzgerald, I was impressed with how much presence and detail the SL could squeeze out of the track’s vocal, pad washes and synth lines, making them sound like a richly textured whole. Admittedly, some of the percussion felt a little less punchy than I’m used to, but that was more than made up for by how well it balanced the saturated, arpeggiated synth and organic organic woodwind sounds that close out the track.

The original Era 100 came unstuck mainly in the bass — like an overexcitable puppy, it was both enthusiastic and yet lacking in discipline. Here, it sounds like the SL’s software has been tweaked slightly to rein this in.

Comparing Listen by Pola & Bryson and Goddard on both speakers, sustained bass notes sound less reverberant and flabby on the SL, while snarling distorted bass synths seem more tightly expressed. However, not that if you’re expecting super-low bass from either device, you’ll be left wanting: there’s very little in the way of sub from either.

I tested the SL’s treble by playing Go Your Own Way by Fleetwood Mac — an exam it easily passed, even if it didn’t quite ace it. There wasn’t any unpleasant distortion or oversaturation to it, while the snare and toms had a delicious punch that kept everything moving forward. However, my one reservation was that the rhythmic punch and the polished vocals slightly outshone the twangy rhythm guitar — for me, they’re part of what makes the track so iconic, so it was a shame they didn't get to share as much of the limelight.

Given the Era 100 SL doesn’t exactly sit at the premium end of the market, it also does a good job of separating different instruments in the mix. Playing a hi-res stream of Clair de Lune by Kamasi Washington straight from Tidal, I was impressed by the clarity of timbre of each instrument, especially during the solos. The trumpet beautifully conveys the instrument’s rich harmonics, while the sliding strings of the double bass as the player launches into their solo are brilliantly expressed.

Like its predecessor, the SL is only capable of so-so stereo. Unlike some more premium speakers, it still largely feels like the sound is issuing from a single point. And when I played Manchild by Eels, I could appreciate the stereo separation between elements — with the guitars clearly panned to the right and the vocals to the left — but only when I was sat within a few feet of the device. At least listening angles are pretty consistent, with only a very slight drop off in the treble as you travel toward the speaker’s back.

All in all, my biggest worries going into this were ill-founded. Despite the cheaper price of the Sonos Era 100 SL, it doesn’t demonstrate any significant sonic sacrifices compared to its full-fat sibling. And there may have even been a few software tweaks behind the scenes to slightly rein in the wilder tendencies of the older speaker. Either way, it’s a very decent-sounding speaker for the price.

• Sound quality score: 4.5 / 5

Sonos Era 100 SL review: design

• Almost identical to the Era 100
• Solid, tactile build
• Effective touch-capacitive controls

When it comes to looks, the Sonos Era 100 SL remains almost identical to its older sibling. They share the same cylindrical ellipse shape, are wrapped in the same metallic grille, and arrive in the same black or white colorway. If you’ve ever gawked at the older Era 100, you’ll know exactly what you’re getting here.

All in all, the Era 100 SL is decently stylish, feels solidly built, and the matte plastic of its top surface is pleasingly tactile. While I’ve poured scorn on quite a few wireless speakers lately for defaulting to this same basic format, I’ll give Sonos a pass here. First off, it was largely the brand that coined this look in the first place — and, more importantly, the Era 100 SL is principally a cheaper speaker wearing its spendier brother’s clothing, meaning it was never going to break the mould of existing speakers.

In light of this, so not surprisingly, the Sonos Era 100 SL is the same size as its full-fat sibling, measuring 7.19 x 4.72 x 5.14 inches / 182.5 x 120 x 130.5mm. However, it's ever so slightly lighter — presumably thanks to its shedding of voice control mics — weighing in at 4.3lbs / 1.95kg compared to its predecessor’s 4.45lbs / 2.02kg. That makes it a pretty average size in the grand scheme of things, neither Lilliputian like the 0.96lbs / 0.44kg Sonos Roam 2, nor Brobdingnagian like the hulking, 3 lbs / 14.5kg Cambridge Audio Evo One.

With one notable exception, the erstwhile voice control button, the buttons on the Era 100 SL are the same. And that’s very much a plus: there’s no need to fix the Era 100’s control scheme since it definitely isn't broke. Its touch-capacitive controls are easy to activate, allowing you to play, pause and skip tracks, while swiping its touch bar lets you tweak its volume. Sure, it could offer light-up symbols for use in darker rooms or customizable shortcut keys, but it covers the core functions well.

Fundamentally, the Era 100 SL is the spitting image of the Era 100 before it. So if you were a fan of the older model, you can be sure you’ll like its younger sibling.

• Design score: 4 / 5

Sonos Era 100 SL review: value

In our review, one of our criticisms of the original Sonos Era 100 was its increased cost. Its initial list price of $249 / £249 / AU$399 presented a chunky markup on the Sonos One at $219 / £199 / AU$319 , but even more so when compared to the Sonos One SL's $199 / £179 / AU$289. Even though the Era 100 has now come down in price to $219 / £199 / AU$319, that’s still only roughly comparable to the Sonos One.

Conversely, the Era 100 SL has a list price of $189 / £169 / AU$289, making it the same price or even cheaper than the Sonos One SL but with many of the same features and the exact same sound quality as the Era 100. That’s not to be sneered at.

In fact, if you’re an iPhone user, the only real thing you’re losing here is voice control, something I’m personally happy to sacrifice for a bit of a bargain. And even if you’re an Android user, this price is still well worth it as you're unlikely to get much better performance by investing your spend elsewhere. Access to Trueplay is a definite bonus but that shouldn't detract from the fact the SL still offers great sound for its price.

• Value score: 4.5 / 5

Should I buy the Sonos Era 100 SL?

Buy it if…

Don’t buy it if…

Sonos Era 100 SL review: also consider

How I tested the Sonos Era 100 SL

• Tested it over four weeks
• Compared it to the Era 100 using a wide range of tracks
• Have decades of experience using audio hardware

I tested the Sonos Era 100 SL over the course of about a month. I made sure to utilize many of its key features, including room-tuning and EQ, and tried connecting to it through a range of options from direct streaming on the device through to connecting discrete devices using AirPlay 2.

To assess its sound quality, I played a wide variety of music, from classic rock to liquid drum & bass. I also compared the sound, side by side, with the Era 100 to see whether I could perceive any significant differences between their sound signatures. In addition, I compared each version’s stereo field and angle drop-off to see whether either revealed any issues with their soundstage.

As well as spending at least the past six years reviewing wireless speakers for tech publications, I have decades of experience using audio hardware in my home environment, including a range of wired and wireless speakers and headphones. I’ve also spent 20 years producing music from home, which has given me a firm understanding of how to assess the balance of frequencies and stereo elements.

• First reviewed: June 2026
• Read more about how we test

Klipsch The Nines II: Two-minute review

The Klipsch The Nines II are a tough pair of small speakers to beat for a large room. The amount of power and the clean, slightly overly bassy, sound are just some of what make these speakers special. There's also a ton of features on offer, including virtualized spatial audio (which is admittedly limited) Wi-Fi streaming, and even Dirac Live (though I couldn't seem to get it to work during my testing).

In fact, the buggy nature of the Dirac Live is my only real gripe with Klipsch's The Nines II (well, that and their cumbersome name if you're writing a review…), and the Dirac issue could be more due to environmental factors than a fundamental problem. My other issue — the fact that the speakers are heavy — is more just inconvenient than a real flaw.

Whenever I listen, I’m convinced that The Klipsch The Nines II are among the best stereo speakers to come out this year. And the amount of connectivity and features make them a nice alternative to the best soundbars, especially if you still want a bit of that more traditional stereo speaker setup.

Just be aware that these are quite a bit more expensive than the original Klipsch The Nines. That said, The Klipsch The Nines II offer a lot more than the first version as well.

Klipsch The Nines II review: Price and release date

• How much does it cost? $2,399 / £2,249 / AU$4,999
• When is it available? Available now
• Where can you get it? Available in the US, UK, and Australia

The original Klipsch The Nines have been out for a few years now, so the Spring release of the Klipsch The Nines II in 2026 is perfect timing. Speakers may not benefit from the yearly iterations of something like phones or TVs, but it’s about time for the upgrade considering the improvements in Bluetooth technology and W-iFi streaming over those last few years.

Interestingly enough, the Klipsch The Nines II are more than an iterative upgrade. Dolby Atmos (even if it’s a virtualization) and Dirac Live support are on offer in the new version, along with support for more Hi-Res codecs and a wider frequency range, which is why this newer version also comes with a much higher price tag — they're $700 / £700 more than the originals. That’s quite a price hike.

Klipsch The Nines II Powered Stereo Speakers: Specs

Klipsch The Nines II Powered Stereo Speakers: Features

• Virtualized Dolby Atmos, and Dirac room correction
• Wi-Fi streaming for a bunch of different music apps
• App has a lot of functionality, including custom EQ

The Klipsch The Nines II speakers may be limited in terms of features just by their form factor compared to a soundbar system like the Klipsch Flexus Core 300, but they have the right amount of options for a pair of bookshelf speakers.

Dolby Atmos and DTX:S is available on these speakers, though the spatial audio support is virtualized due to the fact that there aren’t any upward-facing speakers, and obviously limited width. Still, the virtualization does give a sense of height to the audio that works decently with a blockbuster movie.

Along with Bluetooth connectivity (5.4 specifically), the Klipsch The Nines II also support Wi-Fi streaming, specifically Google Cast, Apple AirPlay 2, Spotify Connect, Tidal Connect, Qobuz Connect, and more. Since they work with Google Cast, they can be set up with Google Home for smart home users.

There’s a tiny bit of a lag between source and speaker when going wireless. However, there is a Lip Sync setting in the app to better synchronize when using the speakers with a wireless source with visuals, such as watching a video on a laptop with the audio coming through the Klipsches.

There will still be a lag between play, pause, etc. but that’s not something that I found to really affect my experience of the speakers.

Speaking of the app, this is the central place for any deeper fine tuning. If you want to tweak the audio, there’s a five-band EQ in the app along with some presets. If you want to set up or use Dirac Live, you do that through the app — by the way, the speaker comes with a limited license that will adjust the audio between 200 and 500 Hz (the full frequency is paywalled).

Lastly (well, I’m leaving a few less consequential things out), you can turn on a few different modes: Dynamic Bass, Dialog mode, and Night Mode, and they all work decently enough with the latter being the most effective at its purpose (bringing up quiet sounds and bringing down loud ones).

• Features score: 4.5 / 5

Klipsch The Nines II Powered Stereo Speakers: Sound quality

• Weighty, robust sound
• Lots of bass, mid-bass a bit too full
• Lots of dynamic headroom

Klipsch's The Nines II are really good sounding speakers, and they might be the most weighty sounding speakers I’ve heard for the size, too. Despite not having a subwoofer (or maybe because of it and still providing a lot of bass), every element seems to have a thickness or robustness to it that I usually don’t hear with a lot of audio equipment.

Listening to music the low end is there in spades, whether I was listening to pop, hip hop, or even Counting Crows. The massive bass gives a boominess to the mid-range that is not unpleasant, but is far from neutral or accurate. Using the app to bring the 400Hz slider down one or two notches does clean up the sound a lot, but know that this is fundamentally built into its audio profile.

The high end is slightly on the warm side due to that weightiness I spoke about. Boosting the 8kHz slider in the app does brighten the affair though, if you prefer. Regardless, the Klipsch The Nines II did retain all the detail in the high-end in elements such as the strings in Radiohead’s Pyramid Song or Joni Mitchell’s higher register in A Case of You.

The soundstage, while dependent on correctly setting up the speakers, is not only nice and wide but has good separation thanks to the amount of headroom on these speakers. After all, I never really had them higher than halfway up in volume and they filled a good sized room full of distortion-free, clean audio.

• Sound quality score: 4.5 / 5

Klipsch The Nines II: Design

• These speakers are big for bookshelves
• Few physical controls, lots of inputs
• There's a subwoofer output

The Klipsch The Nines II are big at over 18 inches tall, over nine and a half inches wide, and almost 15 inches deep, weighing up to 33 lbs per speaker (the one without all the controls is two measly pounds lighter). They’re also attractive, thankfully, coming in three colorways: walnut, red oak, and black (reviewed here).

In terms of controls, the active speaker only has a volume dial and a single power / input cycle button. There’s also an LED indicator above the power button that changes colors depending on the input selected and, while there may only be two physical controls (there’s also a pairing button on the back of each speaker labeled Utility), there are quite a few inputs.

There’s HDMI eARC, optical, phono, USB, Bluetooth, coaxial, and ethernet. It’s easier to select them through the app, because remembering which color corresponds to which port isn't easy to remember.

All the ports are situated on the back of the primary speaker. Besides the physical ports for the channels listed above that need them, there’s also a sub out and a mic in, the latter of which is for the Dirac Live feature.

Also included are speaker covers that attach magnetically, along with a matte black remote, the aforementioned wired mic, an HDMI cable, power cable, and cable to connect the two speakers to each other physically, if you don't want to have them speaking to each other wirelessly (they’re automatically paired with each other out of the box, so going wireless is no hassle).

• Design score: 4.5 / 5

Klipsch The Nines II review: Setup and usability

• Setup is made more difficult by the speakers’ weight
• App is intuitive to use for the most part
• Dirac Live is difficult to set up

The Klipsch The Nines II are both easy and not easy to set up, entirely based on their weight. The primary and secondary speakers are automatically paired out of the box and just need to be plugged in to power. Pairing via Bluetooth requires just being on the Bluetooth input and connecting via your smart phone.

And the physical connections just need their respective cables and possibly a settings change — changing a TV’s audio output to eARC, for instance. In terms of functionality, that’s all you have to do to use them.

That said, each speaker is heavy at over 30 lbs each (or over 14.5kg). That’s cumbersome to move. Even if that weight is not a problem for you, these are big boxes. Add in speaker stands, which I believe are ideal for getting the best sound out of these speakers (an additional $475 for a pair if you want Klipsch's own…) and setup becomes more of a physical challenge than it might be for some speakers.

The stand just takes time to assemble: connect the proper rubber feet based on flooring, the base to the stand, and the stand to the speaker. But if you connected the stand to the speaker upside down like I did, you’ll encounter my least favorite part… flipping the speaker over while connected to the stand, which weighs an additional 24.1 lbs (10.9kg), by the way.

Each complete 57 lbs unit was unwieldy, to say the least, and I felt like I had to be careful so as not to let these fairly pricey speakers accidentally fall and get damaged.

Outside of that, adjusting the speakers for placement is similar to any other pair of bookshelf speakers, if heavier, and it didn't take me long to get them situated for a listening sweet spot on the couch.

Using the speakers is likewise a slightly mixed bag. Using the remote is easy and I appreciate the ability to remap the two bottom buttons to my favorite inputs. The app is generally intuitive as well.

However, as much as I enjoy the difference Dirac Live can make with speakers, I had an incredibly difficult time getting the calibration test to run even though I had the upgrade for the full frequency range (an additional $99).

I know that the microphone is very sensitive so needs as much quiet as possible, but no matter how hard I tried, that degree of quiet threshold I just could not reach.

• Setup and usability score: 3.5 / 5

Klipsch The Nines II Powered Stereo Speakers: Value

• Comes with a premium price tag
• A lot of very good speakers available for much less
• Much more expensive than the original Klipsch The Nines

When the original Klipsch The Nines came out, they were priced similarly to the KEF LSX II LT, one of the most popular active stereo speaker systems out there. The Klipsch The Nines II are not only seven hundred bucks more than the original, but the KEF speakers have come down to $999 / £899 since they came out. That’s a massive price difference.

That said, the KEF LSX II LT are compact so are not able to really fill a room the way The Nines II can. Plus, there’s no analog connectivity or the extensive set of features the Klipsch The Nines II have.

When it comes to being a complete and yet powerful stereo system in two (reasonably) compact boxes, The Nines II are good value — but no one's going to claim they're a bargain.

• Value score: 3.5 / 5

Should I buy the Klipsch The Nines II speakers?

Buy them if…

Don’t buy them if…

Klipsch The Nines II review: Also consider

How I tested the Klipsch The Nines II

• Used regularly for a few weeks
• Listened to all sorts of audio
• Used the various controls and ports

I used the Klipsch The Nines II for a few weeks, listening to all sorts of genres of music, such as hip hop, EDM, pop, rock, jazz, and folk to get a better feel for these speakers. They were also tested with some TV viewing and computer games.

I’ve tested a lot of tech gear over the years from laptops to keyboards and speakers, and so have been able to use my expertise towards giving an honest and fair opinion, not to mention a critical eye, to any product I test.

• First reviewed: June 2026
• Read TechRadar's reviews guarantee

• Major changes to navigation and volume control
• Available in a new beta this week
• Opt-in rather than enabled by default

Sonos has announced a suite of new changes to the Sonos app, and you'll be able to try the new version this week as a beta — if you want to.

Posting on Reddit, Sonos CEO Tom Conrad says that after "hundreds of hours watching real customers use the Sonos app" his team has identified lots of irritants and sticking points. "We've learned a lot about what hangs people up, what's confusing when you're new to the system, and what slows you down when you're just trying to change the darn volume."

In response, Sonos is making lots of changes to the app, including how you turn the volume up and down.

The post has so far generated a lot of positive responses, including the current top comment by Daveintausend: "Never thought I'd say this but I'm hyped for a better volume control."

What changes are coming to the Sonos app?

A new beta will be released this week, with significant changes to the interface. As Conrad put it: "What kept showing up was this: a lot of friction came from proprietary patterns we built that made the app harder to learn and use than it needed to be. Stacks on stacks on stacks of content cards. Swipe-up gestures to switch speaker orientation. Close boxes where any other app on your phone would have a back button. Custom interface elements that never quite felt like part of iOS or Android."

The plan is to change all of that, and Conrad has highlighted three key areas: better tabbed navigation, a "totally new" volume interface, and more control over how your players are listed and displayed.

He also promises "dozens of smaller quality-of-life fixes everywhere" including swipe to delete in playlists, new views on iPad, and a refresh to the Now Playing screen.

The main interface will be divided into three tabs: Home, System and Search, which will be styled in a way that's native to your phone's operating system, and that replace "the hidden gestures and content cards".

And the volume control will have "a core mechanism that is easier to grab and fine tune, buttons to tap up and down if that’s your thing and a new way to synchronize a across group of rooms."

The changes aren't rolling out to the main app just yet, and they're actually not even mandatory in this week's beta either — but if you install the new beta you'll be able to see the changes by enabling "Enable Improved Navigation" in Settings. It will remain an opt-in toggle post-beta, with Sonos soliciting feedback "until it's fully polished up."

The beta program is here, if you want sign up and try the changes out, but bear in mind that using beta software always comes with the risk of bugs or other problems.

I think it's fair to say that Sonos is doing things very differently since Tom Conrad took the helm in early 2025, and he was up-front about the app debacle when my colleague Matt Bolton interviewed him earlier this year.

In that conversation he told us that "In the aftermath of [the problems], you just have to show up in people's life with some humility and do the hard work of earning their trust back through great execution, great product, great software, great experiences, and never forget what you put people through". It's great to see him delivering on that promise.

Majority Move M4 review

The Majority Move M4 is a huge Bluetooth speaker boasting a mighty 70W power output, a rugged design, and plentiful battery life, making it very much reminiscent of JBL’s Xtreme range.

Yes, it's clear that the Cambridge-based audio brand is coming for JBL with its Move speakers — and this model I tested is the most powerful in its line. But can Majority compete with the likes of JBL with this release? Here’s what I think after many hours of listening with the Majority Move M4.

On the face of it, the Majority Move M4 has a lot of the features you’d expect from the best Bluetooth speakers. It has Bluetooth 6.0 for long-range connectivity, IP67 dust and waterproofing enabling it to survive a good dunking underwater, and a high power output for blasting tunes at parties or gatherings.

But this model struggles to keep up with the competition in a number of regards. And crucially, that’s mostly evident in its sound quality.

I started assessing the M4’s audio quality by playing KOLTER’s What a Day. This house tune just didn’t sound as I’d hoped — I was instantly struck by compressed audio, with tinny percussion that sounded grating, even at middling volume levels. Bass also lacked the authority and punch I was looking for, and the low-end sounded distorted at higher listening levels.

It was a similar story with I’ll Be Your by RUZE. Bass lacked dynamism, meaning that drops were anti-climactic. Mids also didn’t sound very well separated or rich, and the track just lacked that full-bodied, energetic quality necessary to replicate its excitement and vibrancy.

Even with a more stripped back track like 78 Rotações by Jards Macalé, I wasn’t a big lover of the M4. It definitely handled the less demanding nature of the track more effectively, with relatively clear vocals and decent enough balance across the frequency range. However, the tonality of acoustic guitars wasn’t the most accurate or expressive, and the finer details didn’t jump out at me.

Even though the M4 can get relatively loud, in part thanks to its 70W output power, it often sounds more shouty than regimented and impactful. Bass lacks the dynamism and drive you may expect. And with compressed-sounding treble that can err on the harsh side of things, this speaker struggles to compete, sonically speaking.

I experienced underwhelming sound while streaming over Bluetooth, but also when I was using a wired connection via a 3.5mm cable. However, you can also use the speaker with a USB flash drive or microSD card if you’d prefer. Both of these listening methods are admittedly on the niche side of things, but hey, they’re here.

There are a few more interesting features onboard, including customizable RGB lights. You can press the light button on the speaker and personalize the color and pattern to your liking, and although I prefer the classier lights of the JBL Xtreme 5, it looks fine. You can also turn the lights off if you’d prefer, which can conserve battery life.

Speaking of battery life, you get a pretty commendable 30 hours here, which is better than budget rivals like the Tribit Stormbox Lava. Other features include a built-in mic for hands-free calling and multi-speaker pairing… though I’m not sure why anyone would want two of these.

The fatal flaw in the features department is the M4’s lack of a companion app. That means there are no EQ options — a big miss — and no way to remotely alter lighting or other useful settings. This is a basic inclusion for a lot of Bluetooth speakers at this point, and was disappointing to see.

Before we wrap up, I want to speak about design. This thing is definitely reminiscent of the JBL Xtreme 4, with a pseudo-cylindrical build, fabric exterior, and rubber buttons. However, it looks like a far less appealing alternative. I wasn’t a fan of the flimsy-feeling handle, the blue and gray color scheme, or the cheap-looking radiators on each side. This sort of thing is subjective, of course, but the look of the M4 definitely didn’t do it for me.

With that said, the speaker feels fairly durable, and its IP67 rating means it's well protected against dust ingress, and can be submerged under a meter of water for as long as 30 minutes — a very solid level of protection.

OK, the Majority Move M4 is hardly the most expensive model on the market. It comes in at £119.95 (about $160 / AU$225). However, rivals such as the Tribit Stormbox Lava are available for less — and while that model is a little heavy-handed in the low-end, it certainly sounds better than this Majority speaker. The JBL Xtreme 4 is also available discounted regularly for as little as $250 / £199 (about AU$350), and although that’s a decent amount more, the jump in quality is outrageous.

Would I recommend the Majority Move M4? The answer is no, sadly. Despite its relatively rugged build and commendable battery life, it offers poor, unrefined audio that lacks energy in the low-end and control in the highs. There’s a generally compressed quality here, which means that your favorite songs just don’t sound as they could. Instead, I’d recommend scooping up an on-sale Xtreme 4 if this is the kind of speaker size you're after (and the budget you've set aside for it).

Majority Move M4 review: price & release date

• Priced at £119.95 (about $160 / AU$225)
• Released in January 2026

The Majority Move M4 released in January 2026 in the UK, although at the time of writing, the speaker — alongside its sibling models, including the Move M1, M2, and M3 — are yet to land in the US or Australia. The Move M4 is priced at £119.95 (about $160 / AU$225), making it a lot cheaper than rivals like the JBL Xtreme line, and although it's the largest in its line, it remains pretty budget-friendly.

Majority Move M4 review: specs

Should I buy the Majority Move M4?

Buy it if…

Don’t buy it if…

Majority Move M4 review: also consider

How I tested the Majority Move M4

• Tested across a week-long period
• Mainly streamed tracks via Tidal
• Compared against similarly sized rivals

I spent hours testing the Majority Move M4 across a week-long period, and tested it in our dedicate music testing space at Future Labs.

For the most part, I streamed tunes using Tidal, but I dipped into Spotify from time to time as well. To begin with, I sifted through tracks in our TechRadar reference playlist, which features songs from a wide range of genres, but I also made sure to listen to a ton of tunes from my personal library as well.

More generally, I’ve spent years testing audio gear here at TechRadar, including a huge number of portable speakers — I even curated our guide to the very best Bluetooth speakers. I compared the M4 to rivals like the JBL Xtreme 4 and Tribit Stormbox Lava, which I personally tested, so I knew exactly how Majority’s speaker stacked up against the competition.

• Read TechRadar’s reviews guarantee
• First reviewed: June 2026

• Multiple Sony devices will lose access to streaming services and Google Cast
• AV receivers, Blu-ray players, soundbars, wireless speakers and more
• Effective November 17, 2026

Something we've learnt the hard way over the years is that pretty much any product with an online component will lose it eventually. Server shutdowns have affected everything from multiplayer games to the ill-fated PlaysForSure music platform, and now it's coming to Sony products.

Like Bose earlier this year, Sony is shutting down servers for some of its audiovisual products. But unlike Bose, which went to great pains to enable people to maintain as much functionality as possible, Sony's devices will lose many core features as a result.

The changes aren't immediate — they won't come into place until November 7th, 2026 — but they apply to a lot of models including AV receivers, Blu-ray disc players, speakers and soundbars. The full list of affected devices is available on Sony's website, but we've included it at the end of this article too.

What Bose did, and what Sony isn't doing

Earlier this year Bose discontinued online support for its SoundTouch speakers first introduced in 2013. However, the speakers themselves remained fully functional and while Bose's own SoundTouch streaming was switched off, AirPlay and Spotify Connect would continue to work.

Sony's changes are more severe. From November, the following services will be unavailable on affected devices:

• Amazon Prime Video
• Google Cast
• Netflix
• Pandora
• Slacker Radio
• Spotify
• Vudu

As Sony explains, from November "access to supported network services will no longer be available on affected models [and] any downloaded network services may no longer be accessible on affected models… we apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate your understanding."

While most of the affected models are elderly, there's a lot of them: nine soundbars, 16 AVRs, 17 Blu-Ray players, multiple Blu-Ray home theater systems and five sets of wireless speakers. That means the service shutdown is likely to affect quite a lot of people.

Which Sony products are affected by the 2026 shutdown?

Audio and Micro Component Systems

• CMT-MX700NI
• HAP-S1
• HAP-Z1ES
• MAP-S1
• NAC-SV10

AV Receivers

• STR-DA1800
• STR-DA2800ES
• STR-DA3700ES
• STR-DA5700ES
• STR-DA5800ES
• STR-DN1020
• STR-DN1030
• STR-DN1040
• STR-DN1050
• STR-DN1060
• STR-DN1070
• STR-DN1080
• STR-DN840
• STR-DN850
• STR-DN860
• STR-ZA810ES

Blu-ray Disc Players

• BDP-BX18
• BDP-BX37
• BDP-BX38
• BDP-BX57
• BDP-N460
• BDP-S185
• BDP-S270
• BDP-S280
• BDP-S370
• BDP-S380
• BDP-S390
• BDP-S470
• BDP-S480
• BDP-S570
• BDP-S580
• BDP-S770
• BDP-S780

Blu-ray Disc Home Theater Systems

• BDV-E280
• BDV-E370
• BDV-E470
• BDV-E570
• BDV-E580
• BDV-E770W
• BDV-E780W
• BDV-E870
• BDV-E880
• BDV-F7
• BDV-HZ970
• BDV-IZ1000W
• BDV-L600
• BDV-T28
• BDV-T57
• BDV-T58

Media Players

• FMP-X10
• SMP-N100
• SMP-N200

Soundbars

• HT-CT790
• HT-CT800
• HT-NT3
• HT-NT5
• HT-RT5
• HT-ST5000
• HT-ST9
• HT-XT2
• HT-XT3

Wireless speakers

• SA-NS310
• SA-NS410
• SA-NS500
• SA-NS510
• SRS-X7

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Denon Home 400: two-minute review

The Denon Home 400 sits in the Japanese brand's completely repositioned Home 2.0 range for 2026, and it doesn’t take much to see the updates as a direct challenge to Sonos and the best wireless speakers on the market. The range features three speakers — the Denon Home 200, 400 and 600 — all of which promise spatial audio from a single box. They’re all tuned by sound masters, built for native stereo playback even as singular units, deliver an immersive experience, and have refined designs.

The Denon Home 400 sits right in the middle of the range, but occupies a bit of a sweet spot. Its $599 price tag puts it at the same ball park as the Sonos Era 300, and I think Denon comes out of the comparison looking like the better option.

Along with Sonos, though, there’s no shortage of competition from the likes of Apple’s HomePods, JBL’s Authentics 300 and the WiiM Sound smart speakers. While the Denon range technically supports Siri, this is a product that’s much more about the sound than it is the smarts.

In use, it sounds tremendous and is highly customizable with a full spatial audio experience where you really can hear the difference. The HEOS app works brilliantly, and set-up is a doddle. It also has a sense of style. This is a speaker that looks premium rather than plasticky, and that alone may make it easier to recommend than Sonos for many potential buyers.

Is it worth the premium price, though? I’ve been hands-on to find out what the Denon does differently.

Denon Home 400 review: price and availability

• Released on March 24th, 2026
• $599 / £449 / AU$999 (approx.)

The Denon Home 400 costs $599 / £449 / AU$999 (approx.) and is clearly positioned to rival the Sonos Era 300, which costs $479 / £449 / AU$749 officially, but it is a bit more likely to be available on offer, having gone down to $379 / £339 on Amazon within the past six months.

Other similarly sized rivals include the JBL Authentics 300, which costs $450 / £380 / AU$600, or the bass-heavy Brane X for $599 / £475 / AU$915. Apple fans will also, of course, consider whether a HomePod 2 ($299 / £299 / AU$479) may better suit their needs, as it has a few clever tricks and perks for the iOS faithful.

Denon Home 400 review: specs

Denon Home 400 review: features

• Native Dolby Atmos with adjustable height and bass
• Several connectivity options
• Voice control only via Siri, and only if you already have a HomePod

The core selling point of all the new speakers in the Denon range is Dolby Atmos support with adjustable sound modes. I’ll go into that in more depth in the 'Sound quality' section below, but it is a meaningful differentiator between this speaker and most of its competition. The vast majority of other smart speakers will either not have Atmos or rely on (the admittedly clever) digital processing trick of spatial virtualization. That’s what the Denon Home 200 does, too.

The one option offering proper Atmos is the aforementioned Sonos Era 300. The Denon Home 400, just like this rival, packs in true Dolby Atmos with a six-driver setup: dedicated left and right drivers, upfiring drive units and two 4.5-inch woofers (all powered by six independent Class-D amplifiers). What this means is that you’ll get much more width — throw a Dolby Atmos track at this speaker and you’ll hear a wider soundstage — and real height, as it bounces sound off your ceiling. The adjustability in the Auto mode means you can dial in exactly how much bass extension, width or height you want.

You can use voice assistance on this speaker, but I’m not going to pretend it’s a headline feature. Apple’s Siri is the only voice assistant on offer, so you’re not going to find Google Assistant or Alexa as an option during setup. And, in order to set it up, you need to have an Apple HomePod or HomePod mini on your Wi-Fi network to handle the Siri requests you make on the Denon speaker.

Luckily, I’ve got some HomePods in another room, so I could test this, and it works fairly well, but I wouldn’t go around suggesting that this is a speaker with built-in voice control. It’s more of a niche added extra, as long as you already have an extra accessory that would cost you at least £99.

In general, the HEOS app (HEOS stands for Home Entertainment Operating System, thanks for asking) is excellent and great if you think you might set up a multi-room ecosystem of speakers after investing in this one. It covers multiple brands, not just Denon, and works with a wide range of speakers, soundbars and receivers.

Overall, the Denon Home 400 offers a broad range of connectivity options, including a 3.5mm AUX for use with turntables or MP3 players, and a simple native Bluetooth button to connect to other devices if you’re not using the app. Bluetooth LE Audio is coming via an update, and it has support for ALAC and aptX formats over Bluetooth. You’ve also got Apple AirPlay 2, Spotify Connect, Tidal Connect, and Qobuz Connect built in, too.

Through the USB-C port, you can deliver firmware updates via a pen drive or use wired Ethernet via any USB-C adapter, which is a nice benefit compared with others that might make you buy a proprietary dongle. Obviously, it’s not quite the same as built-in Ethernet, but it’s not a feature everyone would use.

There’s no remote with the speaker, it’s designed for use with the feature-filled HEOS app, where you can gather together your music services — including Spotify, Amazon Music, Deezer, Soundcloud, Tidal, Qobuz and TuneIn — and internet radio stations, along with control of the multi-room setup and audio customizations. I wish my choice of streaming service, Apple Music, were added to the picks, but it’s otherwise an app I find hard to fault.

• Features score: 4.5 / 5

Denon Home 400 review: sound quality

• Outstanding spatial audio performance from a single unit
• Excellent customization for height and width
• Pure mode for a more direct and balanced experience

We’re going to be talking a lot about spatial audio in this section, because that really is the Denon Home 400’s party piece. It can take a well-encoded Atmos mix and make it feel three-dimensional. It’s in the Auto setting by default, and that’s probably where I’d leave it in my environment, in which it’s more than capable of an immersive room-filling sound.

If spatial isn’t for you, you’ll prefer the Pure sound mode. This bypasses the DSP and works as a great mode for anyone wanting the typical stereo image experience.

I’d already had a chance to hear the Denon Home 400 in a London hotel suite, and that gave me a sense of just how impressive it would be. During Ed Sheeran’s Shivers, I could hear a noticeable height extension that makes it perceptibly different when compared with the Home 200. Listening to the Atmos mix of Riders on the Storm by The Doors reveals background vocals in the height layer, an element that’s harder to pick out in the neutral mode.

Having the speaker within my own apartment only further confirmed how adept it is with spatial sound. To test it, I mostly focused on playing Dolby Atmos from Apple Music over AirPlay, but I also used it with Spotify Connect, radio stations, and I set up both Spotify and Deezer within the HEOS app to test those, too. The experience is convincing, there’s a lot of clarity to be heard across the whole frequency range, and two woofers deliver significant bass oomph.

Listening to Raye’s Where Is My Husband! in Dolby Atmos is highly rewarding for how much extra detail you start to hear in the layers of instrumentation, all while keeping her powerful vocals right in the center. I used the HEOS app to dial up the width and height, and you can feel the backing vocals spread out on the soundstage, with the instruments becoming easier to identify in space.

Putting the 400 in Pure mode and switching over to Click Clack Symphony shows that there’s a place for both modes. Pure is much more direct and balanced. There’s clearly more vocal presence in this mode, and the stomps have far more impact. You can get a different sonic experience by switching between both modes, something this track shows so well — it’s bordering on ethereal in Auto with those spatial customisations, yet sounds intimate on the Pure setting.

In general, I find the sound hard to fault. By default, the Auto mode may have a smidge too much bass for my tastes, but it’s easily remedied by moving the slider down two notches in the app. The Pure mode is fairly neutral in its approach, but still has its fair share of energy and dynamism. If you listen to spatial tracks, play around with Auto, but most of us should find Pure less fatiguing, making it a better 'set and forget' option.

• Sound quality score: 4.5 / 5

Denon Home 400 review: design

• Durable and stylish look
• Two neutral colorways
• Will suit most living spaces

Immediately after unboxing, it’s clear that the Denon Home 400 is more than your average utilitarian speaker. The best thing about its design is the lack of visible plastic, which is only really visible on the speaker's top section. The rest is covered by a seamless piece of fabric with no obvious seams, and the bottom of the speaker — just like every model in the new Denon range — is a sturdy titanium base plate. It adds a little bulk, sure, but also the satisfaction of knowing that this is durable and not something that can be tipped over.

Underneath the speaker, a light glows to let you know it’s turned on. This was something that my wife initially felt ruined the look, but it’s easily solved because you can lower the brightness (or turn the light off entirely) in the app. Crisis averted. There are physical controls on the right side of the device, allowing you to control volume and playback, along with three quick select buttons (for your favourite internet radio stations or streaming services) and an action button to summon voice control.

The speaker also comes in the same two neutral colorways as the rest of the range – Charcoal and Stone (my review unit). I’ve got no complaints. It’s a speaker that’s designed to look good in the living room without commanding attention, and it does exactly that. It’s also worth noting that, on the back, there’s a switch to mute the microphone and that it’s a hard-wired off button that’s not connected to the network circuitry.

I find this looks much less plasticky in comparison to rival speakers (looking at you, Sonos) and that the Home 400's buttons and controls are easier to understand and use (looking at you, Apple). It ends up being a winner on multiple fronts.

• Design score: 5 / 5

Denon Home 400 review: Usability & setup

• Controls are easy to understand and use
• The HEOS app is intuitive and full of features
• But there’s not much voice control available here

The Denon Home 400 is an exceptionally straightforward speaker to set up and use. The box gives you the speaker unit itself and the power cable. Once it’s plugged in, you set it up with the HEOS app, a process that took me approximately five to 10 minutes, and connect it to your home Wi-Fi network, telling the app whether the speaker is away from walls, in a corner, or just in front of one wall, which helps it adapt its sound.

You do need to use the app so that you get all of the internet-connected features, but it doesn’t take long at all to get started. Once you pick some favourite radio stations in the app, you can also press and hold on the preset buttons to save them for quick access, and you can always just use the Bluetooth button to connect devices that might not be on your wireless network. The same applies to wired playback.

I tested both with my MP3 player, the Activo P1, and found it seamless in use. However, it’s worth mentioning that I couldn’t get the Denon to play back at one of its supported higher-res Bluetooth codecs over the P1; it stayed stuck in SBC despite supporting higher bandwidth options.

In day-to-day use, though, this is highly intuitive to use, both wirelessly and if you were to connect an AUX cable to an MP3 player, CD player or turntable. Denon has said a goal with this product is getting you to your music with minimal button presses, and that holds true in use, whether you’re using those quick select buttons, or just playing wirelessly over the HEOS app, Spotify Connect or AirPlay. The one downside would be for those who are used to voice control of their playlists. Unless you use Siri and already have a HomePod, this doesn’t work well for that.

If you were keen to set up multi-room groups, this would also work well, with controls within the HEOS app, plus the ability to create a stereo pair with two Denon Home 400s. It’s also a great feature that the ability to mute the microphone is a physical control, not something that exists only in software, something that’s great for peace of mind if you don’t want to use voice assistance or have your voice recorded.

• Usability & setup score: 4.5 / 5

Denon Home 400 review: value

• Premium price to match the Sonos Era 300
• Cheaper units don’t deliver spatial audio this good
• Rivals are a bit better for voice control, though

At $599, the Home 400 is priced at the top of the standalone premium home speaker market, making it a direct rival to the Sonos Era 300. For me, the Denon more than matches its Sonos competition when it comes to powerful spatial audio and is also a more stylish speaker with more intuitive control and better connectivity. The Denon gives you spatial customization missing from Sonos, and it also has built-in AUX, USB-C and the option of Ethernet.

While rivals like the Sonos Era 100 and Apple HomePod are cheaper, they’re also more locked into ecosystems. They’re good as affordable rivals, but the Denon offers the more powerful, more immersive and more customizable sound. And, while the JBL Authentics 300 also holds a lot of appeal, and I’m a particular fan of its style and retro controls, it lacks native Dolby Atmos, so it doesn’t feel like a direct rival.

The one thing you’ll want to keep in mind is the lack of capable voice assistance from the Denon at launch, but if that doesn’t matter to you, the customizable spatial sound, ability to connect to players and turntables, plus intuitive control make the Denon Home 400 a good value buy in this price tier. Just make sure you’re keen on spatial sound and know you want to hear the layers inside a mix, as that’s what sets this apart.

• Value score: 4.5 / 5

Should I buy the Denon Home 400?

Buy it if…

Don’t buy it if…

Denon Home 400 review: also consider

How I tested the Denon Home 400

• Tested with music streamed from Spotify, Deezer and Apple Music via AirPlay, and radio stations within the HEOS app
• Also tested Bluetooth and wired performance with the Activo P1 audio player
• Used Audio Pro A10 MkII for comparison during listening tests
• Tested over several weeks of both casual and critical listening

I tested the Denon Home 400 using a wide range of different music genres and styles, including popular hits, soundtracks, ambient playlists and classical. I listened to podcasts and radio content, too, over several weeks of testing. I primarily used the Denon Home 400 in one spot, on a table in my living room, and that gave me a sense of how well it was able to fill the space in my small flat.

I used Bluetooth and wired connections with my Activo P1 music player, and also streamed using the HEOS app itself, accessing Deezer, Spotify and radio stations from this interface. Most of my spatial listening was tested via AirPlay, playing tracks mixed for Dolby Atmos through Apple Music.

For some direct comparisons, I used the other speakers that I currently have in my flat, including an Audio Pro A10 MkII and a couple of HomePod Minis in a stereo pair. And, to get a great understanding of the speaker’s performance, I made sure to listen to the widest possible range of genres at varying volume levels.

• First reviewed: June 2026
• Read TechRadar’s reviews guarantee

WiiM is one of the most interesting companies in the audio world right now, breaking out in the last couple of years in no small part thanks to capitalizing on Sonos' disastrous app update, and the company's quieter period since.

In that time, WiiM went from offering add-on boxes for traditional hi-fi, to launching sleek integrated streaming amps, to launching its own wireless speakers and subwoofer, starting with the WiiM Sound, to unveiling its first soundbar.

Ahead of the soundbar's launch, I spoke to WiiM's CEO, Dr. Lifeng Zhao, about the decisions the company made in developing the soundbar, whether WiiM has a signature sound profile, and what it means to offer "simplicity" in the context of these products, among other topics.

TechRadar: Tell me why you guys have chosen to do a soundbar now.

Lifeng Zhao: WiiM is four years old; in terms of brands right now we are a new player. So we did a streamer and amplifier, which convert or upgrade your existing audio gear. Those get really popular among our users, who start to expand [where they use them] to more environments: their living room; their media rooms. So, we always get this kind of feedback — they ask "when will you guys launch home theater, because we already have your gear, but we don't want to have separate components".

To use our streamer or amplifier, you have to have passive or powered speakers, right? But many people want to have one powerful all-in-one device in their living room. So they don't really want separate components because you know there's messing [with wires, and aesthetics], so we are always getting this request.

I'm also a big fan of entertainment, so for myself I want something simple to use with Dolby Atmos that can fulfill my music and TV experience. So, it came both from our own use, as well as a request from our community.

TechRadar: So, did you consider making an AV receiver or something like that before you decided to go the soundbar route? You already made the amps, so an AV receiver seems like it might have been the obvious way to go.

Lifeng Zhao: We already have the AV receiver if you think about it, right? We have the amps.

TechRadar: Only two channels.

Lifeng Zhao: Yeah, 2.1. But you can expand it with your surrounding channels [using wireless WiiM speakers]. That's the beauty of our systems. We don't want to make a traditional AVR, but we have a solution for those AVR users. People want a multi-channel system, but they don't want messy wired solutions. It's not flexible, and there are many limits on the placement, so we already have 2.1, but you can expand it with the surround speakers.

We are looking at more possibilities, but we don't want to make a legacy AVR; we want to make compact powerful and wireless versions of AVR.

TechRadar: The soundbar you guys are releasing is very good value considering the amount of physical channels that you've built in, and the amount of technology. A lot of soundbars at a similar price to yours are quite small, whereas yours is reasonably big. Can you talk through the design process around deciding how big you wanted the soundbar to be, and how that paired with the price you wanted to charge?

Lifeng Zhao: First of all, let's go back to our target users. We want this soundbar for both needs: watching TV plus listening to music. We don't want you to have to have two separate devices just because you watch TV and listen to music in your daily lives. So then we were thinking about how if we make [a product] only for the TV, just to improve the voice clarity, then we don't really need to go big — but we see a lot of people really want to listen to music with good bass, so the physics of that means we cannot make it too small.

So then we are thinking we can make [a soundbar with a subwoofer] but many people prefer the simplicity of an all-in-one — so that also gives us a size limit. So for our first one we wanted [to make one] people can just buy for most use cases. So with the size, our main target market is the US and Europe, and in most of Europe people have a single family [room]. So they have 55 inches or up TVs. So we did some surveys, and we think this is the kind of right size which can capture the majority of our audience.

TechRadar: You mentioned trying to balance the bass with the size and the compactness. So, you've got the four passive radiators in there. Were you designing the size of the soundbar around the size of the speakers and radiators you wanted to use, or were you choosing the speakers based on the size you wanted the soundbar to be?

Lifeng Zhao: We start with acoustic criteria. We say how deep a bass we want, based on our [previously launched devices]. We launched the amps, and we see how people set up their systems. We want to go to 50Hz, so users could get good bass — so that kind of gives us an acoustic volume. We calculate size based on this volume, but we do want it to be a sleek soundbar, so we have some height limits. But we can calculate the length, depth, and the height while leaving space for the speakers.

I always say we start from the acoustic criteria, then we calculate the size, then we design the best speaker driver according to this size limit.

TechRadar: Do you have more than one HDMI port, for passthrough?

Lifeng Zhao: We have one HDMI eARC, we don't have passthrough. We are thinking that people will connect most of their devices through the TV, because you have multiple HDMI inputs in the TV.

TechRadar: A lot of your competitors also only have one HDMI port, but there's a large number of people who have had their TV for a long time and they've collected a lot of boxes to connect to it, and so it can be really difficult to lose one of your HDMI ports to your soundbar. So, is there a reason behind this decision: was it either to do with cost or technical design or simplicity that you chose to only have one port?

Lifeng Zhao: Design is always about trade-offs, right? So, here I would say we value the simplicity, so people aren’t confusing HDMI and HDMI ARC. Before this journey [at Linkplay/WiiM] I also worked on media devices a lot in my past career, so we know that simplicity is very important. This is a choice to value that simplicity more in this device.

TechRadar: One of the interesting things about your soundbar is that you have a screen on the front, like the Wiim Sound speaker. Screens on soundbars is always quite a controversial topic, because people feel very strongly about having a light in front of their TV. Tell us about how the screen will work when you're watching content, and why you decided to include it.

Lifeng Zhao: We actually debated a lot internally. Our first screen-enabled devices [were the streamer and the amplifier], then the Sound speaker. So we actually accumulated a lot of experience in how people use a screen. To go back to your question regarding why we put a screen on the soundbar: first of all, the soundbar is made both for people using it for music and also watching TV, and in both cases we see a need for a screen. To give you some examples, when you listen to music, people always look somewhere to see what's playing, and they like looking at their favorite album art. We see people will even build a separate display just for artwork while listening, so we see this, and we want to provide integrated solutions for that.

Then we go back to the soundbar. So actually we are saying two things. One is that if you don't really need the screen, you can turn it off. Another thing is that we really want instant feedback. Think about it: if you only have an LED light right there with so many inputs, output and functions, how do you know what the status of the device is? It's really confusing even for me when I look at the LEDs, you know? I always forget, like, [what would flash] when the network doesn't work, right? How do I know it?

So, we want to give people a simple and intuitive control plus the instant feedback, because the device is so powerful. There are many statuses that may be important to your use cases. In a simple device we can just use a very simple app, but when it becomes very powerful, like your smartphone, you have to have a screen for people to interact.

TechRadar: There are obviously two ways to think about simplicity. And one is to have less information shown to keep it simple, and to have users trust that they're in the mode they like and things won’t change. Whereas I think you're saying that the way to introduce simplicity is to make sure people have all the information in front of them, so they're not questioning what the options are. That more information makes it simpler. Is it fair to say that's how you feel about it?

Lifeng Zhao: What I'm trying to say is that there are certain use cases where you need more information, but we don't want to give people too many options. So if you don't want that screen while you’re watching TV, our system will automatically turn off for you because you can separately configure the mode for each of your watching needs. But you can do even more, or we can do it automatically for you by default. You just need to set up once.

We want people using the screen intuitively. We don’t want to cause confusion; we don't want to become complicated. But [instead of] only having a red or a yellow indicator, we will tell you, oh, your network is disconnected, or your format is not supported, right? Let's say you don't support DTS, right? If you just have a yellow indicator, people will not really understand, they'll get really frustrated because they don't have any audio. So that's the kind of simplicity we want to have.

TechRadar: When it comes to expanding the system, you've got the ability to easily go to 5.1.2 channels by adding on the other WiiM products. Did you consider going beyond that? Because presumably with your technology, you could offer 7.1 2 or 5.2.2. Did you think about offering these?

Lifeng Zhao: Yeah, that's the beauty of our system, right? We started from separate components, so we accumulated a lot of experience. Another thing is that if you look at our wireless technology, we invest a lot in terms of wireless infrastructure — we have Wi-Fi 6E, so if you have the best routers we can leverage your routers, so we don't really have a limit. If your wireless environment can support it, we can expand it more.

Yes, when we launch the soundbar it supports 3.0.2, but as you mentioned we can expand it beyond 5.1.2, so that's exactly what we are doing, with the latest Wi-Fi standard you know we can expand more and with low latency.

[Editor's Note: Since this interview, WiiM has changed its stance and is aiming to support adding front left and right separate speakers for use with the WiiM Bar at launch, which can be either WiiM's wireless speakers or can be any speakers attached to a WiiM amp. Dr. Zhao gave us this additional comment: "We can confirm the bar supports wireless front, left, and right speakers. This wasn't originally intended as a launch feature, but based on community feedback and the team's testing, we decided to share it. There seems to be a lot of interest from our community, so if feedback and internal testing continue to go well, we'll look to keep it in."]

TechRadar: So are you saying that actually someone can go beyond 5.1.2 channels?

Lifeng Zhao: Right now we are saying 5.1.2, but potentially, with the software update we can expand more.

TechRadar: Speaking of wireless technology, have you guys explored Dolby Atmos FlexConnect as an option for your products?

Lifeng Zhao: We always look at different types of connectivity and the multi-channel options. FlexConnect definitely is on our radar.

TechRadar: Is there any reason why you're not supporting it now?

Lifeng Zhao: This is our first one, right? As I mentioned, we can support it with a software update, so the hardware is there. It's just about whether we feel it's mature enough, or the user experience [is ready]. We don't really want to give people half-baked technology; we want to make sure it’s really good and people can easily use it. So there's a possibility that we can do it even in current hardware with the software update, but I cannot commit on this one yet.

TechRadar: Speaking of the ecosystem, it looks like this is another piece of hardware that doesn't support Apple AirPlay 2, which is true of a lot of the new releases WiiM has launched. Are you able to say why this hasn't been included in the last few products?

Lifeng Zhao: We have many options on our devices, we support like more than 25 music services, then we have other ‘casting’ options there — and we value the people's content. If you're using Spotify, we want you using Spotify Lossless instead of a compressed [stream], and we see a lot of confusion, actually, of people using Spotify Connect with the other option you just mentioned [AirPlay 2]. So, it’s really a choice, like a design choice — we make it easy to use with high-res.

We really want people to leverage the best quality of their music on our system, and we also offer other options, which you can do very easily. We have multi-room no matter which source, via input to the Wiim. And with most of the music sources you can do lossless audio — so that’s the two options we offer right now.

TechRadar: You’re offering your RoomFit room correction here. I guess this is a very similar technology to what you've offered on the amps previously, but did you have to make any changes for working with Dolby Atmos and other formats you're supporting here?

Lifeng Zhao: It has to be different, right? Because in the soundbar we handle Dolby Atmos as a type of spatial audio, we also handle DTS, so we have multi-channel [sound to deal with]. Previously with RoomFit we started with like one device, then we expanded to 2.1 with a subwoofer — but now we’ve expanded RoomFit for the entire system. It's adding your surrounding speakers, adding your subwoofer, it’s not only doing stuff like balancing your SPL, or frequency spectrum, we also balance timing.

So we really expanded RoomFit for the spatial audio. We invested quite some time to get it right, and hopefully when we launch this soundbar people will be amazed by just how good it is. You just do one-tap calibration, it does everything for you: it calibrates the latency, the level matching, both for your front and surrounds and your subwoofer.

TechRadar: You mentioned earlier about designing the acoustic signature to deliver the right kind of sound that you wanted. And would you say that the new soundbar and the WiiM Sound speakers and your amps share a particular sound signature? Is there a sound signature that you believe is the WiiM style?

Lifeng Zhao: We are not really traditional hi-fi, if you look at our history. We really value the source. So that's why we always emphasize that, if you have a very good source, we want to replicate that in the original format. That means the resolution and in the bit depth, so we try to minimize the distortion when we do the [digital-to-analogue].

We do a lot of things mathematically to try to perfect the sound based on your existing system. In our amp we want to value your speaker signature you already have, so in our RoomFit we actually we want to just tackle the room mood most. So your high end, high frequency — we want to keep that signature [of your speakers] because that's what you paid for, right? So I would say we want to value people's preference more, and in the parts we can do well, we control that part — then we give people options. Simplicity, plus the powerful control.

If you go to advanced settings, you still can change your signature because if people whole, like, a warm sound they [can have it].

TechRadar: That makes sense, especially for the amps and things. But when you're making the soundbars and and WiiM Sound speakers, you're the ones choosing what the speaker output is going to sound like. So did you guys settle on a particular sound profile you wanted to make the default, or is it different for the soundbar than for the music speakers?

Lifeng Zhao: Exactly. Out of the box we want a really good sound, and if you talk about a sound signature, we do have different profile settings for the HDMI input or the music inputs. For the music inputs, we want to really have good clarity and a rich sound [with] respect to the original. Then for the HDMI, we tuned for more bass, for immersive audio. So we have a different profile, and I think it's a very good default for each of the sources.

TechRadar: It's interesting to talk to you about this element, because there are some companies I speak to where the speaker drivers are the things they really focus on, whereas your focus seems to be more on the processing and the signal pathway. Do you think that comes from the kind of company you are, as a digital platform company that has extended into speakers, instead of the other way around? Do you think that makes big difference as to how you approach your products compared to older hi-fi companies who did the analog part first and then are adding the digital in?

Lifeng Zhao: To make a better product, we need to marry the two sides. I would say we start from the digital world, but when we did the amplifier we actually [developed] a lot of analog, so we have a really good understanding of that digital-to-analog [process]. So we definitely are also analog people, and then when we do the speakers, our teams have people who worked in traditional [hi-fi] companies such as Harman Kardon, so we do have expertise on this area as well. Our talents will be in wireless, and in the DSP, and we also have a lot of acoustic engineers.

JBL Xtreme 5: two-minute review

The JBL Xtreme 5 is here and it's bigger, bulkier, and just better than what came before it. This party-ready Bluetooth speaker is on the larger end of JBL’s portable range, and comes with a massive 130W power output, 6.4lbs / 2.9kg weight, and a fairly high price to match. But this model really does feel as if it’s worth every penny.

Why? First of all, we have to talk about sound. The Xtreme 5 is a monster, with rumbling, almost earth-shaking bass, that can extend incredibly deep while retaining composure and clarity at all times. I was wowed by the richness and impact of the speaker’s low-end output, but this never came at the expense of rich mids or expressive highs.

It really does feel like the Xtreme 5 is a substantial sonic upgrade on its predecessor, and like the best Bluetooth speakers, it could handle just about every genre I threw at it with ease. This model can also get louder than the JBL Xtreme 4 thanks to its ramped up power output — although it will need to be plugged into the mains to hit its peak.

With souped-up power comes a size increase. This model is a lot heftier than the Xtreme 4, and wider too. It may be too bulky for some, but the included shoulder strap means it’s still pretty easy to carry around.

Something I love about the Xtreme 5 is how delightfully durable it is. This model is built to a very high standard, is drop-proof, and even IP68 dust and waterproof-rated, meaning it can easily survive a dunk in the pool.

But it’s not just practical, it’s pretty swell-looking too, especially thanks to newly integrated edge lights, which are fully customizable in the JBL Portable app. If you’d prefer you can turn them off, which can help to conserve battery life — you’re getting the same 24 hours that we saw on the Xtreme 4, but you can ramp this up to 28 hours with PlayTime Boost active.

Even in the features department, the Xtreme 5 nails it. You get USB-C audio passthrough for lossless playback, Auracast for multi-speaker pairing, customizable EQ, and a super easy-to-use compainon app.

And in the end, this portable speaker really does feel like the full package. Some may point out a slight price bump in the US, but the Xtreme 5’s cost feels entirely justified and well-balanced against the competition. If you want a speaker to get the party moving, with uncompromising, striking sound, this is easily my top recommendation.

JBL Xtreme 5 review: price and availability

• $399.95 / £329.99 (about AU$560)
• Launched in April 2026

The JBL Xtreme 5 launched in April 2026, about two years after its predecessor, the JBL Xtreme 4. It has a list price of $399.95 / £329.99 (about AU$560), representing a $20 bump in the US but no increase in the UK. It’s available in a range of colors, including Black, Blue, and Camo.

JBL Xtreme 5 review: specs

JBL Xtreme 5 review: features

• Customizable EQ and lighting
• 24 hours of playtime (28 hours with PlayTime Boost)
• USB-C audio passthrough for hi-res playback

The Xtreme 5 is overflowing with features, making it an incredibly adaptive and customizable Bluetooth speaker to use.

You’ve got a lot of the usual good stuff: multi-point connectivity, fast-pairing, and Auracast for multi-speaker connection, but there’s even more to uncover with the JBL Portable app.

Through this simple yet effective companion software, you can pick from a neat assortment of EQ presets or create your own with the seven-band equalizer, activate PlayTime Boost for an extra dollop of playtime, and also customize the speaker’s edge lights.

Lighting is new on the Xtreme 5, and it looks great in my view. And it’s very customizable too — you can pick from a range of effects, such as Bounce, Loop, or Trim, and these are great fun to mess around with. But unlike the smaller JBL Go 5, the Xtreme 5 provides the option to change the color of on-board lights, which makes this speaker even more personalizable.

Like a lot of the new-gen JBL speakers, the Xtreme 5 also supports USB-C passthrough, meaning you can enjoy hi-res audio on the go. Just hold down the play button, plug your device in, and you’re good to go.

In fact, the USB-C port stands alone on this model, and can be used for more than just playing music. It’s used to charge the speaker itself, of course, but you can also use it to charge external devices — ideal for juicing up your phone if you’re out and about. There’s also a USB-C wall charger included in the box, which isn’t something you see from a lot of the competition.

While we’re on the topic of charging, I suspect you’re wondering about battery life. And the Xtreme 5 has a good amount of stamina. It can typically last around 24 hours, but with PlayTime Boost active — a mode that increases playtime at the cost of audio fidelity — you can get up to 28 hours. That represents no increase from the Xtreme 4, which is understandable given the higher power output, but there are some competitors, like the Marshall Kilburn III that can give you as much as 50 hours.

Another fun inclusion is JBL EasySing Mic compatibility, which lets you enjoy karaoke wherever you are — but you’ll have to purchase these mics separately.

The only thing that’s missing from the Xtreme 5 is a built-in mic for taking hands-free calls. This is a pretty common thing to leave off the spec-sheet in Bluetooth speakers these days, and is by no means a deal-breaker among the TR team, but it’s worth considering if you’d like to use your JBL as a speakerphone — because that won't be possible.

• Features score: 4.5/5

JBL Xtreme 5 review: sound quality

• Mesmerizing, full-bodied bass
• Detailed mids and energetic highs
• Incredibly powerful, even compared to predecessor

While listening to Max Chapman’s remix of I’ll Be Your by Ruze, I was struck by one thing right out of the box: the bass. I didn’t feel like the Xtreme 4’s low-end gripped me as much as I’d hoped when I tested it a couple of years back, but this was absolutely not the case for its successor.

The dynamism and depth of the low-end was instantly striking — it was commanding, regimented, and intent-filled, resulting in a highly energetic and immersive listen. This remained the case with House tracks like Feel Da Vibe by Soul Mass Transit System, where the bass extension was seriously impressive — if you want clean, full-sounding low-end output, it’s going to be hard to beat the Xtreme 5.

And luckily, this never came at the expense of the rest of the frequency range. Mids are rich and well-balanced — and in Allie X’s Black Eye, I was really surprised by just how natural and detailed vocals sounded, even with the hard-hitting bass powering throughout. That was the case with a simple AAC signal, by the way — even though there’s no aptX or LDAC on board, JBL’s party speaker can still dish out plenty of detail.

In more stripped back tracks, like Desafinado by Stan Getz and Joao Gilberto, vocals sounded warm and textured, with excellent tonality and articulation — even more so than they did on the still-great Xtreme 4. Sure, bass was pretty forward for a track like this, but that was nothing I couldn’t fix — I rapidly switched to my saved custom EQ and found the perfect balance.

The Xtreme 5 handles the highs really well too. When listening to Lewis Taylor’s Paradise via USB-C, percussion in the treble range sounded vivid and energetic, but wasn’t uncontrolled or overemphasized. As I edged towards 100% volume, it could sound a little compressed, but that’s incredibly common for Bluetooth speakers such as this one.

Speaking of volume, this thing can get seriously loud. And that’s no surprise when you look under the hood, with the Xtreme 5 boasting a single 90W woofer and dual 20W tweeters when it’s hooked up to the mains. For reference, that’s 30W more power from the sub than the Xtreme 4 — which instead opted for dual 30W bass drivers.

It’s also worth noting that the Xtreme 5 has a stereo configuration, but you shouldn’t expect impeccably separated and faithful stereo output here — although true stereo output is possible when pairing the Xtreme 5 with a second, identical model.

• Sound quality score: 5/5

JBL Xtreme 5 review: design

• Larger and weightier than the Xtreme 4
• Edge lighting is a welcome addition
• IP68-rated and drop-proof

JBL clearly believes that bigger means better, because the Xtreme 5 has a considerably larger footprint than its predecessor.

It’s wider and heftier too, coming in at 6.4lbs / 2.9kg — quite the rise from the 4.6lbs / 2.1kg of the Xtreme 4. That bulky build may put some off, but the Xtreme 5 still feels surprisingly portable. And that’s thanks to its carry strap, which is adjustable and comfortable to sling over the shoulder.

Despite that size increase, I prefer the look of the Xtreme 5 to its predecessor. There are some small changes to the appearance of the speaker — like a plate on the top side for button controls and a more prominent base stand. But there are still plenty of familiar traits — the recycled plastic and fabric material, the in-your-face logo placement, and the big radiators on each end of the model, for instance.

The biggest change, of course, is the inclusion of edge lighting. I’m a big fan of this personally — it makes bumping tunes that bit more immersive, and adds an ambient touch for late-night listening. These are customizable, but can also be turned off if you’re not in the mood for a light show or want to conserve battery life.

Beyond its looks, the Xtreme 5 is a seriously heavy-hitter in the design department — and that’s largely down to its durable construction. When using the Xtreme 5, it felt like dropping it would break the ground, rather than the speaker itself. It’s got an incredibly solid feel to it, and JBL has certified it as ‘drop-proof’. On top of that, its IP68 dust and waterproof rated, meaning it can even survive a 30 minute dunking under a meter and a half of water — pretty impressive, right?

• Design score: 4.5/5

JBL Xtreme 5 review: value

• Minimal price increase in the US, no change in some regions
• But actually feels like a better value buy than predecessor
• Incredible all-round quality is deserving of the steep cost

As much as I liked the JBL Xtreme 4, there was always a little something missing for me. The bass didn’t quite have the bite I was looking for, I didn’t fall in love with its design, and as a result, it didn’t quite feel worth the money. But the JBL Xtreme 5 has totally sold me.

Look, this is how you do an upgrade. This model has more power, more striking sound, lighting for added beauty points, and an even more durable build than last time out. And although US buyers will have to pay $20 more than the launch price of the Xtreme 4, the price has remained flat in other regions, including the UK.

Even with a price increase, this Bluetooth speaker feels worth every penny to me. And with its increased size, lights-integration, and power-boost, it almost feels like an ‘Xtreme Pro’ of sorts, rather than a mere refresh of what came before.

Looking at the competition right now, I think the Xtreme 5 is in very good standing too. For instance, the Bose SoundLink Max has a list price of $399 / £399 / AU$599 — considerably pricier than the Xtreme 5 in markets like the UK. Sure, Bose’s model goes on sale fairly often these days, sometimes for $100 / £100 less, but even still, I think the Xtreme 5 offers excellent bang for your buck with more bountiful bass and a sturdier build.

• Value score: 5/5

Should I buy the JBL Xtreme 5?

Buy it if…

Don’t buy it if…

JBL Xtreme 5 review: also consider

How I tested the JBL Xtreme 5

• Tested for hours alongside the JBL Xtreme 4
• Used in the music testing space at Future Labs
• Predominantly tested using Tidal

I spent hours testing the JBL Xtreme 5, during which time I exhausted its various features, assessed its audio quality, and compared it against its predecessor, the JBL Xtreme 4. Testing took place at our music testing space at Future Labs.

For the most part, I streamed music over Tidal to assess the audio aptitude of the Xtreme 5, but I did dip into Spotify from time to time as well. To begin with, I sifted through the TechRadar reference playlist, which features tracks from a wide range of genres, but I also bumped tunes from my personal library afterwards.

I’ve spent years testing audio gear here at TechRadar, including everything from cheap wired earbuds like the Sennheiser CX 80U to premium wireless headphones like the Sony 1000X The Collexion. Of course, I’ve tried out a ton of Bluetooth speakers too, and have reviewed JBL models like the JBL Go 5 and JBL Grip. I also curated our best Bluetooth speakers guide, where I tested more than 30 models to find the greatest models around.

• Read more about how we test
• First reviewed: June 2026

Sonos has offered the ability to add wireless rear speakers to its soundbars, creating an effective compact surround-sound system, for well over a decade. But this setup really hasn't changed much from the Playbar to the Sonos Arc Ultra — you can still have the soundbar with two rear speakers, and one or two subwoofers.

For years now, Sonos superfans have been begging the company to expand these options with the ability to use its wireless speakers as true front left and right channels for a home theater setup.

The frustration is width: elite soundbars like the Arc Ultra have angled drivers so that the audio sounds much wider than the soundbar itself, but there are diminishing returns with 'virtualized' width compared to the real width of just having speakers on either side of your TV, the way you would in a five-channel surround sound system made from separate speakers. And we just had a reminder from a Dolby exec about how important width is in recreating Dolby Atmos mixes.

People love the simplicity of a wireless Sonos setup compared to building out a wired separates system, and many are enamored with Sonos' sound profile. But as time goes on, the failure to innovate in the kinds of setups available starts to look stubborn at best.

Imagine that you have a Sonos Beam 2nd Gen connected to your TV over HDMI, and it receives the Dolby Atmos sound and then streams it out to a Sonos Era 300 to the left of your TV and one to the right of your TV.

These would deliver real width, especially since the Era 300 has left and right drivers, as well as forward-facing. The Beam serves as the center channel for clear dialogue, and the Era 300s deliver powerful side channels and height channels. And, of course, you could combine with wireless rear speakers, as Sonos does already.

People are choosing to buy bigger and bigger TVs, which need wider and wider sound to match their scale. We can't keep making soundbars bigger to compensate (well, we can, but I'm not sure it'll really please anyone).

Sonos has been in the perfect position to capitalize on this, and yet somehow Sony beat it to the punch by announcing the Sony Bravia Theatre Trio, an 'LCR' (left, center, right) wireless system that's more or less exactly the setup I described above, but with Sony speakers.

Here's what really galls the Sonos superfans: the tech already exists, unofficially, to do this, and many have tried it. There is a whole subreddit dedicated to a third-party app called Sonosequencr, and the developer makes it clear that they're not hacking the speakers to make this possible: they're tapping into tech already dormant in Sonos' system, that Sonos has never fully enabled.

Using Sonosequencr comes with tradeoffs, with the main one being that you can't use Trueplay to correct the sound for your room, so in some cases it's possible you're better off sticking with a regular Sonos setup that compensates for your room's reflections, especially if you have a smaller space — but in some large setups, the addition of real speakers might be the better option. Sonos could also break the third-party app at any time, since it's all unofficial.)

There were leaks that Sonos was planning to enable this kind of setup using its canceled streaming box as the centerpiece, but this obviously never came to fruition (but the tech that Sonosequencr taps into might be the vestigial remains of it, or an earlier version of it).

I wrote at the time that I hoped it would retain the exact feature I'm talking about today, but there's been no sign of it since then. That's probably partly because Sonos spent a year just trying to fix its app's problems and getting things ready for multiple launches this year (which started with the Sonos Play).

Maybe Sonos is getting ready to unleash a new world of home theater flexibility on us — when I interviewed CEO Tom Conrad, I asked him about Dolby Atmos FlexConnect and its ability to work with really flexible speaker placement, he said: "We're interested in that entire space, the entire domain of: How do you get the bits from the source to the speakers? How do you position the speakers in three-dimensional space? And how do you render? We'll continue to work on our roadmap."

In response to a question about TV makers launching their own wireless speaker tech and pushing Sonos out, Conrad said: "We're the pioneer in wirelessly distributing audio around the family room, and we'll have our own things to say about how that evolves in the coming quarters."

So it definitely sounds like Sonos has something planned for home theater this year, and I really hope it takes the chance to finally unleash extra speaker positions. The fact that Sony got there first really surprised me, but Sonos has a key advantage: price.

Sony's system costs £2000 (about $2,690 / AU$3,750) for the front three speakers. The closest Sonos setup in terms of Dolby Atmos performance would be the Beam 2nd Gen and two Era 300 speakers, as I mentioned above. At the time of writing, that costs $1,127 / £1,077 / AU$2,297 — but you could swap the Era 300s for a pair of Era 100 SL speakers, and the price would drop to $707 / £657 / AU$1,377.

When I think about the scale of performance you could get from that setup for that price… well, like I said, the whole thing

• Sonos' new app update enables you to turn SonosNet mesh networking off
• The feature may cause clashes with "more complex" home networks
• Available on iOS and Android, but not every will get it at the same time

Sonos has release an update to its app for both iOS and Android that may solve a weird networking issue for some users. The update, which is rolling out from today, adds a toggle for SonosNet that enables you to turn the feature off.

According to Liz from Sonos, who posted details of the update to the r/sonos subreddit, turning off SonosNet may "help resolve connectivity issues on more complex home network setups."

This is a relatively small update – the last one in mid-May delivered multiple changes including additional Music Library grouping options, layout improvements in iOS and for US users, changes to advertising personalization. But if you've been getting weird Wi-Fi issues it may be just what you've been waiting for.

What is SonosNet and why should you fear it?

SonosNet is designed to connect your Sonos speakers to each other, and it was created when home Wi-Fi wasn't always up to the task of smoothly streaming to your Sonos gear.

Sonos's solution was to create a Sonos-specific private Wi-Fi mesh network (before mesh routers were common) that your speakers would share, with an Ethernet-cabled Sonos device acting as the hub for everything else.

That's good, but as Liz from Sonos explains: "For most modern, high-speed routers, disabling SonosNet can actually help things run smoother. Newer routers use Wi-Fi technology that can sometimes conflict with SonosNet's mesh, so turning it off lets your system lean fully on your home network instead."

Sonos has also added the ability to see what's connected via SonosNet, which again might help with diagnosing speaker-specific weirdness.

However, it's worth noting that this tech is on by default for a reason — this option might be exactly what many people need, but I wouldn't try it until you've looked into other possible causes if you're having Sonos connection issues.

The update is a rolling update, meaning not all devices will receive it at once — so even though the new software is live today, your app might not show the option yet.

Once it's available to you, you can turn off SonosNet in System Settings > Networks > Disable SonosNet. Of course if you aren't experiencing network problems then there's no need to do this – and if you haven't done so already, it's worth trying a different SonosNet channel first to see if that solves your problem without having to take SonosNet offline.

Recently, I got my hands on the JBL Go 5 — the latest edition of the audio specialist’s smallest, and most affordable Bluetooth speaker. And to say it impressed me would be an understatement.

With exceptional sound quality in a small package, top-tier durability, and enticing LED lights, it proved that JBL is still king of the mini Bluetooth speaker world. It’s also available at a very low price…

However, with the Go 5 finally on the market, you can now easily swipe the previous-gen JBL Go 4 model with major discounts that could easily tempt you to go for that option instead, saving a bit of cash.

Given that the Go 4 was already one of the best Bluetooth speakers in the small-size category, I can see a lot of people being torn on which one to buy. So is the JBL Go 5 worth buying over its predecessor even at a higher price?

After testing both side-by-side, for me the JBL Go 5 is the better buy, even if you have to pay up to 30% more for it — because that difference isn't actually a lot of money, but the speaker itself is a big improvement. Let me break it all down for you.

JBL Go 5 vs JBL Go 4 specs at a glance

How do the JBL Go 5's features & design differ from the Go 4?

First of all, let’s take a look at the key differences between the Go 5 and Go 4.

Both models have a similar, rectangular build and feature the JBL logo at their core. Buttons are layered on the outside edges, enabling you to swiftly turn your speaker on, control playback, and pair via Bluetooth. They also feature a loop for hooking the speaker to something, which are constructed from hardy fabric in both cases.

The differences in terms of build are quite minor, really. The Go 5 is slightly larger, the logo pops a little more, and there are raised 'feet' on the back for when you’re laying the speaker flat. It also has IP68 dust and waterproofing, meaning it's fully protected against dust ingress, and can survive a 30 minute dunking under a meter and a half of water.

The Go 4 is IP67-rated, meaning it can only swim under a meter of water safely, but that level of protection will be more than enough for most.

The obvious and major difference between the Go 4 and Go 5 is the latter’s inclusion of lighting. You can select from a number of lighting effects in the JBL Portable app, and enjoy ambient effects while listening to your tunes. It’s a nice touch, but if you’d rather turn it off to conserve battery life, you can do so.

Speaking of battery life, you get a bit more out of the Go 5 than its predecessor. JBL’s new model supplies eight hours of playtime, with an additional two available using PlayTime Boost.

The Go 4 gets close, with seven hours — and up to nine with playtime boost on — so you should get enough charge to keep the tunes going for a cookout.

Otherwise, things are fairly similar across the two models. You’ll get multi-point connectivity, EQ tweaking in the JBL Portable app, fast-pairing, and Auracast connectivity for multi-speaker pairing.

Usefully, though, the Go 5 supports AirTouch, which enables you to instantly stereo pair to another Go 5 unit just by tapping them together.

Sound quality: more of a difference than you may expect

So, other than the Go 5’s lighting, a lot of the feature and design differences are the sort of incremental things you’d expect from a next-gen refresh. However, when it comes to sound quality, the upgrade is a lot more substantial than you may expect.

I’ve appreciated the Go 4’s sound since I first heard it a couple of years back — it was pretty clear and punchy given the model’s limited confines. But the Go 5 has redefined what is possible for a small-sized speaker.

The Go 5 has a much more open, detailed quality to its audio playback — the Go 4 sounded compressed and restricted in comparison when I used both side by side.

In tracks such as Marco Castello’s Editto Dal Sottoscoglio, I was treated to a much more full-sounding presentation on JBL’s newer release — the definition of dreamy vocals, the sharp, expressive hit of hi-hats, and the tonality of gliding guitars just came through with so much more life and color.

Even though bass is inherently limited on the Go 5, it’s also a bit cleaner sounding against the relatively punchy but slightly less powerful Go 4.

You’ll also be able to get more powerful sound from the Go 5, as its output power has increased to 4.8W from 4.2W, and the speaker does reach pretty impressive volumes — both models will succumb to compression at peak loudness, though.

Unlike the Go 4, you can also make use of wired audio on the JBL Go 5, with USB-C audio passthrough. This unlocks lossless playback, resulting in even more agile, responsive bass, surprisingly detailed mids, and controlled treble. Most will probably stick with Bluetooth, but this sort of feature is great to see regardless.

Verdict: here’s how I’d spend my money

So, in the end which speaker do I think is worth buying? Considering that the JBL Go 5 has a modest list price of $54.95 / £39.99 (about AU$75), representing a very small increase over its predecessor in real terms, I’d say there’s no contest.

With appealing, customizable lighting, incremental feature enhancements, and considerably better sound, the JBL Go 5 is almost like a blueprint on how to do an upgrade right.

Sure, the Go 4 is often on sale now, and I’ve seen it drop below $40 / £30 / AU$50 regularly, so saving the extra $15 / £10 will be tempting. And it still offers solid sound quality, a durable design, and phenomenal portability.

But the audio improvement alone makes the Go 5 worth choosing over its ancestor. For me, it’s the best little Bluetooth speaker that money can buy.

• The Sonos app is not currently available in the Apple App Store
• No change to Google Play: it's still there
• Sonos has acknowledged the issue and is "working on a solution"

Update 2: The Sonos app is back on the App Store now. Normal service resumes. The original article and update will remain as published below.

If you're looking for the Sonos app for iOS, iPadOS or Mac, you'll need to wait: it's not there. The app is temporarily unavailable in Apple's App Store for all three platforms.

Sonos is aware of the problem: in a status update it says that "We have identified a problem with the Sonos App availability in the iOS / Mac App Stores and are working on a solution."

So far the app has been unavailable for a few hours and we don't yet know when it'll return.

Update 1: Sonos provided the following comment to TechRadar: "The Sonos app is temporarily unavailable for new downloads and updates from the Apple App Store while we complete a routine administrative update with Apple. Existing installations on customers' devices are unaffected and the Sonos app and service are operating normally. We expect the issue to be resolved soon. For the latest status, please visit https://status.sonos.com/."

What's wrong with the Sonos app?

The Sonos status page shows a clear sheet for almost everything bar the Sonos Account, which is currently labelled with a red X to indicate a major outage.

Sonos says that in addition to the app not being available to download, you might not be able to update it if it's already installed on your system.

It strongly seems like this is some kind of administrative problem, as hinted by Sonos in its statement to us — some online have speculated that it could be as basic as Sonos' developer accounts expiring, or a similar paperwork requirement not being met. If that's the case, we'd expect it to reappear and for Sonos to never speak of it again…

Having said that, at some point Sonos' Mac app will disappear permanently anyway — it's not built for Apple Silicon, and Sonos says it has no plans to adapt it, and instead is moving all desktop users to its web interface anyway.

• Dali unveils new Vega Wi-Fi speaker, on sale in September
• Works as a streamer, speaker and amp all in one
• Can be used wirelessly, and affixed to different surfaces

Does Dali even want you to buy its five-star classic-style speakers like the Dali Sonik 1 or Dali Kupid? Maybe not, because it's just unveiled a new all-in-one hi-fi system that steers away from traditional hi-fi altogether.

This is the Dali Vega, which the brand has shown off ahead of its 'proper' unveiling at the High End Vienna show at the beginning of June. But we already know basically everything there is to know about the device.

In short, the Vega is an all-in-one music system: it works as a streamer, a speaker system and a soundbar. When I first saw the picture above, I thought it looked a bit like an AC unit, but you don't have to affix it to a wall like that.

Dali's various pictures show it horizontal or vertical on walls and cabinets, with the unit recognizing its orientation and adjusting its output accordingly. It's also wireless, (other than the power cable), so you won't need to cover your home in messy cables.

It weighs 8.7kg, with a body that's 68.3cm long, 33cm wide and 20cm tall. Wall brackets come with the device, so you don't need to start planning your home renovation to hold it.

The Dali Vega is set to begin selling in September in some countries, and October and November in others (though Dali hasn't confirmed the order). It's set go sell for $4,500 / £2,599 / AU$4,499, in two finishes: Dark Oak and Natural Oak. So its price is pretty similar to a high-end AC unit too.

What happens in Vega...

Let's break down the Vega; firstly, its chops as a speaker. The unit houses ten drivers, all developed by Dali itself. There are four 25mm soft dome drivers, four 4.5-inch low-mid frequency drivers, and two passive radiators.

The 25mm soft-dome tweeters are designed to reduce resonant frequencies, and the low-mid drivers are arranged back-to-back, all of this with the aim of reducing resonance within the body.

These go hand-in-hand with Dali's Adaptive Stereo Enhancement tech, which apparently is designed to let each single speaker creative a wider soundstage, changing depending on the signal it's receiving. The Vega has 400W of amplification power across eight 50W channels.

Then, there's the Dali Vega's capabilities as a player. It has RCA and optical ports, as well as Bluetooth because yes, this is a wireless device too. You can use it alongside Spotify Connect, Tidal Connect, Apple AirPlay 2, or whichever piece of hi-fi gear you choose to plug it into.

It uses Bluesound's BluOS streaming system to connect to other sources, and buttons on the body let you set presets for inputs. There's also, as you can tell from the pictures, a nice big dial on the body, as well as an OLED display.

And it has an HDMI input, so you can use it as a soundbar with your TV too — something that's becoming more and more common among the best wireless speakers (above a certain size, at least).

• Jamo launches new portable speakers
• Flex and Flow are portable models designed for outdoors
• Reflect is a bedroom and alarm clock speaker

I feel like I was last writing about new Jamo speakers only yesterday. In fact it was actually a week ago, when the Scandi audio brand came back from the dead to reveal seven new loudspeakers, and I suppose it's now back-er from the dead, with three brand-new portable models.

Jamo has unveiled the HYG family of portable Bluetooth speakers, consisting of three different devices: two outdoor models, one indoor one.

The name comes from hygge, one of the few Swedish words non-speakers know; it's one of those beloved untranslatable phrases that refers to a feeling of cosiness and warmth. And the speakers certainly lean in for that Scandi-chic look.

Before you get over-excited for these speakers, bear in mind you can't buy them yet. They're due to go on sale in July.

Here You Go (HYG)

The outlier of the new trio is the HYG Reflect, which is due to cost $149 / £129 (about AU$260).

This has been designed as a speaker for your bedside cabinet. It functions as an alarm clock, wireless charging pad and, yes, speaker, with dual two-inch drivers and two passive radiators.

Next up, and pictured at the top of this article, is the HYG Flow. It's due to sell for $279 / £239 (about AU$480), which a tempting price when you consider its audio setup is so similar to the far-more-expensive Sonos Move 2.

It boasts twin one-inch tweeters angled away from each other, plus a five-inch woofer — that's the same arrangement as the Sonos, though the actual driver will obviously be different. It's compatible with both Bluetooth 6.0 or an aux cord. It can play with other Jamo Auracast speakers but, unlike the Sonos, there's no Wi-Fi play support, so that's what you get for paying more for the Sonos.

It's ostensibly a portable speaker, weighing 3kg and supporting up to 15 hours of playback, but it only has an IPX2 rating — again, that's weaker than the Sonos.

Finally, there's the HYG Flow, which is the cheapest member of the bunch at $129 / £109 (about AU$220). It's long, thin and light, weighing under a kilogram, and comes in six different hues, about three of which I'm obsessed with.

This offers two 1.5-inch full-range drivers and two passive radiators, connecting in much the same way as the Flow but with a 27-hour battery life. Its IP rating is also IPX7: fine for splashes by the pool, but not for use on a sandy beach.

Prior to the HYG, Jamo didn't have any wireless Bluetooth speakers in its line-up, so it remains to be seen just how well it marries its audio prowess with this functional form factor. July will tell.

JBL Go 5: two-minute review

The JBL Go 5 has still found ways to impress me, even though I've tested more than 50 Bluetooth speakers here at TechRadar.

See, I was already a fan of the JBL Go 5's predecessor, and I wasn't expecting all too much from a next-gen update — especially as the Go 4 itself only released two years ago. But ultimately, the Go 5 was a much bigger upgrade than I'd hoped.

There are some obvious changes out of the box: ambient LED lighting, a more refined overall look, and a slightly larger build. But it's when you fire the Go 5 up that the biggest changes rear their head — and cement this as one of the best Bluetooth speakers in the small-size category.

First of all, this model offers more powerful and refined audio than the JBL Go 4 ever could. Its output power has increased to 4.8W, so the single full-range driver can deliver more volume — ideal for small get-togethers.

But the audio quality onboard has been improved substantially as well. With more expressive highs, clearer mids, and cleaner bass, the Go 5 offers a clear sonic upgrade over what came before.

On top of that, you now get a maximum 10 hours of playtime with PlayTime Boost active, representing an improvement over the previous generation. Don't get me wrong, this is nothing groundbreaking, but it's still a welcome change.

Similarly, the Go 5 has marginally better waterproofing, now packing an IP68 rating. Its drop-proof build also makes it a great model for taking on the go, as well as using in the shower.

There's more, though, with USB-C audio connectivity on the features list, plus a new AirTouch function for instant stereo pairing. That's not to mention the usual good stuff, such as Auracast connectivity, solid EQ options, and multi-point connectivity.

The major takeaway, then, is that the JBL Go 5 is a great-sounding, well-built, and highly affordable mini Bluetooth speaker that offers plenty of improvements over its predecessor. I have some minor complaints, like the lack of color options for its LED lights and the battery life, which can be beaten by some rivals.

But the JBL Go 5 is without question one of the best-sounding small speakers I've ever used, and it's the one I'd pick as being best-in-class right now.

JBL Go 5 review: price and availability

• List price of $54.95 / £39.99 (about AU$75)
• Released in April 2026

The JBL Go 5 was released in April 2026, about two years after its predecessor, the JBL Go 4.

It has a list price of $54.95 / £39.99 (about AU$75), which represents a $5 increase over the Go 4 in the US, but no difference in the UK. Still, this speaker comfortably sits in the budget category, with the Go line standing as the most affordable in JBL's Bluetooth speaker lineup.

JBL Go 5 review: specs

JBL Go 5 review: features

• Battery life gets a boost to 10 hours
• Lights pull up to the party
• Easy to use app with neat EQ options

The JBL Go 5 has a solid featureset, including the usual multi-point connectivity, fast-pairing, and Auracast for multi-speaker pairing. However, by entering the user-friendly JBL portable app, you can open up even more options.

First of all, you can adjust the speaker's EQ. There are a few presets, like JBL Signature, Chill, Energetic, and more. But there's also a custom equalizer, which enables you to tailor sound to your specific taste. I created a slightly bass-boosted custom EQ to add impact for deeper tracks, and found it to work brilliantly, although the default tuning is pretty good regardless.

The JBL Go 5 now comes equipped with lights for a funkier listening experience, and these can also be customized in JBL's companion app. There are various effects to pick from, such as Bounce, Loop, Switch, and Freeze. However, you can also decide to disable lights if you'd prefer to conserve some battery life.

I would've liked the option to choose from different color lights on the JBL Portable app, but otherwise, I'm a big fan of this change.

Looping back to battery life, and JBL has given a boost to the Go 5, which now delivers eight hours of playtime, or 10 hours with the battery-saving PlayTime Boost active. 10 hours is still nothing out of this world, especially when the similar-sized Tribit PocketGo manages double, but that speaker is more basic and doesn't sound anywhere near as good as the Go 5 — more on that later.

Auracast is back for rapid multi-speaker pairing, but there's a new feature onboard for stereo linking two Go 5 models together. This is called AirTouch, and enables you to link a couple Go 5's simply by tapping them together. I tried this for myself and found it to be very responsive and practical.

One final option worth noting is USB-C audio. Just connect your listening device to the speaker with a cable, and you'll be able to enjoy technically lossless audio on the go.

JBL has added this to most of their Bluetooth speakers lately, and it's great to see this on the Go 5 as well, even if it's not exactly going to offer audiophile-grade sound, due to its small size.

• Features score: 4.5 / 5

JBL Go 5 review: sound quality

• Clear, expressive audio in a small package
• A lot more full-sounding than its predecessor
• Improved output power for increased volume

When I tried the JBL Go 4 a couple of years ago, I considered it to be a pretty solid performer, especially given its limited confines. But in my view, the JBL Go 5 offers a significant sonic improvement over that model.

Comparing the Go 5 against its predecessor, I found it to be far more full-sounding and well-rounded, and capable of more powerful audio. See, even though the Go 5 has a single 45mm full-range driver — the same as the Go 4 — it now offers a higher 4.8W power output.

I tried listening to a range of tracks, but started with the spacey house tune, Here to Catch You by Chris Stussy & S.A.M. The track's rhythmic and expressive high-pitched drums were replicated impressively on the Go 5, while synths in the mid-range came through with commendable clarity.

When bass entered the picture, the speaker didn't capture the drop with amazing impact or top-tier dynamism, but the low-end remained clean and agile.

In Editto Dal Sottoscoglio by Marco Castello, the Go 5 offered a more fleshed-out presentation than its predecessor, with more defined vocals, and less compressed-sounding highs.

Against slightly larger models, like the Tribit Stormbox Micro 3, the Go 5 isn't packing tons of low-end power, and as you'd expect, you won't get rippling sub-bass here or anything. However, I found the Go 5's bass to be rhythmic and responsive, and with a slight low-end bump in the EQ settings, I was able to get punchier bass for darker tracks.

Again, the the Go 5's smaller size means that you won't always get the most nuanced and separated audio either, but I was very satisfied with the clarity it managed across genres.

At top volumes, you'll experience a bit of compression, but the speaker rarely sounded tinny or shrill, and offered far more regimented and articulate sound than the majority of its budget-friendly rivals.

The inclusion of USB-C audio passthrough also means you can unleash lossless music on the go, something that few competitors include on their smallest models. For Bluetooth listening, you'll be limited to SBC and AAC, but that's pretty standard. And even with these more basic codecs, the JBL Go 5 is easily one of the best-sounding tiny speakers I've ever tested.

• Sound quality score: 4.5 / 5

JBL Go 5 review: design

• Lighting is a welcome addition
• Wide array of eye-catching color options
• IP68-rated and drop-proof

Overall, the JBL Go 5 looks pretty similar to its predecessor, but there are a few changes worth flagging.

First and foremost, there are some LED edge lights, which JBL has also added to the next-gen update of its Xtreme speaker. This adds a bit of ambience when you're listening late at night or at a party, and doesn't make the model look too busy or over-the top. I mentioned earlier how you can't alter the color of the LEDs, which is a bit of a shame, but the lighting pattern is customizable in the JBL Portable app.

This speaker is a bit larger than its predecessor as well, but only marginally. It's still extremely lightweight, and will easily fit in your pocket or a small bag, for instance.

Another thing I spotted is that the Go 5's logo looks a bit sharper, and there are protruding rubber feet on the reverse side of the model to keep it more stable when laid flat. Looks-wise, though, things haven't been altered all too much — there are still plenty of color options to pick from, and I was a huge fan of the turquoise model I tested out.

On a practical level, you're still getting a drop-proof, lightweight model, but there's one small improvement to note, and that's the dust- and waterproof rating, which has levelled up to IP68. That means that the speaker is fully dustproof and able to survive a 30 minute dip in a meter and a half of water.

The Go 5's palm-sized form factor and practical loop also make it perfect for taking out and about — combine that with its durability and neat looks, and its a very high scorer in the design category.

• Design score: 4.5 / 5

JBL Go 5 review: value

• Not short of improvements over predecessor...
• ...meaning the slight US price-bump feels justified
• Performs a lot better than most rivals in its price-range

The JBL Go 5 is a fantastic value-for-money buy, and even though its seen a slight price increase over its predecessor (in the US, at least), it feels worth every penny.

At $54.95 / £39.99 (about AU$75), this is a very budget-friendly model, and is far cheaper than other small speakers, like the Bose SoundLink Micro Gen 2, for instance.

You also get a whole lot for the money. Impressive sound quality in an ultra-compact form, high-standard build quality, and customizability in the JBL Portable app.

I'd even argue the upgraded audio quality makes it worth upgrading to the Go 5 from the Go 4 if you own that model — the additional power and less compressed audio is an absolute gamechanger, and the ambient lights aren't half bad either.

• Value score: 5 / 5

Should I buy the JBL Go 5?

Buy it if…

Don’t buy it if…

JBL Go 5 review: also consider

How I tested the JBL Go 5

• I spent multiple weeks testing
• Mainly streamed tunes from Tidal
• Reviewed by someone who’s tested more than 50 Bluetooth speakers

I spent weeks testing the JBL Go 5, using it at our music testing space, at home, and in the shower. I exhausted all of its features, and made sure to cycle through all of the options in the JBL Portable app.

For the most part, I used Tidal to stream music, but I dipped into Spotify from time to time as well. During my time with the speaker, I played through tracks from the TechRadar testing playlist, but also bumped a wide range of tunes from my personal library.

More generally, I've spent years testing audio gear here at TechRadar, and have covered everything from small models like the Bose SoundLink Micro Gen 2 to party speakers like the Marshall Bromley 750. I've also used the JBL Go 5's predecessor, the Go 4, pretty extensively, meaning I knew exactly what to look for from a next-gen refresh.

• Read more about how we test
• First reviewed: May 2026

• JL Audio, owned by Garmin, unveils new hi-fi products
• Two speakers: T6 and S3, each with high prices
• Also unveils CS Stereo Centerpiece preamp and streamer

Everyone's favorite smartwatch brand Garmin has taken a break from wearables, such as the recent Tactix 8, to release a series of home audio gadgets with bank-breaking prices.

This is JL Audio's Primacy range, and this is one of Garmin's sub-brands. You'd be forgiven for not having heard of them, as their chief areas are car and maritime audio, and this jump into luxe hi-fi is sure to raise some eyebrows.

Don't expect these gadgets to price similarly to the best Garmin watches, though. They're seriously expensive pieces of hi-fi gear — priced to match the elite stuff from the likes of Bowers & Wilkins and Wilson Audio — that you can only pick up from specialist audio dealers.

Meet the Primacy pals

Let's talk about the Garmin JL Audio Primacy T6 first (just above). This is the priciest of the bunch, retailing for around $90,000 per pair.

These floorstanding active speakers have six drivers each: a 1-inch carbon tweeter, a 5.5-inch mid-range driver, and four 5.5-inch woofers. These are three amps per unit, totaling 1000W of output, and each amp has its own DSP and DAC, with support for 32-bit/192kHz audio.

The JL Audio Primacy S3, selling for $35,000 per pair, drops the specs a little. They're active speakers again, with the same 1-inch dome tweeter as the bigger model, plus a 5.5-inch woofer, and two amplifiers per unit.

Both speakers have various refinements such shaped enclosures and audio filters to offer tuned sound. They connect via XLR, RCA or Cat 6

Rounding out the trio, ostensibly to control the others, is the $15,000 CS Stereo Centerpiece. This is both a streamer — with compatibility for various audio services — and a preamp. It has all the trappings you'd hope at the price, such as room correction, user profiles, Bluetooth compatibility, and a built-in screen.

None of Garmin's new devices are available from its website. Instead, the listings guides you to your local retailer, who you can pick them up from.

• Bose launches premium soundbar, smart speaker and wireless sub
• The Ultra Lifestyle Soundbar is the new Bose flagship at $1,099 / £999 / AU$1,800
• The Lifestyle Ultra Speaker has Dolby Atmos for $299 / £299 / AU$549

Bose's new Lifestyle Collection is likely to cause some frowny faces at Sonos HQ: it's a set of three premium pieces of audio gear designed for every room in your home, offering excellent flexibility including multi-room audio, and promising a typically luxurious Bose audio experience.

The three speakers are the Bose Lifestyle Ultra Speaker, the Bose Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar and the Bose Lifestyle Ultra Subwoofer. And in addition to working with each other, they also promise to work in groups with speakers from other manufacturers too.

Bose says that its app delivers "one of the simplest setup experiences in home audio", and if the collection sounds as good as it looks then Bose may well have a home audio hit on their hands.

Bose Lifestyle Collection: key features, pricing and availability

The Bose Ultra Lifestyle Speaker is a cylindrical speaker with three drivers, two of which fire outwards and one of which fires upwards. Bose says that's enough to create room-filling spatial audio from a single speaker, and it has Bose's CleanBass system and QuietPort acoustic opening to deliver low-end that's clean and punchy.

It also has Bose's TrueSpatial spatial audio processing, which is platform-agnostic, meaning it'll create spatial sound from any source. You can run it solo, in a stereo pair, in a multi-room setup, or as part of a surround-sound system with the Ultra Lifestyle Soundbar and Subwoofer.

The Soundbar is Bose's new flagship and comes with a fresh new design and an entirely new acoustic architecture; it's the first major soundbar redesign that Bose has developed in more than a decade.

There are six full-range drivers — four facing forwards and two pointing up for height channels — plus a center tweeter and two of Bose's PhaseGuide drivers that are design to provide extra virtual width for an immersive Atmos experience.

PhaseGuide is a system that widens the soundstage by using strategically placed transducers and waveguides to make audio appear to be coming from places where there aren't any speakers.

There's also TrueSpatial processing for anything that isn't in Dolby Atmos, SpeechClarity to enhance dialog, CleanBass and QuietPort for deep, controlled bass and the newly renamed CustomTune room calibration system (previously known as ADAPTiQ), which uses your phone as the room calibration mic — what do you know, that's just like Sonos!

Bose says that the system delivers the lowest frequencies of any Bose soundbar to date just from the soundbar alone, while also improving the highs and delivering better audio element separation.

However, for those who want even deeper bass, the third speaker is the powerful Lifestyle Subwoofer, which once again comes with CleanBass and QuietPort. It's built around a 10.5-inch driver, and connects wirelessly to the soundbar.

The three speakers all have Wi-Fi connectivity and support Google Cast, Apple AirPlay 2 and Spotify Connect, and they can be grouped via Apple AirPlay or Google Home. There's also Bluetooth to stream directly from devices such as your phone and other audio sources.

The Bose app promises to walk you through the whole setup process whether that's a single speaker or a full surround system, and it then enables you to control the volume, source, equalization, surround and height levels. There's also built-in Alexa+ for voice control.

The Bose Lifestyle Ultra Speaker has an official price of $299 / £299 / AU$549; the Bose Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar is $1,099 / £999 / AU$1,800; and the Bose Lifestyle Ultra Subwoofer is $899 / £899 / AU$1,300. All three are available to pre-order now, and will be fully released on May 15th 2026.

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Loads of the best Bluetooth speakers will sell themselves on their durability: IP67 ratings, survivable drop distances and rubber grilles are often touted as key selling points, pitching you on the promise of a speaker that can survive picnics, barbecues, hikes, cycle rides, and so on.

As a result, most people buying portable party players will be doing so for their ability to keep going in rugged conditions (or, at least, to keep going after some kind of water-related accident). Compact sizes and a hefty power output help these speakers work in a range of outdoor and social environments.

So when I recently received the Tribit Stormbox Micro 3 to test, I knew I didn’t want to just stick it in a corner of my office and listen for a few hours. I wanted to take it somewhere that’d really push it through its paces.

Thankfully, my testing time coincided with a trip I was due to take. Specifically, I was travelling to a remote cottage in deepest darkest Wales, to shoot a short film. Over the course of a week, we’d be working and relaxing in one of the rainiest places I’ve ever had the pleasure to work, and I needed something that’d keep the vibe going during the shoot and once we’d wrapped each day.

I love using trips like this as an opportunity to test new tech. So I made sure the Stormbox Micro 3 got pride of place in my stuffed rucksack, alongside the Samsung Galaxy A57 (and some headphones I’ve yet to finish reviewing), to put it through this week-long test. (Naturally, I forgot to take pictures on the trip, so you're seeing the Tribit during a sunny picnic after the fact).

A (Tri)bit about the Stormbox Micro 3

Oh, did I forget to formally introduce you to this new speaker? It's the follow-up to the five-star Tribit Stormbox Micro 2, as a portable pocket speaker like many brand offer.

It's a small and totable thing, weighing 330g, with a useful strap that you can carry the thing by, or use to strap it to a backpack or bike handlebars. The battery lasts for up to 24 hours in one go.

Audio-wise, it outputs at 13W, which is a little bit more oomph than many of these super-small speakers offer. It offers a nice amount of bass for the size, especially with a bass booster button that amps it up a little more, but I would have liked more treble in certain songs.

Something I really appreciate is the smooth design. My partner has the LG XBoom Go and while it's fine for music and is wonderfully hardy, its copious straps and dials and cables mean it catches on other things in my bag like picnic blankets or trailing wires.

The Micro 3 is way easier to remove (even if it immediately sunk to the bottom of my 85-liter hiking backpack on my trip to the mountains).

The wet test

One of my filming days was entirely exteriors, but even when we were shooting interiors, we'd need to pop outside to set up lights or cameras through windows. And when we weren't shooting, people would naturally be popping indoors and out to stretch their legs, go on a walk or enjoy the weather.

Unfortunately, anyone who's spent time in any elevated area, can tell you how changeable the weather can be. It'd be sunny one moment and torrential a few minutes after, and it got so bad that I had to cut some scenes to stop my cast and crew getting ill.

I didn't have to show the same worry for the Tribit, though. I'd sometimes leave it outside, only for sun to be switched out for rain clouds at the blink of an eye. On more than one occasion, I'd pop inside, only to return to a speaker weathering an unexpected deluge.

Sometimes, that can spell the end of tech. I'm sure many of us have lost gadgets to unexpected rain-bursts, and it's probably why the myth of the rice-drying solution is so prolific.

However the Stormbox seemed unmoved by its unexpected drenchings. The name really started to make sense after I kept accidentally getting it wet, and it kept successfully playing music.

At one point an unexpectedly strong gust of wind knocked it from the branch I'd perched it on, and even its brief dalliance with gravity (and the muddy hills of Eryri) left no marks (except some mud).

I really appreciate something as protected as the Tribit, because it removes one thing to worry about on trips or holidays. It'll keep ticking, even if I forget to look after it.

A feast (for the ears)

I'm not a cruel tech owner, I promise, and I let the speaker indoors from time to time.

The most use the Stormbox Micro 3 got was after shooting finished each day. I wasn’t just the director but the producer, making sure all the cast and crew ate well, and this meant cooking and serving a hearty meal for everyone — all while ensuring everyone was relaxed and had a drink to unwind with. I was a busy host.

When I cooked, I'd strap the Tribit to a cupboard handle, so it could keep the vibe going while I worked over the stove. I've tested some other gadgets with carry handles — most memorably the Lenovo Yoga Tab 13, which was limber enough to dangle from handles — and I love how versatile they are. The Tribit's hook meant I could hang it on all kinds of objects, to put it wherever I wanted.

Specifically, it meant I could keep the Micro 3 out of the way. Even though it's a small speaker, counter space can be limited in a busy kitchen, and I needed every inch of it for pots, pans and chopping boards.

Here's where I used the bass boost button most. If people are knackered from working all day, some good vibrations go a long way, and people aren't as interested in the audio nuance of trebles and mids. In fact, one guest took charge of toggling the bass button themselves, because that's what everyone wanted.

The kitchen-dining room combo wasn't huge, but two conjoined rooms are probably the exact size you'd be able to fill with the Stormbox. A speaker of its size isn't going to fill a cavernous dining room or a large garden, but it was perfect for self-catered cottage rooms like these where people will be near each other.

That principle could extend to this whole trip. The Tribit may not be the biggest or most powerful speaker out there, but it was perfect sized for a group trip like this, so we could bring a music player with us that we didn't need to worry about. I didn't even charge it all week, because apparently 24 hours is all I needed.

Tribit Stormbox Micro 3: two-minute review

Four years after its predecessor launched, the Tribit Strombox Micro 3 has landed — and it’s been well worth the wait. This new model offers plenty of improvements over what came before, with a higher power output, extended battery life, faster charging, and a refined look. But is it worth picking over the competition? Here’s what I think after a week of testing.

First of all, we have to talk about sound. This speaker may be small, but it packs 13W of output power, which is nothing to sniff at. Its dynamic full-range driver links up with two passive radiators for impressive volume, and genuinely hard-hitting bass. When listening to low end-focused genres like House and Hip-Hop, I was wowed by the speaker’s bass output — it’s powerful and full-bodied, but never seems muddy or compromising to other sounds in the frequency range.

You also get clear mids and articulate treble, with solid balance using the speaker’s default sound signature. Sure, you’re not going to get the high-fidelity, openness, or detail that some more premium options in our best Bluetooth speakers guide offer, but the Stormbox Mini 3 still sounds admirable given its limited confines and tempting low price.

Something else I love about the Stormbox Micro 3 is its plentiful playtime. You get up to 24 hours here — double of what the Stormbox Micro 2 could deliver. Combine that with faster charging speeds and the capability to charge external devices, and you’ve got a seriously strong performer in the battery life category.

Other changes, like improved waterproofing, a newer Bluetooth version, and a novel magnetic base only help to make the Stormbox Micro 3 feel like a worthy successor to the Tribit Stormbox Micro 2 — a model we absolutely loved.

A lot of returning features, including a built-in mic, multi-speaker pairing, and extensive EQ options also stand Tribit’s small-sized speaker in good stead against the competition. The much-beloved JBL Go 4, say, doesn’t have hands-free calling capabilities, has a more humble output power, and lacks the detailed EQ controls you'll get here.

Still, that’s not to say that the Stormbox Micro 3 is perfect. I touched on its revamped design earlier, which gives it a more rounded look and provides the logo with a cleaner, more striking feel. But this speaker still isn’t the prettiest I’ve seen, and the lack of color options hold it back from greatness in terms of design.

Regardless, its dust and waterproofing, drop-proof build, and compact size ensure that the Stormbox Micro 3 is a highly practical model, and one that’s ideal for taking on the go. And many of my other complaints are mere nitpicks — the lack of backwards compatibility with the Stormbox Micro 2 plus a modicum of compression when listening at higher volumes, but these are extremely common gripes for speakers of this size.

All in all, the Tribit Stormbox Micro 3 is a very capable small-sized speaker. And the fact its price has barely changed from last time out makes it a seriously attractive proposition. At $64.99 / £62.99 (about AU$130), it’s an absolute steal, and considering the quality it posts across the board, I’d say that it’s one of the best value Bluetooth speakers I’ve ever tested. As a result, it’s an easy recommendation for me to make.

Tribit Stormbox Micro 3 review: price and availability

• List price of $64.99 / £62.99 (about AU$130)
• Released in April 2026

The Tribit Stormbox Micro 3 was first released in April 2026, about four years after the Stormbox Micro 2. Thankfully, the new speaker comes in at an extremely similar price to its predecessor — it will only set you back about $64.99 / £62.99 (about AU$130), which is a great price given its talents.

Tribit Stormbox Micro 3 review: specs

Tribit Stormbox Micro 3 review: features

• Battery life has been doubled to 24 hours
• Lots of customization options with Tribit app
• Multi-speaker pairing, but no backwards compatibility

The Stormbox Micro 3 has had quite the refresh in terms of features. The most striking is its improved battery life — you’re getting up to 24 hours this time out, which is double the amount of playtime you got on the Stormbox Micro 2. Of course, if you’re listening at higher volumes and using the XBass function, you’ll struggle to get that maximum 24 hours, but in my testing I found that number to be pretty accurate.

On top of that, the Micro 3 charges a lot faster than its predecessor. Tribit notes that you can get its lil’ speaker’s battery to 100% from empty in just 2 hours — a big leap from the 2.5-3 hours required to juice up the Stormbox Micro 2.

As we saw last time out, you can also use the Strombox Micro 3 to charge up other devices with a USB-C cable. That’s a pretty handy feature if you need to give your phone or wireless earbuds a boost, for instance, and the higher battery capacity makes this feature feel more worthwhile.

The new Stormbox Micro also has an improved Bluetooth version — it’s using Bluetooth 6.0, which gives you 45m of range, ideal if you want to keep the tunes moving while in a different room.

What’s more, the Stormbox Micro 3 packs 13W of power from its full-range driver (which is accompanied by a couple of passive radiators). That’s better than its predecessor’s 10W, and results in a louder, meatier sound.

Another nice inclusion is the built-in mic, which enables you to take calls hands-free like a speakerphone. I tried this out, and was genuinely surprised by the clarity of my speech. Given that a lot of rivals (JBL Go 4, I'm looking at you) skipped the mic, this was great to see.

You can also customize the sound of this speaker using the Tribit app. There are a nice range of EQ presets, including genre-specific options, and some designed for specific environments, like Outdoor. There’s also a nine-band equalizer, giving users the chance to tailor sound to their specific tastes.

In addition, there’s an XBass mode for those that really want to ramp up the low-end. I steered clear of this, though, as it just made the low-end sound overpowering, and caused the speaker’s battery to drain at a faster rate.

Finally, you can pair the Stormbox Micro 3 with a second, identical unit to activate stereo sound. Typically, audio will be downmixed to mono, so this is a useful feature — I just wish Tribit had let us pair with the Stormbox Micro 2 as well, something that would’ve given owners of that model a better reason to upgrade.

• Features score: 4.5/5

Tribit Stormbox Micro 3 review: sound quality

• Powerful, well balanced sound
• Seriously commendable bass from such a small speaker
• Lacks the mid and treble range finesse that premium rivals supply

Given its limited confines and low price, the Tribit Stormbox Micro 3 doesn’t sound perfect — you’ll experience some compression at higher volumes, and there are no fancy codecs like LDAC or aptX Adaptive. But still, the speaker performed pretty admirably in my testing.

I’ll start by saying that I spent most of the time using Tribit’s Signature EQ — XBass is here for a bumped-up low end, and there are a few other presets, but the standard tuning had a more balanced, controlled sound, so I rarely felt tempted to deviate from it.

For me, the most impressive thing about the Stormbox Micro 3 is its bass output. So many small-sized speakers fall flat here — even some more premium models sound as if there’s nothing going on whatsoever in the low-end, resulting in a thin, de-energized presentation.

But not the Stormbox Micro 3. In tracks like Harmony in the Distance by M-High, I was struck by the pumping, impactful bass that never sounded lethargic or bloated. Indeed, the low-end hit pretty hard considering this model’s small form-factor, but at the same time, it never drowned out synths in the mids or higher frequency percussion.

In this track, treble also sounded surprisingly sharp, with a rapid decay to ensure drums hit with rhythmic precision. They didn’t have the full-sounding fidelity you’d expect to hear on more premium speakers, though — something I’ll get onto shortly.

Moving over to one of my favorite tracks, Space Cowboy by Jamiroquai, and the Stormbox Micro 3 maintained impressive quality. Vocals were nicely weighted in the mix, and funky bass occupied a well-defined pocket, never seeming over-eager or muddy. At one point, the vocals and bass cut, as the tune built towards its euphoric climax, and the speaker recreated the re-entry of various instruments with finesse, indicating its solid dynamics.

With really deep, demanding records, such as Morning Wonders - Leo Pol Remix by Kolter, Tribit’s tiny speaker still managed to hold its own. The dark, rippling bass was perhaps a little too much for it to handle, but it still put up a valiant effort, while translating the aggressive higher-pitched percussion with control, rather than letting it fly off the handle.

So far, the Stormbox Micro 3 was doing pretty nicely, but I wanted to turn up the temperature, so I decided to test it against a pricier rival from a big name: the Bose SoundLink Micro Gen 2. Now, for all of my gripes with Bose’s small-sized speaker, I have to say it sounds pretty good, with vibrant treble, expressive mids, and clean bass. So how did Tribit’s mini rival compare?

I started with a tech house track, Good Luck from ADR (UK) and OUTTEN, and straight away, I realized how the Tribit replicated low-end sounds with much more confidence and vigor than its Bose counterpart. Despite lacking some low-end punch, the SoundLink Micro Gen 2 produced cleaner overall audio in my view, with more refined clarity in the treble range in particular.

It was similar in Shinchiro Yokota’s Do It Again, with Tribit conjuring up more regimented, full-sounding bass, but less polished highs. The Bose really did struggle with some of the darker sounds, though, and despite its impressive clarity further up the frequency range, you’d expect more given its hefty asking price.

It’s with softer tracks, though, like Yellow Giant Reprise by Tatsuhiko Asano, where the Stormbox Micro 3’s limitations are laid bare. Mids just sounded more detailed, open, and separated on its Bose rival, and although Tribit’s speaker still plated up perfectly clear and non-distorted sound, it failed to offer that premium edge.

Overall, though, this comparison showed me the fantastic sound for pound value of the Tribit Stormbox Micro 3. Sure, it lacked the nuance and grace of the SoundLink 2 in the mid-range and treble, but it still performed solidly in those areas, while also producing far more energized bass and higher volume potential than its Bose rival.

It’s also worth noting that I mainly kept the Stormbox Micro 3 upright, typically while magnetized to my fireplace. It sounded great with this configuration, but you can also lay it flat, which has a less rounded, but still enjoyable sound.

• Sound quality score: 4/5

Tribit Stormbox Micro 3 review: design

• New rounded design still not the prettiest
• Magnetic base with handy silicone strap
• IP68-rated and drop-proof

The Tribit Stormbox Micro 3 looks pretty similar to its predecessor, but it's got a slightly more rounded build and a neater, more striking logo at its center. It’s not the prettiest small speaker I’ve seen — the retro-style Marshall Willen II and modern Bose SoundLink Micro 2 have a more premium, eye-catching aesthetic, although they’re also quite a bit pricer.

What I do like, however, is the practicality of the Stormbox Micro 3. First of all, this new model comes with a magnetic base, which makes it easy to fix to a shower or fridge. I had the speaker attached to the fireplace by my desk, which worked fantastically.

There’s also a strap on the reverse side of the model (carried over from previous iterations), which makes it easy to hook onto a bag, bike, or hook, so this is a very versatile speaker placement-wise. And it’s incredibly compact, which means you could easily chuck it in a bag when it’s out of use as well.

What’s more, the Tribit Stormbox Micro 3 has an IP68 rating, meaning its fully dustproof, and can survive a 1.5m dunking underwater for as long as 30 minutes. That’s an improvement over the previous model’s IP67 rating, and while it’s fairly unessential, it’s pleasing to see Tribit keep up with the likes of JBL’s water-resistant tech.

The Stormbox Micro 3 is also drop-proof, making it ideal for taking on the go. Tribit says that it can survive being dropped from about 1.2m, in-line with US military standards — so you shouldn't have to worry about it taking the occasional tumble.

Other than its average looks, my only complaint would be the Stormbox Micro 3’s lack of color options. You can only grab it in Black at the moment, while its predecessor could be purchased in Blue, Red, or Mint instead. Hopefully more colorways will be released down the line, but that lack of vibrancy is a shame, particularly given the vivid options supplied by Bose and JBL, among others.

• Design score: 4/5

Tribit Stormbox Micro 3 review: value

• Plenty of improvements over predecessor with next to no price bump
• Strong sound at this price-point, with great bass output
• High battery life and durable build make it a slam dunk

When it comes to value-for-money, I’m not entirely sure you can do better than the Tribit Stormbox Micro 3. We already raved about its predecessor's high quality paired with a low price, and things are much the same here.

There’s been next to no increase in list price against the Stormbox Micro 2, in spite of macroeconomic pressures, and you get even more for your money this time. More power, better battery life, a magnetic design, a more rounded look…this is a worthy improvement over a speaker we already loved.

For just over $60 / £60, you’re going to make a few sacrifices. You don’t get the stellar detail, nuance, and open sound that some small-sized rivals can offer — but they’ll come at a significantly steeper price-point. The Stormbox Micro 3 still sounds very good overall too — even if it can be outclassed, the clarity and balance on offer is highly commendable.

And given that the Stormbox Micro 3 performs very nicely in the low-end — an area where a lot of small speakers struggle, you’re getting plenty of bang for your buck as far as sound goes.

I was also delighted by the Stormbox Micro 3’s exceptional battery life, which is higher than a lot of premium rivals. Combine that with a durable build, and almost everything you could want from a small speaker can be yours at a very modest price indeed.

• Value score: 5/5

Should I buy the Tribit Stormbox Micro 3?

Buy it if…

Don’t buy it if…

Tribit Stormbox Micro 3 review: also consider

How I tested the Tribit Stormbox Micro 3

• Spent one week testing
• Mainly streamed tunes over Tidal
• Reviewed by someone who’s tested more than 40 Bluetooth speakers

I spent one week testing the Tribit Stormbox Micro 3, predominantly using it at home — both stood upright and resting on its base.

When listening to music, I made sure to stream tunes over Tidal, starting with the TechRadar testing playlist, which features tracks from a wide variety of genres. I also bumped a range of tunes from my personal library, and tried out the speaker’s different sound modes and mic functionality.

More generally, I’ve spent in excess of two years testing audio gear here at TechRadar, which includes everything from the best wired earbuds through to premium wireless headphones. I’ve tried more than 40 Bluetooth speakers during my time here, and personally curated our guide to the best Bluetooth speakers, so I know exactly what is required for a model to stand out in this heavily convoluted market.

• Read more about how we test
• First reviewed: April 2026

I’ve tested more than 40 Bluetooth speakers during my time here at TechRadar, and I always get most excited to test the party speakers. They’re large, powerful and — for someone who loves house music like I do — ideal for pumping out tunes with impactful and immersive bass.

This is an area where JBL has been pretty dominant. In 2025, JBL launched more of its high-performing PartyBox speakers, and its owner, Harman, claimed that the brand had “solidified its position as the number one portable and party speaker brand”. It’s hard to dispute that. Not only is JBL shipping a whole lot of units, but its party speakers come with impressive power, AI-optimized audio, modern features such as Auracast, and generally moderate pricing.

However, JBL has competition on its hands from another brand that’s used to putting on a show. Marshall recently took launched to two models to knock JBL off its perch: the Bromley 750 and Bromley 450 models.

Why has Marshall decided to scale this mountain, and how is it differentiating itself from rivals like JBL? I put these questions — among others — to Marshall, so here's what it has to say about the world of party speakers.

Standing out in a homogenous market

Marshall’s amp-making heritage certainly makes it seem at home in the realm of party speakers.

That was a clear focus for Hanna Wallner, Product Manager at Marshall Group, who told me: “We have a long history of bringing sound to the stage, and in more recent years, to homes through our Bluetooth speaker range, headphones, and TV sound. It was a natural next step to move into the party speaker category, and we saw an opportunity to bring something different to a uniform market."

But how exactly do the Bromley speakers stand out in a segment full of generic boxes with colorful lighting? For Wallner, this had a lot to do with “staying true to our identity and what we are great at — prioritizing iconic design and superior acoustics”.

That involves considering every element of design through this lens. “Everything is thought through in such great detail, from the PU-leather cabinet wrapping and tactile control panel, right through to the light sequencing patterns that are inspired by stage lighting,” said Wallner. As someone who’s tested both the Bromley 750 and 450, I have to say that the white, stage-inspired lights are a stand-out aspect of their design, offering an alternative to the swathe of RGB-light-adorned rivals.

And nailing that lighting was crucial for Marshall. Wallner explained: “When we first introduced the idea of lights, we were hesitant as the different colored LEDs that we see on competitor products didn’t feel quite right. But we managed to find our own unique way of integrating lights whilst staying true to our heritage. This is a speaker with ‘party’ at its core and in parallel puts the Marshall stamp on the party speaker category.”

The ‘Marshall stamp’ is clear in just about every part of the Bromley speakers, not only through their lighting, but also through their sound signature. A lot of party speakers — at least in my experience — put a lot of their eggs in one basket, with very heavy bass and limited attention placed elsewhere. Sure, that can open up loud, attention-grabbing audio, but it’s less satisfying for those of us who want a more refined, well-rounded listening experience.

However, the Bromley 750 and 450 are able to paint a fuller picture. Yes, they plate up hard-hitting low-frequency audio, with a serious dosage of output power. But they also manage surprisingly detailed, well-separated mids, and snappy and responsive treble. They also offer a great soundstage — Marshall’s ‘true’ 360-degree stereophonic sound really saps the blind spots out, meaning you don’t get the overly directional sound that some rivals supply.

Learning from the past

Interestingly, though, Marshall’s entry into the world of party speakers doesn’t mark its only adventure into a new segment of late. For instance, the audio specialist decided to try its hand at the TV audio market in 2025, and released three new products: the Marshall Heston 120 and Heston 60 soundbars, as well as the Heston Sub 200 subwoofer. With those releases, Marshall undertook a considerable amount of market research when producing its entrant models.

And that appears to have been the case with the Bromley 750 and 450 too, with Wallner sharing: “When we started this project, we wanted to really deep dive into the different behaviors in the category. Together with consumer insights and our design research team, we did a qualitative user study globally, where we focused on people that owned and bought a party speaker in a similar size and price. From this, we learned that this category is all about setting the right environment for a party."

But how do you translate an abstract concept like a party ‘environment’ into something tangible? “Acoustics are naturally very important,” said Wallner, “but more than that, this product needs to trigger your senses and add that extra layer to the party. It needs to work as a social lubricator, and also a showoff piece."

This seems to be a sensible approach. While Marshall may not be able to offer its products as cheaply as the dominant player, JBL, the brand has an instantly recognizable aesthetic that turns its audio gear into statement pieces.

That’s evident in the Bromley speakers’ gorgeous faux-leather casing, golden details, and metal grilles — but also in the design of its other models, such as the Marshall Kilburn III, Middleton II, and Emberton III. Buying one of these speakers will provide impressive audio, yes, but there's an undeniable sense of cool to these designs built on the the guitar amp and live music heritage that other speakers just don't match.

Marshall beyond the stage

So, Marshall has delivered a couple of party speakers that set themselves apart, not only in terms of sound and features, but in terms of design, but they still have to be good, right?

In my review of the Marshall Bromley 750, I described it as “a great-sounding party speaker debut, packed with plenty of power, connectivity options, and an extensive battery life”. I also raved about its premium build quality, iconic look, and repairable parts.

OK, the Marshall app is a little under-equipped and the high price — compared to JBL's PartyBox line — could be a dealbreaker for some. But I still felt that the Bromley 750 was a strong party speaker debut for Marshall.

The Marshall Bromley 450 was revealed a little later, and just released in March 2026. Wallner revealed a little about its inception: “Early into that project [the Bromley 750], we saw a great opportunity to bring all the great pieces from 750 into something smaller and more accessible. We actually started the 450 project before 750 hit the market."

And in my four-and-a-half star Marshall Bromley 450 review, I praised how Marshall compressed so much of the 750’s talents into a more portable, affordable model, talking up its immersive sound and tasteful lighting, among other things.

But that’s only one side of the coin. I was curious to hear about consumer uptake and feedback, and gauge whether Marshall is starting to make a splash in the party speaker world.

While the company refused to delve into specifics on sales figures and the like, Wallner stated: “The response so far has been fantastic. Our launch into TV sound and the party speaker category in 2025 proved there is a real and growing appetite for Marshall beyond the stage."

When I asked if more party speakers were on the way, Marshall declined to say, but did add that the company is looking forward to “bringing the unique Marshall experience to returning fans and new audiences alike”.

• JBL drops two new rugged speakers
• JBL Go 5 is a pint-sized pocket speaker for $49 / £39 / AU$59
• JBL Xtreme 5 is chunky party speaker for $379 / £329 / AU$499

We rank JBL's outdoor speakers among the best Bluetooth speakers you can buy, and one of our top picks has seen an upgrade, so let's start at the successor to the JBL Go 4.

The JBL Go 5, which looks set to match its predecessor's $49.95 / £39.99 / AU$59.95 price (judging by the UK price, which is confirmed to be £39.99), brings a few upgrades over one of our favorite pint-size options.

JBL has apparently upgraded the sound, to increase the volume and offer deeper bass than before, both by a claimed 10%. It has an extra hour of battery life over its predecessor, and a new EQ preset lets you get another two hours.

JBL has also made it easier to pair multiple Go 5 speakers: you just need to tap them together and then they can play in stereo, instead of messing around in the app.

Since these are the kind of cheap speakers you can easily buy to take on days out, wild picnics or walks, there's a good chance your friends might have a few too. Soon, you can be playing in unison.

And then there's the Xtreme

The other new speaker is the JBL Xtreme 5, which as you can imagine is an upgraded Xtreme 4. The predecessor cost $379.95 / £329.99 / AU$499.95, and we know that the 5 will match that price in the UK.

The Xtreme 5 has also seen some performance changes: it's been redesigned to allow its drivers to sing, and also has an enhanced output to get the most out of its specs. Perhaps most importantly to bass fans, it has a subwoofer too.

These changes let the Xtreme 5 match the Go 5's upgrades of, according to JBL, 10% more bass and 10% higher volume. There's also a new SmartEQ Mode, which identifies what you're listening to and applies an appropriate equalization preset, and a sound booster to reduce distortion at higher volumes.

These two speakers launched alongside JBL EasySing Mics, which are karaoke mics designed to work with the brand's speakers. Their built-in tech can remove vocals from tracks, immediately turning them into karaoke-able songs, and last for 10 hours on a single charge.

We've seen them before, most recently alongside the PartyBox On-The-Go 2 Plus, and they seem to work across most JBL speakers. The UK price is £129.99.

We’re not exactly short of options when it comes to choosing a wireless speaker to blast tunes out of either at home or on the go. But how often have you chosen what you believe to be a perfect speaker, only to eventually discover it doesn’t quite meet your evolving needs?

Perhaps you have a large, powerful speaker to use at home, but then you want something you can take on the road with you. Or vice versa, you have a portable speaker that’s easy to throw into a bag, but the sound quality is disappointing. You've been forced to juggle multiple speakers to cover your life — until now.

The Sonos Play laughs in the face of that compromise. One speaker. Every scenario. Done.

Having used it at home, it really does cover all bases. Its impactful audio delivery means it can comfortably be used as a home speaker, as it has little trouble filling a room. And it’s small enough to go into a bag, and you can stream over Bluetooth when you’re away from home.

Throw in a long-lasting battery with up to 24 hours of play time, and you really do have what I would consider to be the only speaker you need.

Not convinced? Allow me to explain.

Filling a gap

Looking at Sonos’ speaker lineup, it would seem like a fair statement to say the brand has a model for every person and every scenario. There are home speakers including the Era 100 and Era 300, then you have the Move 2, which is ‘portable’ speaker but is too large to truly carry around, and finally the Roam 2, that’s about as portable as you can get but not as good as a standalone speaker like its bigger brethren.

That left a little gap between the Move and the Roam that needed filling.

The Sonos Play perfectly slots into the gap, while also crossing over into home speaker territory, sitting above the Era 100 in terms of price, but backing it up with extra features. Tom Conrad has claimed it to be a true ‘Goldilocks’ speaker — I couldn’t agree with him more, and I'm amazed it didn’t already exist.

The joy of music

The Play’s superb sound quality and its versatile design has had an unexpected knock-on effect for me — it’s got me listening to music even more. With multiple Sonos speakers dotted around my apartment, including a stereo pair of One SLs in the kitchen that I use when working from home, I didn’t think I’d have a real need for the Play, yet I’ve found myself using it the most since it arrived.

It’s been great to be able to have it right next to me on the table where I work, then take it into the bedroom where I have a Sonos Arc and another pair of One speakers already set up. But since the Play is already, well, playing, I’ve not seen the need to swap over to that bigger system.

A good reason for not needing to swap over is because the Sonos Play delivers a huge sound that gets better the more you crank up the volume. You can read more about the sound quality in our full in-depth Sonos Play review, but take it from me as someone who not only has other Sonos speakers but also a dedicated hi-fi listening room, the Play sounds tremendous.

If you’ve never owned a Sonos speaker before, I think the Play is the perfect entry point to the brand. It offers excellent sound quality and usability from the get go, while also having the capability to open up a wider multi-room audio system thanks to its Wi-Fi support.

And given Sonos found its footing in multi-room audio, I love the fact the Play makes joining that ecosystem ridiculously easy.

More than just a pretty face

I’ve always been a fan of Sonos’ aesthetic, so much so that my home is filled with its speakers and soundbars, while the Ace headphones were the first over-ear headphones I truly fell in love with. Every product is lovely to look at and to touch, and the Play continues that trend.

Yes, the buttons on the top panel could be a bit more defined to save you from needing to actually look at which one you’re pressing, but otherwise I can’t find any faults with what the Play offers physically.

There’s great cohesion across the lineup too. For example, Sonos has used the same green color for the Play’s small carry handle and its charging base that’s been used for the interior of the Ace’s case. It’s a subtle nod, but one that’s very effective and I, for one, truly appreciate.

Regaining trust

I’m fully aware of the tumultuous couple of years Sonos has had recently. While the launch of the much-anticipated Arc Ultra soundbar at the end of 2024 could be deemed a genuine success — it’s maintained a spot in our guide to the best soundbars ever since we reviewed it — the disastrous app update fiasco certainly would have soured relationships between the company and its millions of users.

Throw in a number of competitor brands — such as WiiM, Audio Pro and Denon — also offering a seamless gateway to multi-room audio, and Sonos’ position as a leader in its field was in serious jeopardy.

While many of the issues that plagued the app have been fixed and with CEO Tom Conrad confirming the company has plans to improve it further, Sonos still needed something to say to customers ‘we’re back and we’re better than ever’ — and in the Sonos Play, it’s well and truly proved it.

Sonos Play: two-minute review

The Sonos Play is one of the few products I've tested recently that really converted me to its cause over time. It's a product that Sonos pitches as a home speaker that's also portable — the one speaker you can use everywhere.

I started off thinking that the Sonos Play was struggling for value, because it's more expensive than Sonos' small purely home speaker, the Sonos Era 100, but doesn't sound quite as good. And it costs a lot more than most of the best Bluetooth speaker options, such as the excellent JBL Charge 6.

But over time, I realized that the Sonos Play excels in subtlety. Despite Sonos' claim, I don't think of it as a home speaker first and a portable speaker second. I see it as a portable speaker that's good enough to justify a place out on your furniture all the time, rather than being relegated to a drawer when you're not using it. And as a result, I started using it as both a home speaker for the room its in, and I started grabbing it to take with me to other rooms simply because I could, and it sounds good.

The charging cradle is vital to this. With no cable to fiddle with, you can just grab the Sonos Play and go without pausing your stride. It lasts for ages once it's away from the cradle (24 hours, and it turns itself off when not in use to keep going over days), so you don't need to be precious about returning it for a charge. It's solidly waterproof so you can use it anywhere without fear — It's a great shower karaoke companion.

And the Sonos Play does sound good — better than most portable speakers of its size. It's really well-rounded, with solid mids, clear treble and plenty of bass. It lacks some dynamic edge (though improves as the volume goes louder), but is still a really enjoyable listen.

It's become my speaker buddy — the one I'm using most, because it's so versatile. It's ready to go anywhere, to play in the house on Wi-Fi or out of the house on Bluetooth. You can achieve everything it does from other speakers, and arguably in a way that's better value — but not with this efficiency.

Sonos said it wanted to make a speaker that could be the one you need — powerful enough to fill nearly any room, and easily portable to take to nearly any room — and I think it nailed it.

Sonos Play review: price and availability

• Released on March 31st, 2026
• $299 / £299 / AU$499

The Sonos Play's $299 / £299 / AU$499 price is a fine balance. When it comes to Sonos' portable speakers, it sits neatly between the Sonos Roam 2's $179 / £179 / AU$239 and the Sonos Move 2's $449 / £449 / AU$799.

When it comes to Sonos' home speakers, it sits neatly between the $219 / £199 / AU$289 price of the Sonos Era 100, and the $449 / £449 / AU$749 price of the Era 300.

The difference, of course, is that the Play's performance sits correctly between the two portable speakers, while it doesn't perform any better than the Era 100 — what you get instead is a smaller design and a battery.

There are tons of competing speakers at this size, but few that offer the combination of Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and battery portability. Portable competition includes the Bluetooth-only Marshall Middleton II, which is similar in price at $329.99 / £259 / AU$499, or the JBL Charge 5, which costs $199 / £169 / AU$229.

On the non-portable side, there's the JBL Authentics 200, which is $349 / £299 / AU$449 officially (but can be found for a lot less these days) or the BlueSound Pulse Flex for around $349 / £279.

Sonos Play review: specs

Sonos Play review: features

• Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, USB-C line-in connectivity, 24-hour battery life
• Charging cradle included, but no power adapter
• Stereo pairing option, or share over Bluetooth with other Sonos speakers even when not on Wi-Fi

The Sonos Play is the company's most versatile speaker to date. It works as a normal Sonos home speaker, complete with Wi-Fi connectivity and support for Sonos' network and app, which support Hi-Res Audio playback from compatible services. You can play to it directly over Apple AirPlay 2 or Sonos Connect as well.

There's also Bluetooth support to play from any other device, and the USB-C port on the back can be connected to an adapter to offer a line-in port for a turntable or other audio source, which then becomes available to all your other Sonos speakers on the network.

Sonos also has a new feature that enables you to group portable Sonos speakers when you're out of the house, so you connect to one of them over Bluetooth, and the sound is shared with the other speakers. There's no Auracast support, though.

The speaker setup consists of two angled tweeters facing slightly left and right, a single midwoofer facing forward, and then two force-opposed bass radiators on the left and right.

You can use a Sonos Play on its own, or you can put two into a stereo pair. You can also use a pair as rear speakers in a Sonos home theater setup.

But it also has a built-in battery, which can last up for up to 24 hours, and the speaker can still play over Wi-Fi or Bluetooth when it's running from battery power alone. The Sonos Play comes with a little battery charging cradle, which you just slot it onto to charge, and you can grab it straight off at a moment's notice without fiddling to unplug.

It's a small thing, but I think it makes a difference to its perceived versatility compared to it being plugged in to charge — I'll dig into that more in the Design section.

Be warned, though, that the cable just has a USB-C connector on the end, and no plug to connect to an outlet. Any USB-C port with 20W of charging power should work, so it could be connected to a device like a computer, or to a power adapter.

The Sonos Play can also be charged using its USB-C port, so you don't need the cable if you take it away for a weekend. You can also charge another device from the USB-C port, if you like, so it can work as a power bank for your phone.

The exact battery figure you get will depend on how you use it (Wi-Fi is more battery-consuming than Bluetooth), but I think Sonos' estimate is about right. I took it off its cradle for three days, using the speaker on Wi-Fi by my desk while I worked during the day for intermittent periods, without charging it at all. At the end of that time, it had 21% battery left.

You can get better battery life from the Marshall Middleton II (30 hours), but only over Bluetooth, not Wi-Fi. I think Sonos has found a good balance of longevity compared to size here.

The one thing about portable use that annoyed me a little was that it turns itself off a little faster than I would like, despite me making sure that the option in the settings to turn off faster to preserve battery life was off. To turn it back on, you need to use the on-off button on the back, and it takes a moment — I'd much prefer a button on top to make this feel less like a hassle.

There can also be times when the flexibility of the speaker conflicts with itself. For example, I put my two units into a stereo pair to test the sound, planning to live with the setup for a few days. But once they're in a pair, the Sonos app (and AirPlay) only want to treat them as a pair, meaning that the idea of grabbing one to take into another room on a whim no longer works. Take them both, or don't bother.

I ended up doing a more intensive stereo audio test, and then switching them back to individual speakers because I was enjoying them more in their most flexible form.

I'll finish this section by touching briefly on the Sonos app. It remains one of the best when it comes to streaming service support, and I've had no problems when it comes to reliability testing either these speakers, or with my current Sonos soundbar/home theater setups.

Setting the speakers up was absolutely seamless, and it was then easy to activate Automatic TruePlay tuning, in which the Sonos Play speaker listens to its own sound output and adjust the sound to better fit the space it's placed in.

The Sonos app can be a bit slow to load new music or screens, though, and there are some design issues that seem needlessly confusing. Sonos CEO Tom Conrad identified some that he plans to fix in an interview with me ahead of the launch of the speakers, though my own gripes are that it's silly that if you tap the cog icon in the top corner to be taken to the Settings screen, the cog icon stays in the corner, meaning it's possible to open the app, tap that because you want to go to the Settings screen, and nothing happens because you don't realize you're already in part of the Settings screen.

I also hate Sonos' design for its on/off switches. They go from black with a white dot, to white with a black dot, depending on whether they're on or off. But which is on and which is off? It's a terrible piece of user communication, you have to play to figure it out. (Black with a white dot is on.)

Now, a lot of other streaming device apps are equally flawed — some have better interfaces, but worse streaming support, for example — so at this point I find the app far from a dealbreaker, but I'm looking forward to seeing it get better. I actually nearly always use AirPlay for playing music anyway, so after setup, I don't interact with it much.

For those who don't want to use an app at all, the Sonos Play support Amazon Alexa and Sonos Voice Control options — but its mic can also be disabled using a switch on the back (which also disables Automatic TruePlay, since it fully disconnects the mic from the system).

• Features score: 4.5 / 5

Sonos Play review: sound quality

• Bass is powerful, but a little heavy handed
• Very well-rounded sound, but best with the volume over 40%
• About as good as speakers of this size sound

The Sonos Play sits in a slightly odd position when it comes to judging its sound quality, because it's a hybrid home and portable speaker. I'm going to mostly judge it based on comparisons with other portable speakers, rather than home speakers, because the design constraints of being portable affect what sound quality you can reasonably expect from it — but I will also compare it to the Sonos Era 100.

As is standard from Sonos, there's a really well-rounded sound with a fair amount of heft across the whole frequency range. The thing that immediately jumps out is the amount of bass depth there is for something pretty small, thanks to its dual passive radiators.

Much like the Era 100, the bass is controlled a little more loosely — a little more heavy-handedly — than I'd like. As with a lot of passive radiator-based speakers, it can feel boomy depending on what surface you place it on, too, but that's situational. It's a trade off in exchange for the punch it provides, and I'm quite happy with it on balance.

The second thing that jumps out is the overall power, which the bass only helps emphasize. This speaker can fill any room in my house without coming close to breaking a sweat or over-stretching itself — in fact, as I'll come back to, it's at its best once you dial up to a certain volume.

The two angled tweeters serve up high frequencies that sound clear and well elevated out of the rest of the mix, with this likely aided by the use of two angled tweeters pointing left and right.

Sonos has also claimed that this set enables stereo sound from a single speaker, but this is, alas, a fantasy. Firing up Crooked by Smilk, the opening of which is basically ‘Now That’s What I Call Stereo Imaging’, reveals only the most minimal stereo effect even from a song that really push separation to the max.

The mid-range is able to find a good amount of detail and solidity in different elements, so that even complex mixes still feel like that have all their constituent parts, rather than getting mushed together in the way that some portable speakers are prone to.

The mid-range and treble are both relatively tame and a little softer on dynamic attack than larger and more expensive portable speakers, or non-portable home speakers. That's a compromise here compared to the Sonos Era 100, for sure — that speaker just has the extra edge in enough areas of sound reproduction to feel like a slightly more robust, more gripping, more revealing listen.

However, compared to the JBL Charge 6, the Sonos Play is a significant step up in the overall reproduction of a song, with the mid-range the clear area of difference. On the JBL Charge 6, it's simple way too thin, lacking in expression, presence within the sound balance, and really limited in range — in particular, the Charge 6 really struggles to ramp from mid-range down through to bass, compared to the Sonos Play.

Young Blood by The Naked & Famous relies on a foundation of lower-mid synth in its verses, and without this, the song is unbalanced. The JBL Charge 6 just doesn't have this balance in its register, but the Sonos Play is able to add the weight.

The Charge 6 also has less deep bass reach than the Sonos Play — it handles its bass well, but there's just less lower-frequency grunt going on.

I should note here that we have highly rated the JBL Charge 6 for its sound reproduction compared to other portable speakers — this is just what spending the extra on the Sonos Play gets you.

That said, the JBL Charge 6 has a slightly more dynamic treble than the Play, though, with a little better handling of transients (ie, handling the sudden start of a sound) that make it feel more detail-rich. I still prefer the Sonos Play overall, for sure.

However, I mentioned above that going above a certain volume opens things up for the Sonos Play. Pushing past the 40% mark leaves the bass working in the same way that it was before, but suddenly the upper-mids and treble get a boost — a subtle but clear change in profile when ticking up.

This adds to the expansiveness of the sound, and where certain songs that should be thrilling could feel tame at times at lower volumes, they all really wake up past 40%. The Sonos Era 300 had this trait as well, when I tested it.

The only question is whether you want the Sonos Play that loud all the time — in my bedroom, 25% was the volume where I mostly wanted to use it, for example. But again, I still think the sound is very good for a portable speaker even at the lower volumes. It's just that when you can let it off its leash, it improves further.

Speaking of letting it off its leash, I also tried the sound in a stereo pair. As is often the case, it gives the speakers room to do a little more by sharing the burden, and in particular I noticed that the bass felt like it was able to be a little more controlled at the same level of power, but the mids came across weightier, again improving on the lower-mids particularly.

I don't think it opened up more detail in the treble or anything like that, but two of these are really good at filling even a large room with well-rounded, well-dispersed sound, without pushing themselves hard in a way that can affect the sound quality. You'd rarely need to push them even as far as the 40% volume mark — a pair of Plays is such a powerful system consider how small they are.

For my last sound comparison, I broke out the Sonos Roam 2. This comparison actually made the Sonos Roam 2 look impressive, because it's remarkable how close its sound signature comes to the Play. But the Play's audio is much bigger, much deeper, and more refined in all areas.

• Sound quality score: 4.5 / 5

Sonos Play review: design

• Home-friendly design, but still IP67-rated and drop-proof
• Great size, weight and charging design to grab quickly
• Buttons aren’t as clear as they could be

The design of the Sonos Play sits very much in line with other Sonos speakers. It has a hard dotted grille like most of its designs, with a rubbery top and bottom, like the Sonos Roam 2. The rubberized portion has a hefty lip at the top where it overlaps with the hard grille, and this makes me thing more of older Sonos speakers (like the Sonos One) than the Era 100, in a fond way.

I like the size of the Sonos Play a lot. I can grab it easily in one hand from the side, thanks in part to a smart concave groove on the back that's also rubberized, giving you a little grip aid.

It's weighty, but not too heavy to happily grab and carry around. It's about a third heavier than the JBL Charge 6, but is nearly a third lighter than the Marshall Middleton II, so finds itself in a good balance.

It has a flexible hook on the top of the back, which can use to carry it around or to hang on a bathroom door or something. This feels nice and sturdy.

It's IP67-rated, so should be able to handle all but the worst of water-related accidents. It should be able to handle complete immersion for a short time, so it's no risk for baths or for pool parties.

The charging cable is a little oval of plastic with a lip, and there's not much to it, but it holds on surfaces well enough when you're removing or replacing the speaker, and the charging points always line up perfectly.

I really think Sonos has nailed it with the core physical design here, and not just in a physical sense. Yes, it's durable, it's got a hook, and perhaps most importantly it looks nice — you'll happily have this thing out on a shelf, whereas a lot of people would choose to hide the JBL Charge 6 in a drawer.

But the design also make a different to my mentality, I've found. It's about how its size, weight and charging cradle lodge into my mind that this is a speaker that I not only can grab to take with me for a music blast, but that I should grab because it's so easy. There's no downside.

The Sonos Move 2 has an identical setup — durable, powerful, portable, easy charging cradle — but it's too large and heavy. You have to reach around to carry it from the back using its carry handle. If I'm taking that anywhere else, it's because I'm committing to being there for a while. I plan ahead.

And I have small portable speakers already in my house (shout out to by beloved B&O A1) that I could grab and take anywhere with me easily — but they're stored in a drawer upstairs, because I don't have them out most of the time.

But the Sonos Play has become my new kitchen speaker, so it's always out on the side, ready to grab. And it's so grabbable because it's about the thickness of a drink can, and I don't need to fiddle to unplug it because it uses a charging cradle, so I can just swipe it one-handed as I walk past. And it's already turned on and ready to play, assuming it's not already playing, because it's the main speaker in that room.

These are small, subtle design elements that add up to me feeling quite differently about the Sonos Play than almost any other speaker I've had, from the many Wi-Fi options to many portable Bluetooth speakers. As the weather where I am improves, the Sonos Play has quickly become my buddy that I take with me more; I grab the one from my kitchen to take outdoors when I sit out there, and I grab the one from my bedroom to take to the bathroom to blast tunes while I shave.

There must be a 'however', though, and it's the controls. I already mentioned that the on/off button is on the back, and while it's large and easy to find, I would prefer that you could get it to turn back on just by pressing something on top.

But the top buttons are also annoyingly disguised. They're distinguished only by symbols, not any kind of actual raised button element. And 'distinguished' is far too strong a word, because they're the same color and matte material as the rest of the top, so they're genuinely hard to see in some lighting conditions.

They also don't feel super distinct under the fingers. You get used to it, because you've only got four controls — volume down, play/pause (which also skips tracks with a multi-press), volume up, and voice assistant activation — but they just seem unnecessarily disguised.

• Design score: 4.5 / 5

Sonos Play review: value

• It's pricey for a portable speaker…
• But few things are as versatile for the same cost
• It's priced in line with competitors at the same audio level

The Sonos Play is not cheap. For only a little more than the Sonos Play, you can get both a Sonos Era 100 SL and the JBL Charge 6, providing you with the core versatility of the Sonos Play — a powerful home speaker and robust portable speaker. But that's two devices, and part of the draw here is one device that can do both — simpler and more efficient.

But the price is also right in line with other powerful speakers at a similar level of audio quality, like the Marshall Middleton II — and it does things the Marshall doesn't. The JBL Charge 6 is a five-star portable speaker that's nearly half the price, so if the portable side is your priority, it makes sense to get that and save so much money… but the Sonos does sound better, offers more versatility, and looks way nicer to have as a home speaker.

When I look at other options at the same price, is anything ticking as many boxes as the Play? Pricey, yes, but more than justified. I'm not sure I'd buy a stereo pair over other wireless options you can get for $600 / £600 though, such as the Kanto Ren, since you lose some of the versatility in a pair.

• Value score: 4 / 5

Should I buy the Sonos Play?

Buy it if…

Don’t buy it if…

Sonos Play review: also consider

How I tested the Sonos Play

• Tested over three weeks at home
• Compared with other Sonos speakers, and options from other brands

I had two Sonos Play units at home to test, over the course of three weeks. They were updated with the same software that the products will launch with, including all the various features.

I tested over Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, and using the Sonos app and Apple AirPlay 2. I mainly listened to music on Apple Music.

I've been reviewing speakers for 15 years, and I test audio products of all kinds, from Bluetooth speakers to floorstanding passive speakers.

• First reviewed: March 2026
• Read TechRadar’s reviews guarantee

Bose SoundLink Micro Gen 2: review

The Bose SoundLink Micro Gen 2 is the sequel to the audio specialist’s 2017-issue mini Bluetooth speaker. And according to Bose, this palm-sized follow-up brings a fair few enhancements to the table: ‘improved audio performance’, ‘enhanced features’, and ‘extended battery life’. But is it actually worth buying? Here are my thoughts after several weeks of testing.

First of all, it has to be said that the Bose SoundLink Micro Gen 2 is a significant improvement over its predecessor — as you’d probably hope given that they were released eight years apart. Now, you get USB-C charging, and up to 12 hours of battery life, which is nothing special, but comparable to some similar-sized rivals from JBL and Ultimate Ears.

On top of that, its new and improved fabric strap is fantastic — it’s so easy to sling around shower heads, bikes, bags… you name it. Pair that with a still-great IP67 dust and waterproof rating — which enables the SoundLink Micro Gen 2 to survive being dunked under a meter of water for 30 minutes — and you’ve got a speaker that can go literally anywhere with you. Combine this with its small size and lightness of build, and Bose’s bijou audio companion is more practical than just about any model out there — even those listed in our best Bluetooth speakers guide.

Something else that has been improved is audio quality. And in fairness, the Bose SoundLink Micro Gen 2 is a pretty solid-sounding model given its small size — but that’s not to say it’s perfect.

Bose has gone for a relatively balanced sound profile on the SoundLink Gen 2. Bass is pretty punchy, but never boomy or overstated. Mids are clean, but not the sole star. And treble is energetic, but not tinny — unless you’re listening at top volumes, but that’s something I’ll get onto later.

Anyway, when listening to Black Eye by Allie X, I was impressed by the tonality of vocals, and the way that the speaker replicated their almost breathy quality. The attack of violins in the intro wasn’t the most dynamic I’d heard, but it was certainly clean and distortion-free at mid volume levels. And after bumping bass up by a level on the Bose app, the pumping low end came through with decent impact too. Was I wowed by excellent instrument separation, pounding low-end performance, and top-tier detailing? No. But that’s to be expected on a speaker this small.

While we’re on this topic, it’s worth noting that the Bose SoundLink Micro Gen 2 has a fair few sonic limitations, as a direct result of its compact form. You won’t get the bass thump that larger models — like the Bose SoundLink Plus, or even the Bose SoundLink Flex Gen 2 — can muster. And if you push volume all the way to the maximum, you’re going to get pretty thin-sounding audio, with very noticeable compression and slightly shrill treble. But in this model’s defense, this is fairly standard for mini Bluetooth speakers — trust me, I’ve tested tons of them!

But still, this model did perform well, all things considered. In Felini by Venerus and Marco Castello, the precision of fingerpicking guitars and airy sound effects was commendable, and the two vocalists' harmonies intertwined neatly.

Deeper tracks, like M-High’s Never Would don’t sound amazing on the SoundLink Flex Gen 2, as it struggles to handle the darkest parts of the frequency range. Still, standing upright, the speaker managed decently agile bass, and matched the track’s aggressive treble to good effect. Rivals like the Ultimate Ears Wonderboom 4 can produce a more weighty performance, but if you’re not listening to the heaviest tunes, that shouldn’t be a problem for you.

I’ll finish talking about sound by mentioning that the Bose SoundLink Micro Gen 2 has strong codec support, with SBC, AAC, and even aptX Adaptive — if you’ve got a compatible device that is. There aren’t any wired playback options, though I suspect most users will be fine with using Bluetooth 5.4 connectivity.

So, the SoundLink Micro Gen 2 sounds pretty solid overall, but how does it perform elsewhere? Let’s step on over to the features domain.

This model isn’t doing anything out of the ordinary by Bose 's standards. It has multi-point connectivity, fast-pairing, and a shortcut button for Spotify or linking with another Bose speaker. And you can link with various other Bose speakers, luckily, including another SoundLink Micro Gen 2 for stereo, or models like the Bose SoundLink Max for generally bigger sound.

However, you can also rename the speaker in the Bose app (mine’s called Bite Size Party), enable or disable voice prompts, and alter EQ. As we’ve seen with many Bose products, the EQ settings are a little basic, with presets to boost or dampen bass or treble, and a three-band equalizer to adjust the bass, mids, and treble. However, this still works decently well.

I would’ve liked to have seen some more interesting features, like a personalized EQ test for more tailored audio, or hands-free calling, seen on the original SoundLink Micro (which had a built-in mic), but this model still has a good feature-set all in all.

Perhaps my favorite thing about this speaker, though, is its design. I’ve already mentioned its excellent fabric strap, which I’ve been using to attach the speaker to my shower, but there’s more. It has well-sized, responsive button controls, a rubber body that’s drop-resistant, and a classy range of color options. I used the Black version, but I’m partial to the Blue Dusk, Petal Pink, and Sandstone alternatives. Ultimately, this is a great-looking, compact, and waterproof speaker that really can go anywhere with you.

Still, there’s one thing that holds me back from recommending the Bose SoundLink Micro Gen 2 outright: its price. This model comes in at $129 / £119.95 / AU$179.95, which is a lot for a speaker of this size. For reference, you can get our pick for the best Bluetooth speaker overall, the JBL Flip 7, for $149 / £129 / AU$179 at full price. And that model is considerably more powerful, offers far superior audio with awesome bass, and has more features to explore too. It’s also regularly discounted, and although it's a little larger, remains highly portable.

Even if you wanted something as small as the Micro Gen 2, you could go for the JBL Clip 5, which retails for $79.95 / £59.99 / AU$89.95, or the bass-heavy Ultimate Ears Wonderboom 4 for only $99.99 / £89.99 / AU$149. I’m not convinced that the Bose SoundLink Flex Gen 2 offers sound that’s good enough to warrant the extra cost. All of these other models are highly waterproof, sound strong, and look great to boot. So, even if Bose’s speaker performs fairly well across the board, it feels like a slightly tough sell.

And there you have it. The Bose SoundLink Micro Gen 2 is a very solid upgrade on its predecessor, and I was satisfied by its thoughtful design and improved sound quality. Ultimately, though, it doesn’t feel exceptional enough — either sonically or in terms of features — to earn its steep price-tag, meaning that I’d only recommend this above rivals — from the likes of JBL and UE — if you can get it on sale.

Bose SoundLink Micro Gen 2 review: price & release date

• List price of $129 / £119.95 / AU$179.95
• Released in August 2025

The Bose SoundLink Micro Gen 2 released in August 2025, eight years after its predecessor, the Bose SoundLink Micro. It comes in with a list price of $129 / £119.95 / AU$179.95, which represents a $10 / £20 / AU$30 increase over the original, at their respective launch points. However, there are a lot of improvements on this second model which make it the better pick over its ancestor. The SoundLink Micro Gen 2 is available in Black, Blue Dusk, Petal Pink, Sandstone, or Twilight Blue.

Bose SoundLink Micro Gen 2 review: specs

Should I buy the Bose SoundLink Micro Gen 2?

Buy it if…

Don’t buy it if…

Bose SoundLink Micro Gen 2 review: also consider

How I tested the Bose SoundLink Micro Gen 2

• Tested over the course of multiple weeks
• Used in our music testing space and while showering
• Mainly tested using Tidal

I spent multiple weeks testing the Bose SoundLink Micro Gen 2, and spent hours listening in our music testing space at Future Labs, at home, and in the shower.

Most of the time, I listened to tunes via Tidal, on either my Samsung phone or the Nothing Phone (4a). To begin with, I ran through the TechRadar testing playlist, which features tunes from a wide range of genres, but I also made sure to bump tracks from my personal library. I also tried using party mode, by connecting the speaker to my Bose SoundLink Flex Gen 2.

More generally, I’ve tested more than 40 Bluetooth speakers here at TechRadar, and personally curated our guide to the best Bluetooth speakers. I’ve reviewed all sorts of models, from premium Bose units, through to budget-friendly alternatives like the Tribit PocketGo. As a result, I have a strong understanding of the segment, and know exactly what it takes to stand out in a highly convoluted market.

• Read TechRadar’s reviews guarantee
• First reviewed: March 2026

• Elipson's Prestige Facet II 6 Active BT launch for £599 (about $799 / AU$1,130)
• 2 x 50W power with MM phono, hi-res USB-C and HDMI connections
• Bluetooth 5.3 with aptX HD for wireless sound

Elipson has added a new speaker pair to its impressive Facet II range with powerful amplification and excellent connectivity. The Prestige Facet II 6 Active BT speakers are powerful bookshelf models that promise the same high standards as the Facet II 34F floorstanders and Facet II 8B bookshelf speakers.

The new Prestige Facet II 6 Active BT speakers come with 2 x 50W Class D amplification, plenty of wired inputs for both digital and analogue needs, Bluetooth for wireless connectivity, and a choice of three colours: black, black/walnut and white.

This means they'll work with a ton of tech, including turntables, computers over USB-C, all kinds of stuff over Bluetooth, and even your TV over HDMI ARC, with Elipson pitching the speakers as a superior soundbar alternative.

Elipson says it's France's oldest hi-fi manufacturer, with a portfolio that includes plenty of sensible speakers as well as much more out-there options. These new speakers are in the former category.

Elipson Prestige Facet II 6 Active BT speakers: key features and pricing

Designed for wired and wireless use, the Prestige Facet II 6 Active BTs feature an MM phono input for the best turntables, RCA line in, optical S/PDIF, and a USB-C audio input for Hi-Res Audio up to 24-bit/192kHz. There's HDMI ARC for your TV, and you can stream via Bluetooth, including higher-resolution with aptX HD.

Each speaker contains a 25mm tweeter and a 140mm mid/woofer and delivers a claimed frequency range of 57Hz to 25kHz. If you want to add some more low-end thump there's a subwoofer output with 120Hz filtering.

There are on-board EQ controls with a range of +6 / +3 / 0 dB on the bass, -3 / 0 / +3 dB for the mids and -3 / 0 / +3 dB for the treble, and the included remote control enables you to change the source, Bluetooth functions and volume.

The Elipson Prestige Facet II 6 Active BT will be available from late March 2026 with a price tag of £599 / €699 (about $799 / AU$1,130).

Marshall Bromley 450: two-minute review

The Marshall Bromley 450 is the second party speaker that the audio specialist has released. It’s a smaller variant of its older sibling, but aims to condense everything we like about that model into a less costly, more mobile unit. But just how well can it do that?

Well, at first glance, the similarities between the Marshall Bromley 450 and its sibling are striking. It has a very similar amp-inspired build, it's got those classic tactical knobs for controlling volume, bass, and treble levels, and it's adorned with the golden Marshall logo. But the similarities don’t stop there.

Its older sibling sits in our guide to the best Bluetooth speakers around, so unsurprisingly, the sound signature here is actually quite similar. You get agile and punchy, yet warm bass, which really feels like the star of the show. But you also get controller, expressive highs, paired with decently-detailed mids. Like the Marshall Bromley 750 before it, this is a great-sounding speaker, and has the raw power required to offer awesome audio outdoors as well as indoors.

My criticisms of the Bromley 450’s sound are very few and far between. It doesn’t offer the most rippling sub-bass, and I needed to adjust EQ now and then to get vocals to sound their best in particular tracks. But these are pretty minor qualms, and this is still an impressive performer — especially when you account for this model’s excellent soundstage, stereo sound capabilities, and ‘true’ 360-degree stereophonic sound tech.

Something else I highly rate is the Bromley 450’s design. Its premium construction — with faux-leather casing, a metal grille, and golden details — is as stunning as it was before. Meanwhile, the included handle makes it relatively easy to transport, even if this is a hefty model overall. The Bromley 750's wheels and suitcase-esque handle are gone here though, which makes this a little tougher to carry over longer distances.

Still, you get better protection against the elements compared to the Bromley 750, with this smaller alternative packing an IP55 rating. This means that the speaker is dust-protected, and can withstand multi-directional water jets, making it a good fit for outdoor use.

You will make a few sacrifices when choosing the Bromley 450 over Marshall’s larger party speaker, though. You get less power, and thus slightly less omnipresence through the deep bass registers — understandable given that the Bromley 450 covers a little less of the frequency range. But you also lose the sound character control feature, which enables you to find the right balance between ‘dynamic’ or ‘loud’ audio output.

But still, you do get quite strong functionality from the Bromley 450, all things considered. It has a whole host of connectivity options, including XLR/6.35mm slots for karaoke and instruments. It supports Auracast for multi-speaker pairing with another Bromley unit or other Marshall speakers — like the Marshall Middleton II or Marshall Kilburn III. And it has a replaceable battery which packs an incredible 40 hours of playtime, and can be used as a portable charger.

And if all of this wasn’t enough, you also get classy stage-inspired lighting, with three dynamic options for different vibes. You can also turn these off if you want to conserve more battery life.

If there’s one flaw that sticks out to me, it's the Marshall app. It feels underbaked, lacking EQ controls or the ability to adjust effects like delay and reverb. I wish you had more ways to remotely control this unit, especially if you’re further away from it and want to make a quick adjustment to the bass, for instance.

But overall, there’s a whole lot to love about the Marshall Bromley 450. It does a great job at shrinking the 750’s talents down and replicating them, and it's a luxurious party speaker in just about every way imaginable.

Yes, it comes at quite the cost, and those on a tighter budget may favor a rival from the JBL PartyBox line. But the Marshall Bromley 450 is almost a different proposition entirely — it’s masterfully constructed, built to be a true centerpiece, and brings an air of retro-style classiness that its RGB-laden contemporaries fail to deliver.

Marshall Bromley 450 review: price and release date

• List price of $799.99 / £549.99 / AU$1,079
• Available now via the Marshall website
• And available from other select retailers from March 31, 2026

The Marshall Bromley 450 launched in March 2026 for $799.99 / £549.99 / AU$1,079. It’s available now via Marshall’s digital store, but select retailers will also begin to sell the speaker from March 31, 2026. It’s available in a single colorway — Black & Brass.

The Bromley 450 is the younger sibling of the Marshall Bromley 750 — Marshall’s first party speaker which is larger, more powerful, and in turn, a lot pricier. The Bromley 750 comes in at $1,299 / £899 / AU$1,799, placing it in competition with speakers such as the JBL PartyBox 720.

Marshall Bromley 450 review: specs

Marshall Bromley 450 review: features

• Excellent connectivity options, including XLR/6.35mm slots for karaoke / instruments
• Phenomenal 40-hour battery life
• Sound character control left out, app is underwhelming

The Marshall Bromley 450 follows in its larger sibling’s footsteps with an incredibly similar feature suite. So that means you’re getting the basics, like multi-point connectivity, fast-pairing, and companion app support, although there’s a decent amount more to uncover.

First of all, this thing has a whole host of connectivity options. You’ve got Bluetooth 5.3, 3.5mm wired, USB-C, and even RCA inputs. If you’d like to use this unit as a karaoke machine, then no problem either. There are two XLR / 6.35mm combo jacks on the top side of the speaker, which you can use. Again, there are effects you can add, including reverb and delay if you wanna spice things up a bit.

Another thing I love about the Marshall Bromley 450 is its battery life. 40 hours of playtime is absolutely fantastic for a speaker of this size, blowing most of the competition out of the water. But there’s more. This is actually the same battery used on the Marshall Bromley 750, meaning you can interchange them if you own both units. This also highlights Marshall’s heightened efforts in the sustainability field again — it's issuing components that can be used across multiple units, and are fully replaceable.

The battery can also be used as a power bank to charge up external devices, such as the best wireless earbuds and best noise-cancelling headphones.

One more feature I appreciated on the Marshall Bromley 450 was its Auracast capabilities. Although more traditional multi-speaker pairing is not available, you can connect a bunch of compatible Marshall devices together using Auracast for even more powerful and immersive sound. I tried linking the Bromley 450 up with the Marshall Kilburn III and it worked without a hitch. I also tried linking it with a second Bromley 450 unit — something I’ll discuss at length in the ‘Sound quality’ section.

This is all great stuff so far, but I do have a few qualms with the Bromley 450’s feature-set. First of all, I have to say that the Marshall companion app feels a bit bare. Although there are some neat physical EQ options on the speaker itself — which let you adjust bass and treble levels — there’s no way of altering this remotely. The same goes for the reverb and delay effects.

Yes, the app provides a way to tap into Auracast broadcasts, and some simple customization options for the ‘M’ button, but that’s about it. Given that Marshall has rolled out a more complete app for its home theater tech — like the Marshall Heston 120 and Heston 60 — I’d expect a few more controls for the Bromley 450.

On top of this, it was a bit of a shame to see the sound character controls from the Bromley 750 get dropped on this new model. This worked really well on that model, and enabled listeners to tailor audio towards a ‘dynamic’ or ‘loud’ style. I get it, this is a smaller, cheaper model, but it would’ve been nice to see again here.

But I want to be clear: the Marshall Bromley 450 still has a very capable set of features. I haven’t even mentioned my favorite yet, the integrated stage lights. There are three presets: the first is ambient, suited to an occasion like a dinner party or solo listening session; the second is representative of actual stage lights, with bold and dynamic patterns that sync to your music; and the final preset is high-energy and flashy, intended to create more of a party atmosphere.

All of the presets work well, and the white lighting is tasteful and classy — something that I can’t say about the swathe of party speakers with loud RGB lighting. The second is my favorite, simply for its authenticity and dynamism, but I was glad to see an option to disable lights for the moments where you want to conserve battery life.

• Features score: 4/5

Marshall Bromley 450 review: sound quality

• Energetic sound that rocks indoor and outdoor spaces
• Excellent soundstage and no real sweet spot
• Powerful bass overall, although the darkest depths could hit harder

I was a big fan of how the Marshall Bromley 750 sounded, so I had pretty high hopes for its lil’ bro. But did it deliver? Yes, yes it did.

Let me begin by stating the obvious: this is a seriously powerful model. The Bromley 450 harnesses the power of two 6.5-inch 40W woofers, four 2-inch 6W full-ranges, and a couple of passive radiators to make that bass feel even heftier. The result is powerful, regimented sound that travels brilliantly, no matter whether you’re listening indoors or outdoors.

When tuning into Timeless by Shinchiro Yokota, I was wowed by the impact of mid-bass, as well as the snappiness of higher-pitched percussion. The speaker’s sense of rhythm and handling of dynamics also remained impressive, whether I was listening at low volumes or cranking things up towards max loudness.

In Morning Wonders – Leo Pol Remix by Kolter, a track with pretty aggressive drums in the treble range, the Bromley 450 replicated highs with confidence. There was a snappy responsiveness and satisfying tone to percussion, even while the tune’s intent-filled bass consumed our music testing space.

As the Bromley 750’s smaller sibling, you are of course going to make a few sacrifices in terms of sound. Most noticeably, the Bromley 450 is less powerful — but it's also less adept at handling the darkest sounds in the frequency range. For instance, tracks with rippling low bass, like Max Dean’s Fascinator, didn’t quite have that full-sounding rumble that mightier models can muster. Sub-bass is audible in tracks, don't get me wrong, and the Bromley 450 can still reach down to a solid 42Hz, just don’t expect the most palpable deep bass ever.

One minor thing I noticed is that there’s also a bit of compression at absolute peak volumes. This is pretty common for Bluetooth speakers, but the Bromley 750 barely showed any hints of compression — in part thanks to its sound character control function, which helped the speaker sound ultra-clean in ‘Dynamic’ mode.

My complaints run out there though. Sure, vocals could sound a little subdued at times when I listened to voice-led tunes indoors. But two things: the onboard EQ options totally solved this issue — I just had to turn the bass down two notches; and this speaker is designed for parties rather than the most detailed, high-fidelity listening.

Overall, the Marshall Bromley 450 is a very strong performer in the audio department. Its punchy bass, direct-sound, and vibrant treble are great of course. But the inclusion of Marshall’s 360-degree ‘true stereophonic’ audio tech also helps this unit to stand out among the crowd.

This thing genuinely sounds awesome from every angle. It doesn’t matter if you’re in front, behind, near, or far away from the speaker, it doesn’t have any real acoustic sweet spot. This tech impressed me on smaller speakers like the Marshall Kilburn III, but it was even more striking on a hulking model like the Bromley 450.

In a product briefing, Marshall also explained how the speaker’s full-range drivers are mounted on the four sides of the speaker (two on the left, two on the right) which keeps stereo channels well separated for a more immersive listening experience.

One more note on sound: this thing can reach new heights if you pair it with a second unit via Auracast. I was lucky enough to be testing the Bromley 450 at the same time as my Future colleague, Nikita, and we decided to combine our two units outside, via an Auracast broadcast from my phone. And the results were exceptional.

In Felini by Venerus and Marco Castello, I was astonished by how absorbing the trickle of flowing waters and strumming of natural acoustic guitars sounded. It really felt as if I was standing front and center at a gig. And with deeper tracks like Chris Stussy’s Breather, I was enveloped in pumping, euphoric bass. Of course, you’ll get awesome power with multiple units as well — when positioning the speaker on the far side of a parking lot, I could still hear that rich bass from the other side. Impressive stuff.

• Sound quality score: 4.5/5

Marshall Bromley 450 review: design

• Classy Marshall aesthetic is as satisfying as ever
• Tasteful lights and premium physical controls
• Very hefty, and the wheels are no more

Every time that I review a Marshall product, I feel like I’m repeating myself. But that’s simply because I’m always full of praise for the captivating retro-style design that the company brings to each and every product. And the Marshall Bromley 450 is no different.

Everything from the faux-leather casing, through to its metal grille and golden details is a joy to behold — just as it was on the Bromley 750. This is a pricey model, but you do feel like the luxurious looks, high quality materials, and tasteful stage lights help to make your investment feel worthwhile.

The golden control panel on top of the speaker is also laid out beautifully, and is incredibly easy to use. Red LEDs symbolize which connectivity option you’re using, and tactical knobs are available to alter volume, bass and treble levels, and more. The mic and instrument ports are also located on top of the speaker this time, making it even easier to get a guitar performance or karaoke session underway.

Something that Marshall Bromley 450 actually improves on compared to its pricier sibling is its protection against the elements. You’re getting an IP55 rating here, which means that the speaker is dust-protected, and can withstand multi-directional water jets. In practice, this essentially means that the Bromley 450 is perfect for taking into outdoor spaces, and will be able to handle a spot of rain without issue. As the Bromley 450 is smaller than its older sibling, and easier to take outdoors, this feels like a very smart design decision indeed.

But what else is different from the Bromley 750? Well, the most noticeable difference is the removal of wheels. Yep, this is a wheelless Party Speaker, and you’ll have to lug it around using the handle on the side of the unit. Now don’t get me wrong: the handle is well-made, but if you’re transporting this thing over long distances, a word of warning.

This speaker is honestly pretty hefty, coming in at 26.9lbs / 12.2kg. Sure, the 750 was essentially double the weight, but its suitcase-style handle and wheels made it fairly painless to lug about. If you’re keeping your speaker in one place, or only moving it over short distances, the handle will certainly suffice, but its weight is worth keeping in mind.

• Design score: 4.5/5

Marshall Bromley 450 review: value

• It’s by no means cheap
• But quality is undeniably high, even compared to rivals
• Repairability makes the speaker feel like a worthwhile investment

Let’s not beat around the bush here. The Marshall Bromley 450 is an expensive model, even when you consider its output power and sonic talents. But a high price doesn’t mean a speaker can’t be good value for money.

And I do think you get bang for your buck overall with this model. At $799.99 / £549.99 / AU$1,079, the Bromley 450 is costlier than similarly powered rivals, like the JBL PartyBox Stage 320, for instance. But, in turn, you’re getting considerably better battery life, improved dust and waterproofing, a more luxurious build, and a larger array of speaker drivers.

Is that going to be worth it? It depends. For some, the lower price and specs of the JBL speaker will be plenty good enough. But if you’re looking for a premium quality, long-lasting option, then the Marshall may be more attractive.

On top of this, the Bromley 450 is repairable, with Marshall offering maintenance and parts via its website. That helps the speaker to feel like a worthwhile investment for years to come rather than a short-term audio solution.

• Value score: 4/5

Should I buy the Marshall Bromley 450?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

Marshall Bromley 450 review: also consider

How I tested the Marshall Bromley 450

• Spent hours listening to music both indoors and outdoors
• Used alone and while paired with a second unit via Auracast
• Predominantly tested using Tidal

I spent hours listening to music on the Marshall Bromley 450, during which time I exhausted its various features and tried it both indoors and outdoors.

When listening to tunes, I made sure to try out a wide variety of genres, and run through tracks in the TechRadar testing playlist. For the most part, I used Tidal to blast my tunes, but I also dipped into Spotify now and then. I used the Bromley 450 on its own to begin with, but I also had the opportunity to pair it with a second unit, and connected the two together via Auracast.

More generally, I’m an experienced audio gear reviewer, and have spent the last two years testing everything from premium headphones — like the Sony WH-1000XM6 — through to some of the best Dolby Atmos soundbars, including the LG Sound Suite Immersive Suite 7 Pro. I also reviewed the Marshall Bromley 750 myself, so I’m intimately familiar with Marshall’s quality in the party speaker domain.

• First reviewed: March 2026
• Read more about how we test

I’ve said it before, but choosing a Bluetooth speaker in this day and age is a very challenging task. Simply put, there are just so many amazing options – not good for those of us who struggle with choice paralysis.

Luckily, I’ve tested more than 40 Bluetooth speakers, so I have a good idea of what to look out for when selecting your next portable audio companion. Today, I wanted to compare two speakers that may have premium price tags and offer great sound, but actually have a whole host of differences: the Bose SoundLink Plus and the Bang & Olufsen Beosound A1 3rd Gen.

Now, both of these speakers are excellent and received stellar reviews from us here at TechRadar. They both also compete with the very best Bluetooth speakers around. But which one should you buy? I’ll walk you through their unique qualities, and compare them across areas like features, sound quality, design, and value, to help you make the right call.

Bose SoundLink Plus vs Bang & Olufsen Beosound A1 3rd Gen: price and availability

The Bose SoundLink Plus was released in June 2025, and is typically priced at $269 / £249 / AU$429. And sure, that’s a fairly steep price to pay, but you do get an awful lot of quality in return. On top of that, I’ve seen the SoundLink Plus go on sale in the past – even dropping as low as $180 / £180 in some sale events.

Meanwhile, the Bang & Olufsen Beosound A1 3rd Gen dropped in May 2025, and is typically a little pricier than its Bose rival. It has a list price of $349 / £299 / AU$639 – a luxury cost for an equally luxurious product. This model goes on sale pretty rarely, but I’ve seen it discounted in some territories, like the UK, for close to £260.

Bose SoundLink Plus vs Bang & Olufsen Beosound A1 3rd Gen: specs

Bose SoundLink Plus vs Bang & Olufsen Beosound A1 3rd Gen: features

You’d expect an expansive feature-set from any speaker in the $200 - $300 / £200 - £300 price bracket, and both of these models supply that – at least for the most part.

The Bose SoundLink Plus comes with the usual good stuff like multi-point connectivity and Google Fast Pair, but if you download the Bose control app, you can unlock even more. For instance, you can customize the handy shortcut button, rename the speaker, or adjust EQ.

Personally, I think Bose’s EQ settings are a little simplistic. You can select a preset that either boosts or reduces the bass or the treble, or you can manually alter the level of the lows, mids, or highs. But a lot of rivals offer genre-specific presets too, and often have five-band or higher EQ customization, enabling you to better customize sound to your taste.

Still, most of the stuff you’d want from a modern Bluetooth speaker is here. And audiophiles will appreciate the option to stream music at a higher resolution using the aptX Adaptive codec – though you’ll need a compatible device. Otherwise, it’ll be SBC or AAC.

The Beosound A1 3rd Gen also comes with support for the aptX Adaptive codec, which I always find gives a pleasantly detailed take on my favorite tunes. But where Bang & Olufsen takes it up a notch is with the inclusion of USB-C audio passthrough. This provides lossless, higher-fidelity listening than the SoundLink Plus can offer – a model that skips on 3.5mm connectivity too.

On top of this, the Beosound A1 3rd Gen provides a step-up in the EQ department, with mood-based presets like Bright, Relaxed, Energetic, and Warm. You can also go for a custom setup if you’d prefer, although I think this model sounds great out of the box. Its app is also a bit more fleshed-out, with some fun inclusions like integrated radio stations available.

I’m not trying to be mean to the Bose SoundLink Plus, but B&O has it beat in other areas too. For instance, the Beosound A1 3rd Gen has built-in microphones for clearer hands-free calls – something omitted by its Bose counterpart. You also get 24 hours of battery life from B&O’s circular speaker, while Bose only provides 20 hours of playback.

It’s not all one-sided, though. For example, the Bose SoundLink Plus offers very solid multi-speaker pairing capabilities, with the ability to link with an identical unit for stereo sound, or with other models – like the Bose SoundLink Flex Gen 2 – for some added volume. The B&O can pair with an identical unit, or the Beosound A1 2nd Gen for stereo playback, but it lacks the ability to link up with other models. Still, I think we’ll hand the first category to the A1 3rd Gen, all things considered.

Bose SoundLink Plus vs Bang & Olufsen Beosound A1 3rd Gen: sound quality

Here’s where things gets juicy. See, it may look like the smaller Bang & Olufsen speaker would struggle to compete with the stockier and blockier Bose model, but they both boast plenty of power. Whichever model you pick, you’ll get enough volume to keep the vibes strong, even at a gathering or small party.

But which model sounds better? Well, let’s start by taking a look at the Bose SoundLink Plus. This speaker largely impressed me during testing, and took a satisfyingly revealing approach to playing my music. When listening to Clair-Obscur by Alice Duport-Percier and Lorien Testard, soaring, layered vocals intertwined beautifully, while expressive and emotive acoustic guitars glided through the track with beautiful rhythm and tonality. Instruments and vocals were separated to impressive effect, yet there was a strikingly cohesive quality to the speaker’s output.

The speaker tackles treble well too, offering expressive yet controlled highs, even when creeping towards peak volumes. When listening to heavier tunes, I never felt that thrashing drums sounded shrill or tinny – they were aggressive in a way that felt true.

In the low-end, my views remain largely positive, though I have a few notes. In general, you get a pretty punchy performance from the SoundLink Plus – the low-end comes through clearly and doesn’t sound underpowered, especially with a custom tuning. But when I listened to house tunes, like Touch Me by Luke Dean and Max Dean, I was left wanting a little more. The bass didn’t have that full-sounding thump that I was craving, and could sometimes fall short of the presence and dynamism I’d expect.

Don’t get me wrong, I still think that the SoundLink Plus performs decently in the depths of the frequency range, but it could be better.

When it comes to the B&O speaker, I wouldn’t say the same about its bass output, though – for me, it nails it. For a speaker of its size, the Beosound A1 3rd Gen offers seriously impactful low-end sound – it’s mighty, direct, and even immersive. I’d even issue a warning here – make sure you’ve got a solid surface for this thing to sit on, because it can cause less stable constructions to shake at higher volumes!

I tried listening to a lot of house music on the B&O model, and in tracks like Breather by Chris Stussy, I was astonished by the agility and complete-sounding bass on offer – I could hardly stop listening when using it while testing for my best Bluetooth speakers buying guide.

But unlike Meghan Trainor, I don’t think it’s all about that bass. See, the Beosound A1 3rd Gen offers balanced all-round sound, with commendable detail across the frequency range. In tunes like A Horse With No Name by America, I was instantly impressed by the way vocals and the strumming acoustic guitar occupied almost separate pockets. Subtler percussive sounds also came through sounding gentle yet perfectly weighted . As the tune built, the speaker kept its composure, and delivered a layered, intricate, and emotive performance.

Treble is tight and vivid too, with M-High’s Harmony In the Distance showcasing the B&O’s ability to serve up expressive highs while pumping out imposing bass and hypnotic synths – all without a single element impeding the other.

The Bose SoundLink Plus is a very good performer overall, and I want to pay kudos to its open, spacious sound. But the Beosound A1 3rd Gen is a cut above in the bass department, and it offers that extra layer of separation required to wow the listener. Another B&O win.

Bose SoundLink Plus vs Bang & Olufsen Beosound A1 3rd Gen: design

When it comes to looks, these two couldn’t be much more different. See, the Bose SoundLink Plus assumes a more traditional cuboid form, with a fabric loop on the side if you want to fasten it to something like a hook or bag. However, the Beosound A1 3rd Gen has a circular build, with an upward facing speaker grille and a versatile leather strap. And the differences don’t stop there.

For instance, the Bose SoundLink Plus has a rubber exterior as well as a powder-coated steel grille, giving it a brilliant combination of drop-proof practicality and a premium finish. It’s available in a simply stunning set of colors too, including Citrus Yellow and Blue Dusk, but there’s also a basic Black if you’d prefer.

The B&O can’t quite offer the same vibrant, eye-catching look of its Bose rival, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. This model opts for the more understated, classy approach, and is available in colorways like Wam Granite, Green Eucalyptus, Natural Aluminium, and my personal favorite, Honey Tone. All of these look excellent and fit the luxurious look of the model to perfection.

The Beosound A1 3rd Gen is also constructed masterfully. The lower half of the speaker is constructed from hard-wearing polymer, while the upper segment is made of textured pearl-blasted anodized aluminum. We stated it clearly in our review, but I’ll repeat it here: the pride of ownership you experience with this speaker – not only from its sound, but from its build – is precisely what makes it so special.

While the B&O may have a durable exterior, it may be a little more prone to scratches and scuffs than its Bose rival. Still though, both are pretty rugged – something symbolized by their shared IP67 rating. This indicates that both models are fully dustproof, and can be submerged in up to a meter of water for as long as 30 minutes. Perfect for shower listening sessions or pool parties.

Both of these speakers have great designs – they even have neat button placement and LED lights to indicate aspects like remaining battery life. But the model you prefer will be a personal thing. If you want something bright and colorful with top-tier durability, then the Bose is where it’s at. However, I’m going to give the edge to the B&O once more – the quality of its materials, its iconic circular build, its distinctive color options… it’s all to die for.

Bose SoundLink Plus vs Bang & Olufsen Beosound A1 3rd Gen: value

As I mentioned at the start, both of these speakers come with premium price tags, but which one is actually worth splashing out on?

Well, the Bose may seem like the obvious choice at first due to its typically lower cost. At $269 / £249 / AU$429, it’s not exactly cheap, but remains a very tempting option. It offers revealing sound with hi-res Bluetooth streaming support, it’s well-built with a vibrant look, and can link up with other Bose models to boot. I think the feature-set could be a little more expansive, and bass could be a little more refined, but it’s still a fantastic model all things considered.

Meanwhile, the Beosound A1 3rd Gen comes in at $349 / £299 / AU$639. And I won’t beat around the bush: that’s an awful lot to spend on a speaker of this size, especially when that amount of cash could typically land you a larger model like the JBL Xtreme 4 or an on-sale Bose SoundLink Max.

But even if it’s pricey, I still think you get what you pay for with this B&O speaker. It’s made of luxurious materials, and has equally luxurious sound quality to match. It's highly waterproof, comes with an amazing companion app, and supports genuinely lossless audio via USB-C.

Even though the Beosound A1 3rd Gen is expensive, I’m yet to test another Bluetooth speaker that’s got it beat for quality in its size class. And by B&O’s lofty standards, this speaker is definitely on the more affordable end of the spectrum anyway. There’s a lot to like about the Bose SoundLink Plus – I just think I’d want slightly better battery life and features at the price, so I’d edge the B&O model here.

Bose SoundLink Plus vs Bang & Olufsen Beosound A1 3rd Gen: verdict

So, there you have it. After winning the vast majority of the above categories, victory goes to the Bang & Olufsen Beosound A1 3rd Gen. It’s hard to think of a better looking Bluetooth speaker, and its infectious, immersive sound is seriously hard to top. Yes it’s pricey, but it actually feels worth the expenditure – and if you can grab it in a rare sale, I’d strongly suggest doing so.

As for the Bose SoundLink Plus, I want to be crystal clear: this is a very good speaker indeed. It has a rough and ready design, is popping with color, and its sound quality – although not quite perfect – is still very strong, with impressive detail levels and aptX Adaptive support. If you want something a little cheaper than the B&O, I’d happily recommend this model, especially if you can get a discounted unit.

In the build up to the launch of the new Sonos Play and Sonos Era 100 SL speakers, I had the chance to speak to Sonos CEO Tom Conrad not just about these speakers, but about the many changes he's made to the company since taking over in January 2025, and other changes happening in the industry at the moment.

Below is our full conversation, covering every topic — but you can read just our conversation about the app disaster and how the company is changing as a result (and what Conrad still doesn't like about it) here, or just our discussion of wireless soundbars and Dolby Atmos FlexConnect here, or just our talk about what the music streaming services can do better here.

Conrad has been a part of Sonos as a board member for eight years, and became the boss when former CEO Patrick Spence left following a disastrous app update in 2024 that changed the company's perception drastically. It seems like an appropriate position for a man who had a tattoo of the Sonos Ace headphones on his arm even before he got this job.

After our initial introductions, Conrad wasted no time in jumping into his pitch for the direction of the company, and how that informed the launch of these new products.

Tom Conrad: One of the first things that I said to the team when I took the job as CEO was that I think we really make just one product, which is a sound system for the home. Any individual device is just a way into the system or to deepen your attachment to it. The system of Sonos really is the product.

Now, of course, we sell speakers and soundbars and headphones and components. But what has always made Sonos special is that the experience gets better every time you add another room, a stereo pair, surround sound in the living room, music moving with you from the kitchen to a road trip — really a system where the whole is genuinely greater than the sum of the parts.

And I think that really sets Sonos apart from every other audio company on the planet. And so I think that's the context to understand [Sonos Play]. We're not launching a new speaker, but we're really opening a new front door to the system.

13 years ago, Play:1 introduced millions of people to this idea. Actually we sold more than 10 million of them, and remarkably, nine out of 10 are still in use today.

And Play:1 didn't just introduce an audience to whole-home audio, it really invented the category and defined what internet-connected home audio could be.

When we started this project [the Sonos Play], we asked a simple question: If we were designing the perfect fundamental building block for the Sonos system today, knowing everything we've learned over the last two decades, what would it look like?

And as an intentional callback to the speaker that started it all, we're calling this new product Sonos Play.

And when you put Sonos Play next to the Play:1, you can see how much has changed. Play:1 was a mono single tweeter speaker with a midwoofer. Sonos Play is true stereo with dual tweeters, a dedicated midwoofer and, frankly, a soundstage that just absolutely fills the room.

The bass is deeper, the amplification architecture is three generations ahead of where we were with Play:1. It has automatic TruePlay that continuously adapts the sound to wherever the speaker happens to be sitting, and then there's just all of the technological stuff that didn't exist in 2013 — Wi Fi 6, microphone arrays for AI conversation.

Matt Bolton: I also feel like there's a couple of design elements in the Play that look more like the Play:1 and the Sonos One than the Era 300. It's got this bigger like white lip at the top and some elements of the slightly more old-school Sonos design aesthetic.

TC: That's right, it is a callback in a bunch of ways. I mean, it looks really nice next to a 300, certainly from the same family.

As beautiful as the, as the Play:1 was in its day, and you still see them all over the world, we have moved dramatically beyond the design language of that product, from that era. So [the Play is] just aesthetically, it's a great step forward.

The last exciting thing about Play is that while Play:1 was designed to sit kind of permanently on a shelf in your home, Sonos Play comes with a charging cradle and has a full-day battery in it.

So in addition to being the perfect speaker for your kitchen or for a stereo pair for your office, it's also the best speaker for you to take with you, whether it's into the backyard for a dinner party or to throw in your bag to take on vacation.

It's beautifully between the audio characteristics of Sonos Roam and Sonos Move. it's a pretty remarkable Goldilocks speaker, if I do say so myself. We're really, really excited about it.

MB: I feel like the fact that you're talking about fresh front door products is an indication in itself that, after 15 months of being quiet, you've had to go through some kind of reset. So can you you talk through what you guys have been changing internally?

TC: If you think about the history of the company, we had a decade under the stewardship of John McFarlane, the company's founder. His vision was really all driven by the idea of filling every home with music on the backs of this emergent streaming moment, that he predicted so accurately.

But if you were to critique his decade, it might only be that we didn't ship that much hardware — a couple of amplifiers, a controller, you know, the initial Play:5.

It wasn't until Patrick became CEO, in our second decade, that the company really found its footing with respect to reliably shipping a couple of new products every single year. In fact, his stated goal for the company was to turn it into kind of a new product introduction machine. And, I mean, I'm the incredible beneficiary of that work!

But if you were to critique his chapter, I think the unintended consequence of that laser-like focus on new products was the company lost some of its connection to the idea that the product is actually Sonos. That the individual product launches are meant to extend the idea of what the system can be in a home and in the world.

The shift in my chapter, in some ways, is to marry the best of both of those worlds, to return to the idea that Sonos is a comprehensive system for audio in the home that you need in the same way that you need lighting and plumbing and Wi Fi; you need a sound system for your home. But to also build on our capability around new product introduction.

For my first year at the company, we had to pour so much of our energy into righting the ship with respect to the software platform that underpins all of the system experiences, that we purposefully paused our new hardware introductions to get back to par on that front.

And so it is an exciting moment to be able to say, OK, we're back, and we're launching new products again, and we'll have more in the back half of the year, because, you know, I like to say that Sonos is a company that's 100% software and 100% hardware, and so it's nice to get the 100% back that's hardware.

MB: It's interesting you mentioned that moment, because with something like the Era 100 SL, it's not like it requires a huge amount of new R&D to develop it, so it's clearly a decision you've made to wait for this time to release it. So what is it about the stage you've reached with the platform or the other work you've been doing that made now the right time?

TC: Then you look at where we were when I came in the door, we were in the middle of trying to recover from our missteps in the spring of 2024 with the launch of the new app and software platform.

Candidly, the real story there is that we just changed too much too fast, and made a bunch of tactical errors along the way of rolling it out to our customers, and then paid a very dear price. As did our customers.

I've been a customer for nearly 20 years. I've been a partner to the company for 15 or something, going back to the integrations we did between Pandora and Sonos in my days building Pandora. I've been on the board for eight years. I love this company

And Sonos in my own home is a huge part of, you know, the daily delight and satisfaction and ambiance I enjoy when I'm at home. As much as anything, I took the job to fix the product and, and get the company back to a place where we're just reliably delighting tens of millions of customers around the world again.

A lot of that was on the back of getting the software right. And so I wanted the company to be just laser focused on that return.

And with respect to the timing on Era 100 SL, our goal with Era 100 SL, frankly, was really to anchor the product line in an attainable price point for our customers. There's a lot of work that went into Era 100 SL to get us to a point where we could offer it at this entry-level price point while not compromising on audio quality at all.

So while it might look like this is as simple as removing some microphones, there's a comprehensive look at the cost of the product from top to bottom to get it to this new entry-level price.

MB: So there's an amount of re-engineering inside to to help you get it there?

TC: That's right.

MB: The other outcome of everything you guys have been through with the app is that it now means that any further updates you make to the app are automatically a huge deal, whether they deserve to be or not. Does that affect how you're approaching it or how you communicate about it?

TC: I think that when you make software that people use every day, and it's a big part of their life, it's always a big deal when you make changes. It's certainly true that there's additional scrutiny on Sonos, but as a software creator, I've always felt a keen responsibility to move my audience along with the changes and updates that we're making, in a really thoughtful and methodical way.

And so, as an example of that playing out at Sonos, you know, I'd say there were kind of three things that we had to improve upon after the disastrous launch in 2024. We had to fix performance and reliability — we had to restore baseline functionality that had been dropped from the product in its initial release. And we had to improve the user experience of the offering as well.

And it's really the third thing that we're only just now able to tackle [now]. If I'm candid about my assessment of the app, I think it's peculiar. I think the company made a range of decisions about the user interface that are just not consistent with what you see in any other music streaming app, for example.

I mean: all kinds of strange swipe behaviors and a search affordance that floats above the screen in a kind of weirdly invisible way — cards upon cards upon cards as you navigate through the app, none of which is conventional.

So when we sit with our customers in their homes and observe them using the app, they get lost, they don't know where they are. It's not clear to them how to get to just basic functionality. There's a funny kind of search blindness — the interface that we chose for search actually takes up more pixels on the screen than a typical search interface, but people don't even see it. They're like, 'I can't find search' because it's presented in such an unconventional way.

And so, we're now at the place where we can update the app to return it to more conventional choices. But it is, as you point out, another set of changes for our customers.

We're handling this opportunity in a really different way. I've been on Reddit, for example, describing the changes and asking our customers there to give us feedback back about their own experience learning to use Sonos and living with it every day. We will roll changes out to our beta channel and even there, our users will be able to opt into the experience.

And then when we take it to production, we'll similarly have opt-in experiences and a gradual roll out and iteration. We've already learned a lot from the perspective of our customers on Reddit after my invitation to them [recently] to share their thoughts.

None of this is a surprising way to operate a scale consumer software product, but it's certainly the set of best practices and, frankly, one of the missteps of the company in 2024 is that we didn't more closely adhere to these norms.

MB: There was a real sense that your competitors could smell blood in the water in 2024, and they really went hard on their own products going for, going for the switchers. Do you think you can win back people who did switch to WiiM or other platforms? Or do you think it's more about using these new "front door" products to go after an expanded market?

TC: Certainly, anyone that was frustrated with Sonos in the last couple of years, I hope will consider us again. When I wear my business hat, there was a cost of goodwill with our customers from this chapter, I think it really most impacted advocacy and repurchases. I don't think it was a huge driver of people fully leaving Sonos and going to other platforms.

So my my hope is that all of the people who had a bad experience in 2024 are having good experiences today, and are starting to feel better about Sonos, and can be excited about a product like Sonos Play or Era 100 SL to extend their experience in their own home, or to evangelize it to their friends and family as something that they have to have in their homes.

I think that was the real cost, it was sort of a cost of advocacy and evangelism more than it was people switching to one of the the smaller players who purports to do the same kinds of things we do.

MB: You guys certainly were one of the most recognizable brands in tech — I mean, still are, no doubt — but that must have been a real eye-opening moment that momentum and past performance only takes you so far, right?

TC: Yeah, for sure. I mean, it certainly was a moment that changed my life.

In the aftermath of that, you just have to show up in people's life with some humility and do the hard work of earning their trust back through great execution, great product, great software, great experiences, and never forget what you put people through.

MB: I believe you restructured the company. How is that changing how you're working and helping to make improvements?

TC: When I came in in January of 2025, I quickly made a bunch of changes. I moved us from a business-unit orientation, where we had a home theater team, and a portables team, and a professional team, a headphones team — to a functional [organization], where we have a hardware organization and a software organization, and a product design organization.

And the benefit there is that it really allows you to get the company thinking about what we do as a system and not a collection of categories.

In the process of doing that, we also eliminated a bunch of management layers, which were standing in the way of execution. So yeah, we're definitely functioning differently today than we were a year ago.

MB: How would you say that change in function manifested in designing and launching these two products?

TC: It allowed us to really think holistically about how the product fits into the lineup. I think under the old guard, a product like Play might have been principally conceptualized alongside the various other kinds of mid-tier portable speakers, and would have been scrutinized internally and marketed on [technical specs] around battery life and portability and so forth.

We've really focused on how we make this a really great part of the Sonos system — the 'Goldilocks' perfect speaker, if you like.

MB: It's interesting you say that because I remember when the Move 2 came out, one of the things that occurred very quickly to me is that it has, if not the exact same speaker configuration, an extremely similar speaker configuration to the Era 100. Are you saying that with the Play, you're just working on the Play, you're not looking at what technology you have elsewhere that you can borrow?

TC: Well, no, in some ways the opposite, particularly as it relates to software. We're thinking more fundamentally about: How does this fit into the overall offering? How does it make the the system of Sonos more comprehensive?

With Play, I really do think it's kind of the ideal building block. I mean, when my friends and family ask me about Sonos, I'm going to start telling them they should put a Sonos Play in every room, or a stereo pair in their family room.

It's a phenomenal-sounding speaker and just has so much utility relative to anything that we've ever done before

MB: We've talked a lot about the Sonos system in particular as it pertains to the music side. I wanted to ask about home theater as well, because we're on the cusp of a major change in that sector with wireless connectivity, particularly from the TV to the soundbar. LG and Samsung are exploring proprietary options that lock out companies like Sonos, and push people to buy the same soundbar brand as their TV. Is this a trend you are concerned about?

TC: As you know, we're by far the most successful player in home theater, and consistently taking more and more market share from the companies that you're talking about

It's a huge part of our business, and we're the pioneer in wirelessly distributing audio around the family room, and we'll have our own things to say about how that evolves in the coming quarters.

MB: What do you think of Dolby Atmos FlexConnect? Is that something you would support?

So FlexConnect is interesting. There are really three things that have to happen in a FlexConnect-style implementation. You've got to get the bits from the media to the speaker, whether that's through the television or through the set-top box or through the soundbar, something has to get the bits into the air.

And then you have to position the speakers in the room, understand where they are and what their orientation is.

And then the last piece is that, understanding the speakers' position and the bits from the device, you have to render the bits appropriately for that position and orientation.

Dolby has done a great job of telling the story of FlexConnect as encompassing all three dimensions, but the technology of FlexConnect is actually just that last bit. It's taking the positional information [of the speakers] and the bits [from the media] once they're on the speaker, and rendering it.

And, the other two dimensions — positioning, and the transmittal of the bits actually from the source to the speakers — is sort of left as an exercise for the student, which is why the LG solution is proprietary to LG and the TCL solution is proprietary to TCL.

And you can imagine that — even as much as Dolby wants to talk about the universal character of FlexConnect in the same way they talk about Atmos — the LGs and TCLs of the world might not be that motivated to create a system whereby you can mix and match speakers [from other brands] with their televisions.

I guess I could just say that we're interested in that entire space, the entire domain of: How do you get the bits from the source to the speakers? How do you position the speakers in three-dimensional space? And how do you render? We'll continue to work on our roadmap.

MB: The old Sonos was a really leaky ship when it came to product launches before your time. Is that something you want to change? I've got to say, I yearn for us to go back to the days when companies showed us tech six months, eight months, before it launched — to get a feel for how people responded to it. Could you imagine the company operating in that way?

TC: You know, the funny thing about the period where Sonos was sort of a leaky ship is that it was a period where the company, I think, was trying to be at its most secretive. In some ways, I think that Sonos culturally, internally, fashioned itself like a mini Apple, and really tried to hold its cards close to its vest.

As much as I've been a little evasive about some of the things you've asked about our roadmap, I'm conscious that we're not Apple, and that I think we can talk a little bit more about where we're going and the future that we see without being so concerned about the secrecy of it all.

I sort of love that since I've gotten here, the leaks have dried up from that standpoint, and I think it suggests that the people inside the company are feeling excited and proud of their work, and not wanting to see it out in the world in advance of when the company decides to reveal it.

Where my head is, is somewhere between where Apple sits and what you would like for us to do. So stay tuned, we should keep talking!

MB: I want to ask about the largely rumored but semi-confirmed set-top box and smart software that seemed to be developed in partnership with another company. Are you willing to talk about how far it got, or what your relationship to it was?

Without getting into specifics of that project, if it exists, I will say that part of what I had to do when I came in the door was to make some hard decisions about where we were going to focus. The company was, demonstrably, spread too thin, was trying to do too many things, and was struggling to execute with excellence across all of them.

So I tried to focus our energies on the programs that I thought that were most aligned with our differentiating power in the market. I remain really confident that the things that we chose to focus on are the things that are going to have the most impact on Sonos, in the near term.

MB: Given your background at Pandora, what do you think of music-streaming services today and how they integrate into the Sonos app? Do you, from the Sonos side, have any frustrations with them, and then personally what do you think?

TC: One of the things I'm really excited about in terms of our software roadmap is working more closely with our music service partners. All I really care about with with respect to listening to music on Sonos is getting the customer as quickly and seamlessly as possible to their outcome.

If that means AirPlay or Bluetooth or Spotify Connect or experiences inside of Spotify versus experiences inside of our app… I don't care. I just want it to work every time, and have it be completely seamless. I feel like we have a better relationship with Apple, Amazon, Spotify than we have in years, and I'm really excited about the work we're driving together.

I think the only thing I will say about the state of streaming music is that, you know, the iPod invented the core conventions of modern digital music, and then in 2004, Pandora and Last FM, I suppose, kind of invented the modern conventions around personalized streaming audio. And it's been 20 years, and it's surprising to me how little has changed in that experience.

We've gone from a world where you had access to just the CDs you bought to a world where you have access to hundreds of millions of songs in your pocket, and yet the user interface of it all is kind of just some hierarchical browsing, and then a fullscreen audio player with skip buttons and things.

I guess quietly, at night, I sort of imagine a future where there's more innovation and [questioning] what does it mean to navigate the whole entire world of music with something that wasn't designed for 1,000 songs in your pocket.

MB: Do you think that the physically small size of phone screens is holding us back in that regard?

TC: You know what I think is mostly holding us back in that regard? Apple is motivated by selling hardware, and Spotify is motivated by reducing licensing costs, and no one is motivated by: let's make a great and innovative music discovery experience for the consumer.

I spoke to Sonos CEO Tom Conrad recently, to discuss the launch of the company's new Sonos Play and Sonos Era 100 SL speakers, and how the company's big changes under his leadership influenced their development.

Naturally, we also discussed what really went wrong with the Sonos app disaster and how he's directing the team the fix it, and I also asked Conrad whether the launch of Dolby Atmos FlexConnect is a danger or an opportunity for Sonos.

But given the fact that Conrad's history includes 10 years at Pandora in the early days of music streaming — he was Chief Technology Officer when he left in 2024 — and that Sonos is so deeply connected to the music-streaming services, I wanted to ask what he thought about these services today, both in terms of working with them now on the Sonos app, and personally as a streaming pioneer.

"One of the things I'm really excited about in terms of our software roadmap is working more closely with our music service partners," he begins. "All I really care about with with respect to listening to music on Sonos is getting the customer as quickly and seamlessly as possible to their outcome.

"If that means AirPlay or Bluetooth or Spotify Connect or experiences inside of Spotify versus experiences inside of our app… I don't care. I just want it to work every time, and have it be completely seamless. I feel like we have a better relationship with Apple, Amazon, Spotify than we have in years, and I'm really excited about the work we're driving together."

I expect those who use the Sonos app instead of AirPlay or other direct streaming tech will be pleased with the idea of being able to get into music quicker and more easily, but it's the more personal insights I'm more interesting in, and Conrad shared some of those too.

"You know, the iPod invented the core conventions of modern digital music, and then in 2004, Pandora and Last FM, I suppose, kind of invented the modern conventions around personalized streaming audio," he told me. "And it's been 20 years, and it's surprising to me how little has changed in that experience.

"We've gone from a world where you had access to just the CDs you bought to a world where you have access to hundreds of millions of songs in your pocket, and yet the user interface of it all is kind of just some hierarchical browsing, and then a fullscreen audio player with skip buttons and things.

"I guess quietly, at night, I sort of imagine a future where there's more innovation and [questioning] what does it mean to navigate the whole entire world of music with something that wasn't designed for 1,000 songs in your pocket."

Motivational speaker

I asked if Conrad thinks the physically small size of phone screens is a restrictive element that holds us back from developing new ways of interacting with music.

"You know what I think is mostly holding us back in that regard? Apple is motivated by selling hardware, and Spotify is motivated by reducing licensing costs, and no one is motivated by: let's make a great and innovative music discovery experience for the consumer."

I point out that Qobuz and Tidal are more focused on music discovery, but don't have the bottomless resources that Spotify and Apple do, which Conrad agrees with — but overall, I agree with him.

I always say that the vinyl revival and the popularity of the best turntables here in the 2020s is in no small part because people want music to feel special, with the thrill of discovery. Physical media gives people the excitement of successfully finding something they didn't have before when they're looking through a record store's boxes — the power of a surprise.

Obviously, it would be foolish to replicate the scarcity element of physical media in a streaming app, but Conrad's suggestion of new ways to navigate and discover music seems like a way to scratch that same itch of making music apps exciting by providing more ways for you to find something you've never heard before, and to then explore that artist or genre.

The discovery features of music streaming services feel so narrow — they either replace radio or throw a pipeline of music at you without context, and with only the foggiest sense of why you'd be interested in it.

I'd like it to feel interactive, like by opening the correct door, searching in the correct box, or asking the correct source, I can find something new to experience. I hope we'll see more innovative interfaces to create the experience of being a smart record hunter in the future.

Sonos is synonymous with wireless multi-room audio and home theatre, and has long been known for making some of the best wireless speakers and best soundbars. The company has also recently introduced the Sonos Play and Era 100 SL speakers, which both have their sights set firmly on music playback.

While those two new models are now available to pre-order ahead of their launches at the end of this month, Sonos is hoping to ignite a multi-room, home theatre passion in all Australians and New Zealanders with a ‘March Madness’ sale that is seeing up to 25% off a range of speakers and soundbars.

As a Sonos aficionado myself, who has a complete Sonos home theatre setup and music speakers dotted further around my apartment, I can’t recommend the company’s devices enough for anyone wanting effective Dolby Atmos surround sound experiences or easy room-filling sound.

The Sonos March Madness sale covers a wide gamut of speakers, from the Arc Ultra soundbar through to the portable Roam 2 Bluetooth speaker.

What’s more, Sonos offers what it calls ‘Sets’ that combine various speakers and soundbars to help make your buying decisions easier. The prices of these Sets have also been discounted in line with the individual discounts, but if you’re anything like me, you’ll want to buy items individually.

How come? Well, if you buy a set, you commit to just one colour choice for all speakers and components. When buying individually, you’re free to choose whether you want white or black. In my case, I have a black Arc Ultra to help blend in with my dark TV unit and white Era 300s and Sub to blend in with my white sofa and lighter room decor.

The final decision is yours of course, I just wanted to add my two cents.

The full list of discounts available at Sonos AU is as follows:

• Sonos Arc Ultra: was AU$1,799 now AU$1,499
• Sonos Beam (Gen 2): was AU$799 now AU$599
• Sonos Sub 4: was AU$1,299 now AU$1,049
• Sonos Era 300: was AU$749 now AU$599
• Sonos Era 100: was AU$319 now AU$289
• Sonos Sub Mini: was AU$699 now AU$559
• Sonos Roam 2: was AU$299 now AU$239
• Sonos Move 2: was AU$799 now AU$639
• Sonos Ace (Black only): was AU$599 now AU$449

You’ll want to be quick though, as this rare sale is only running until March 31.

I’ve highlighted my favourite deals below, but be sure to head to the Sonos AU or Sonos NZ website for the full selection of deals and discounts. I’ve seen The Good Guys beating the price on these by a small margin in some instances, so if you're after the absolute cheapest deal then check out the full Sonos range and the Good Guys site.

The Sonos Arc Ultra is available in a variety of ‘Sets’, which pair it with anything from just a Sub 4 subwoofer, to a complete surround sound package with two Era 300 Atmos-enabled rear speakers. You can view the full range of sets in the table below.

Speaker sets that include the Beam (Gen 2) are also available, and are as follows.

• Sonos brings back notification and lock screen controls on Android
• Work is still ongoing to support these controls on iOS
• You can also access these options from your wrist via Wear OS

After some well-publicized tribulations over the last couple of years, Sonos is on the comeback trail. Not only did the company launch new speakers earlier this week, it's also now fixed a major source of frustration for users of its Android app.

As posted by u/edfosho1 on Reddit (via 9to5Google), the ability to control playback and volume from the Android notification shade and the lock screen has returned. Previously, users had to go into the actual Sonos app for these controls.

Understandably, users are pretty happy with the return of the more convenient widget controls — one user describes the fix as a "game changer" while also welcoming the returning support for scrobbling on the Last.fm service.

There's also a sense of annoyance over the amount of time that it's taken for Sonos to get around to bringing back this functionality. "It's 2026, what took them so long," reads one comment in the Reddit thread.

We can fix it

Finally, Android notification for playback from r/sonos

The playback controls are also going to be available if you're using a Wear OS smartwatch, as demonstrated by u/wizewiz on Reddit. However, as yet there's no such widget control on iOS from the lock screen or the Dynamic Island — though it's believed to be on the way.

As per the official Sonos update, the app may take up to two weeks to reach everyone, so don't panic if you're not seeing it immediately. You're looking for version 82.01.9 on Android and version 82.01.12 on iOS in your app store of choice.

The refreshed app is part of an ongoing effort by Sonos to win back user trust. Speaking to TechRadar, Sonos CEO Tom Conrad has admitted mistakes have been made in software and hardware development, but that he's also now busy righting the ship.

There are also now two new Sonos speakers to enjoy, the first from the company since 2024: there's a new and portable version of the Sonos Play (for $299 / £299 / AU$499), amd the Sonos Era 100 SL ($189 / £169 / AU$289).

Sonos has just unveiled its first new music speakers since the Sonos Roam 2 in May 2024, and the first since its infamous app change that shook the whole company and led to the replacement of then-CEO Patrick Spence with current CEO Tom Conrad in January 2025.

For the launch of Sonos Play and Sonos Era 100 SL, I spoke to Conrad about his big structural changes to the company and how they impacted the development of these speakers. So my next questions are about what else Sonos was actually doing during its quiet 2025.

What's the inside story on the app's changes, and how does the company plan to win back the trust it used to have?

"For my first year at the company, we had to pour so much of our energy into righting the ship with respect to the software platform that underpins all of the system experiences, that we purposefully paused our new hardware introductions to get back to par on that front," he explains.

"We were in the middle of trying to recover from our missteps in the spring of 2024 with the launch of the new app and software platform. Candidly, the real story there is that we just changed too much too fast, and made a bunch of tactical errors along the way of rolling it out to our customers, and then paid a very dear price. As did our customers."

Taking stock of history

Conrad is generally in a pretty candid mood for our conversation about the problems with the app, and why people were so frustrated with it — but he's also clearly incredibly proud to be at Sonos, even if he's trying to be clear-eyed about it.

"If you think about the history of the company, we had a decade under the stewardship of John McFarlane, the company's founder. His vision was really all driven by the idea of filling every home with music on the backs of this emergent streaming moment, that he predicted so accurately. But if you were to critique his decade, it might only be that we didn't ship that much hardware — a couple of amplifiers, a controller, you know, the initial Play:5," Conrad says.

"It wasn't until Patrick became CEO, in our second decade, that the company really found its footing with respect to reliably shipping a couple of new products every single year. In fact, his stated goal for the company was to turn it into kind of a new product introduction machine. And, I mean, I'm the incredible beneficiary of that work!

"But if you were to critique his chapter, I think the unintended consequence of that laser-like focus on new products was the company lost some of its connection to the idea that the product is actually Sonos. That the individual product launches are meant to extend the idea of what the system can be in a home and in the world."

Digging into that topic with Conrad, it seems like he's identified a disconnect between how the company treated the software, and how the users treat it.

"In the aftermath of that, you just have to show up in people's life with some humility and do the hard work of earning their trust back through great execution, great product, great software, great experiences, and never forget what you put people through," he says.

I mention that any changes the company makes to the app in the future will automatically become a big deal, whether the changes really deserve to be or not.

"I think that when you make software that people use every day, and it's a big part of their life, it's always a big deal when you make changes. It's certainly true that there's additional scrutiny on Sonos, but as a software creator, I've always felt a keen responsibility to move my audience along with the changes and updates that we're making, in a really thoughtful and methodical way."

How are things looking now?

I obviously want to get into the work that Sonos has been doing, and how happy Conrad is with it now, and he's pleasingly open and unsparing with his assessment.

"I'd say there were kind of three things that we had to improve upon after the disastrous launch in 2024. We had to fix performance and reliability — we had to restore baseline functionality that had been dropped from the product in its initial release. And we had to improve the user experience of the offering as well.

"And it's really the third thing that we're only just now able to tackle [now]. If I'm candid about my assessment of the app, I think it's peculiar. I think the company made a range of decisions about the user interface that are just not consistent with what you see in any other music streaming app, for example. I mean: all kinds of strange swipe behaviors and a search affordance that floats above the screen in a kind of weirdly invisible way — cards upon cards upon cards as you navigate through the app, none of which is conventional.

"So when we sit with our customers in their homes and observe them using the app, they get lost, they don't know where they are. It's not clear to them how to get to just basic functionality. There's a funny kind of search blindness — the interface that we chose for search actually takes up more pixels on the screen than a typical search interface, but people don't even see it. They're like, 'I can't find search' because it's presented in such an unconventional way.

"And so, we're now at the place where we can update the app to return it to more conventional choices. But it is, as you point out, another set of changes for our customers."

The ill-fated set-top box, and the leaky ship

At the end of 2024, while unhappiness with the app was still strong among the Sonos community, information leaked that Sonos was preparing a streaming box, which would be high-priced and yet supposedly developed using ad-based tech from a software partner called The Trade Desk. Sonos later confirmed this partnership, adding that it was "excited to explore" integration with The Trade Desk's Ventura OS.

And then, after previous CEO Spence left and Conrad took over, reports said that the project had been quietly dropped. I asked Conrad about this, and how it factored into the rethinking and restructuring at Sonos over the last year.

"Without getting into specifics of that project, if it exists," he says, smiling, "I will say that part of what I had to do when I came in the door was to make some hard decisions about where we were going to focus. The company was, demonstrably, spread too thin, was trying to do too many things, and was struggling to execute with excellence across all of them.

"So I tried to focus our energies on the programs that I thought that were most aligned with our differentiating power in the market. I remain really confident that the things that we chose to focus on are the things that are going to have the most impact on Sonos, in the near term."

I pointed out that Sonos has been a very leaky ship in the past, with upcoming product info regularly splashed across the tech press — the Sonos Era 300 leaked in detail nearly a year before its introduction. I asked Conrad if that's something he actually wants to change, because I personally with we could go back a few decades to when tech companies talked openly about products months and months in advance so we could get a feel for them.

"You know, the funny thing about the period where Sonos was sort of a leaky ship is that it was a period where the company, I think, was trying to be at its most secretive. In some ways, I think that Sonos culturally, internally, fashioned itself like a mini Apple, and really tried to hold its cards close to its vest.

"As much as I've been a little evasive about some of the things you've asked about our roadmap, I'm conscious that we're not Apple, and that I think we can talk a little bit more about where we're going and the future that we see without being so concerned about the secrecy of it all.

"I sort of love that since I've gotten here, the leaks have dried up from that standpoint, and I think it suggests that the people inside the company are feeling excited and proud of their work, and not wanting to see it out in the world in advance of when the company decides to reveal it. Where my head is, is somewhere between where Apple sits and, and what you would like for us to do. So stay tuned, we should keep talking!"

Working better with the users

Speaking of keeping talking, I also asked if Sonos' experience with the app update has led it to think differently about communicating with its users, and Conrad says that's something he's tried to change.

"We're handling this opportunity in a really different way. I've been on Reddit, for example, describing the changes and asking our customers there to give us feedback back about their own experience learning to use Sonos and living with it every day. We will roll changes out to our beta channel and even there, our users will be able to opt into the experience.

"And then when we take it to production, we'll similarly have opt-in experiences and a gradual roll out and iteration. We've already learned a lot from the perspective of our customers on Reddit after my invitation to them [recently] to share their thoughts."

He's quick to point out that he know this isn't a revolutionary approach, though: "None of this is a surprising way to operate a large-scale consumer software product, but it's certainly the set of best practices and, frankly, it's one of the, the missteps of the company in 2024 is that we didn't more closely adhere to these norms."

I point out to Conrad that its competitors really sensed blood in the water after the app update, and pushed hard to win people over to their own platforms — with WiiM, for example, launching a direct competitor to the Era 100 with a very similar audio setup — so I asked if he felt that they could win back any 'switchers'.

"Certainly, anyone that was frustrated with Sonos in the last couple of years, I hope will consider us again. When I wear my business hat, there was a cost of goodwill with our customers from this chapter, I think it really most impacted advocacy and repurchases. I don't think it was a huge driver of people fully leaving Sonos and going to other platforms.

"So my my hope is that all of the people who had a bad experience in 2024 are having good experiences today, and are starting to feel better about Sonos, and can be excited about a product like Sonos Play or Era 100 SL to extend their experience in their own home, or to evangelize it to their friends and family as something that they have to have in their homes.

"I think that was the real cost, it was sort of a cost of advocacy and evangelism more than it was people switching to one of the the smaller players who purports to do the same kinds of things we do."

There's more to come

Something that really comes across speaking to Conrad is that he feels a deep affinity for Sonos and the things it actually makes, in a more genuine way than a lot of tech CEOs.

"I've been a customer for nearly 20 years. I've been a partner to the company for 15 or something, going back to the integrations we did between Pandora and Sonos in my days building Pandora. I've been on the board for 8 years. I love this company," says Conrad.

"And Sonos in my own home is a huge part of, you know, the daily delight and satisfaction and ambiance I enjoy when I'm at home. As much as anything, I took the job to fix the product and, and get the company back to a place where we're just reliably delighting tens of millions of customers around the world again.

"A lot of that was on the back getting the software right. And so I wanted the company to be just laser focused on that return."

As Conrad mentioned above, there are things he wants to change further about the app, but he's clearly happy with the changes so far, and says Sonos absolutely isn't done with hardware yet in 2026:

"We're back, and we're launching new products again, and we'll have more in the back half of the year, because, you know, I like to say that Sonos is a company that's 100% software and 100% hardware, and so it's nice to get the 100% back that's hardware. "

• Sonos launches two new speakers: Sonos Play and Sonos Era 100 SL
• Sonos Play is a new portable speaker, costing $299 / £299 / AU$499
• Sonos CEO Tom Conrad tells us it's designed as a "front door" to the Sonos system, like the Play:1 speaker was 13 years ago

Sonos has just unveiled its first new music speakers since May 2024: the Sonos Era 100 SL, and a new portable speaker that sits between the Sonos Roam 2 and Sonos Move in the company's lineup. It's called the Sonos Play, and Sonos CEO Tom Conrad tells me that with the Play, "we're not launching a new speaker, but we're really opening a new front door to the system."

The new Sonos Play's name is "an intentional callback" to the Play:1 as the original introductory Sonos speaker, Conrad says, because the idea here is to create a speaker that is the best of all worlds at once. "It's a phenomenal-sounding speaker and just has so much utility relative to anything that we've ever done before," he promises.

The Sonos Play has a smart audio setup for its compact size: there are two angled tweeters for a little stereo separation, with a mid-woofer for mid-range and bass. This is the same approach used in the Sonos Era 100, but because the drivers need to be smaller than in the Era 100, the Play also has two force-opposed bass radiators to help improve low-end power without adding vibrations. "It's beautifully between the audio characteristics of Sonos Roam and Sonos Move," says Conrad.

The idea is that it can provide enough audio power and quality to fill any room at home, either alone or in a stereo pair, but is small enough to take away with you — the Move 2 is a little hefty to take anywhere, even though it's technically portable, as I said in my Sonos Move 2 review.

The Sonos Play supports Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, and promises up to 24 hours of battery from a single charge, which is impressive compared to even the best portable speakers. It has a USB-C port that can be used as a line-in via an adapter (for one of the best turntables or a similar source) — Sonos really wants this to be able to do anything its other speakers can, as far as possible.

The Sonos Play is IP67-rated, meaning it's pretty dustproof and can be fully immersed in water for a short time without problems. It weighs 2.87lb (1.3kg), and at 4.43 x 7.56 x 3.02 inches (113 x 192 x 77mm), it's small enough to easily take around with you, even if it's not exactly pocketable. It has a little hook on the back for carrying or hanging somewhere.

Obviously, it works as part of the Sonos ecosystem on Wi-Fi (and includes Apple AirPlay 2 support), and comes with a charging base. But it also expands the Sonos system in a new way: multi-speaker support over Bluetooth. You can connect your phone to a Sonos Play over Bluetooth, and then it can transmit the sound to up to three other Play or Move 2 speakers, no matter where you are. It's not as broad a system as Bluetooth Auracast support on some speakers, but that's not available on all phones, and this is a nice upgrade anyway.

The Sonos Play will be released on March 31st, 2026, priced at $299 / £299 / AU$499, so it's definitely not a cheap thing to add to every room. As mid-size Bluetooth speakers go, you're paying a lot more than you would for the five-star JBL Charge 6, for example. But then you wouldn't get the Wi-Fi features that are essential to the best wireless speakers — and, significantly, the Sonos has a much nicer home-friendly design compared to the JBL.

The Era 100 SL looks like a great budget buy

The Sonos Era 100 SL follows the pattern of Sonos' other SL products — it's a cheaper version of the Sonos Era 100. It has the same speaker configuration of two angled tweeters to provide some sense of stereo sound, with a single mid-woofer for mid-range and bass.

It still includes both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, plus a USB-C port that you can connect an adapter to for line-in audio from a turntable or another source. However, it doesn't include any voice control option at all — the mics have been removed to help lower the price. (This also means it doesn't support TruePlay Quick Tuning for iOS and Android, only the iPhone-only full TruePlay.)

With a launch price of $189 / £169 / AU$289 (available on March 26th), it's the cheapest Sonos speaker you can buy in the UK and Australia, though in the US it costs $10 more than the Sonos Roam 2.

Tom Conrad told me that it wasn't just a case of removing the mics to get the speaker to that price, though, and that the speaker was actually reengineered inside to make it less expensive to produce:

"There's a lot of work that went into Era 100 SL to get us to a point where we could offer it at this entry-level price, while not compromising on audio quality at all. While it might look like this is as simple as removing some microphones, there was a comprehensive look at the cost of the product from top to bottom to get it to this new price."

Refocusing on the system, not the devices

I asked Conrad why these models are the choices to lead Sonos' return to launching music-focused speakers, and he emphasized that the big change in how he's approaching the company is to stop treating individual launches as separate products, but to focus on the whole.

"One of the first things that I said to the team when I took the job as CEO was that I think we really make just one product, which is a sound system for the home. Any individual device is just a way into the system or to deepen your attachment to it. The system of Sonos really is the product."

So when it comes to planning launches, he says, "We're thinking more fundamentally about 'how does this fit into the overall offering?' How does it make the the system of Sonos more comprehensive?"

As I mentioned earlier on, he was very keen to reference the original Play:1 (and showed me that he uses one at his desk even today). The name and even some design elements of the new speaker are a callback to that model (the thicker band of plastic at the top of the Play is reminiscent of the Play:1 or Sonos One, compared to the Era 100), but he says it was also about the philosophy:

"13 years ago, Play:1 introduced millions of people to [the idea of the Sonos system]. Actually we sold more than 10 million of them, and remarkably, nine out of 10 are still in use today.

"When we started this project, we asked a simple question. If we were designing the perfect fundamental building block for the Sonos system today, knowing everything we've learned over the last two decades, what would it look like?"

As part of thinking about Sonos itself as a product, Conrad started to restructure the company quickly after he joined permanently in January 2025.

"I moved us from a business-unit orientation, where we had a home theater team, and a portables team, and a professional team, a headphones team — to a functional [organization], where we have a hardware organization and a software organization, and a product design organization.

"And the benefit there is that it really allows you to get the company thinking about what we do as a system and not a collection of categories."

Conrad says the development of the Sonos Play is an example of how changing the structure of the company changes the products themselves.

"It allowed us to really think holistically about how the product fits into the lineup," he says. "I think under the old guard, a product like Play might have been, principally conceptualized alongside the various other kinds of mid-tier portable speakers, and would have been scrutinized internally and marketed on [technical specs] around battery life and portability and so forth. We've really focused on how we make this a really great part of the Sonos system — the 'Goldilocks' perfect speaker, if you like.

"I really do think it's the ideal building block. When my friends and family ask me about Sonos, I'm going to start telling them they should put a Sonos Play in every room, or a stereo pair in their family room."

Of course, any discussion about the direction Sonos is moving in can't ignore the app debacle that led to Sonos' nightmare year in 2024, and Conrad and I discussed that in depth.

You can read Conrad's analysis of what went wrong before he joined, how mistakes were made, what's being improved, and what changes still need to happen in my discussion with him here — but here's a little tidbit:

"If I'm candid about my assessment of the app, I think it's peculiar. I think the company made a range of decisions about the user interface that are just not consistent with what you see in any other music streaming apps, for example.

"I mean: all kinds of strange swipe behaviors and a search affordance that floats above the screen in a kind of weirdly invisible way, cards upon cards upon cards as you navigate through the app, none of which is conventional. And so when we sit with our customers in their homes and observe them using the app, they get lost, they don't know where they are. It's not clear to them how to get to just basic functionality."

Recently, LG released its Sound Suite range, which it has described as the “world's first soundbar audio system powered by Dolby Atmos Flex Connect".

This tech enables you to experience optimized audio and Atmos effects, even if your speakers are positioned outside of the optimal 'forward left and right, rear left and right' placement. In order to do this, FlexConnect speakers use built-in microphones to map their position in a room, adjust their output accordingly to recreate a normal surround sound from wherever they are, and deliver the best home theater immersion possible in your particular space.

It’s a technology that could be game-changing for people with rooms that are ill-suited to the best Dolby Atmos soundbars requiring a traditional surround sound setup. And I’m intrigued to see whether LG’s rivals begin implementing it into their home theater tech too.

As I discovered when writing my LG Sound Suite Immersive Suite 7 Pro review, FlexConnect is more than a good idea in theory — it works well in practice too. However, that specific system combines a soundbar and sub with only two surround speakers. And I wanted to really push this system’s FlexConnect capabilities to the limit.

So, I tried the ultimate configuration: a soundbar, sub, and four surround speakers — and those are the most powerful LG M7 speakers. This set-up is known as the LG Immersive Quad Suite 7. It’s a 13.1.7-channel system packed with 29 speaker units and a whole lot of power. But is it actually good? And is it worth buying? Here are my thoughts after hours of testing.

Flexible Atmos that’s seriously striking

You may have already suspected this, the Quad Suite 7’s stand-out feature is its impeccable Dolby Atmos performance.

As I mentioned earlier, FlexConnect works very well, and helps to make Atmos effects feel supremely immersive. All I had to do was set the speakers up around our TV testing space, add them on the LG ThinQ app, and calibrate the system. I had to try this a couple of times to get the most accurate reading, but once the system was set up, I got access to some seriously impressive sound.

With a 4K Blu-ray of The Mask, I was blown away by the quality of Atmos — even compared to the still-powerful Immersive Suite 7 Pro. In a scene where The Mask himself hurtles through a glass door, he continues to spin around the screen in a tornado-like motion.

With the Quad suite, every part of his movement was mapped amazingly. I could hear the small discrepancies as he spun from the center into the left corner, and the sense of space of each movement was huge. It really sounded as if I could hear him spinning into the corners of our testing room, creating an almost tangible viewing experience.

Other details impressed me too. Tina’s dialogue was placed expertly when chatting to Stanley, for instance, and the sound of mobsters playing air hockey in the backdrop of another scene was replicated in a natural-sounding, authentic manner. This movie really was a great example of the phenomenal width that the Quad Suite could whip up.

But the Quad Suite is very adept when it comes to height effects too. I threw on my go-to for testing verticality, Top Gun: Maverick, and the system performed very astutely. In a scene where Tom Cruise flies his jet directly up and overhead, the system tracked the lift of his aircraft with total precision. Most soundbars or soundbar systems I’ve tested don’t completely nail that verticality — after all, Atmos in its truest form makes use of actual overhead speakers.

The Quad Suite served up a really strong showing, though, and mapped upward movements to great effect throughout the movie’s runtime. With flexibility, expansiveness, and impressive height, the Quad Suite 7 really is elite when it comes to Dolby Atmos sound.

Sound check

Atmos is great on the LG Immersive Quad Suite 7, but how does it sound more generally? Well, as you may imagine, it’s an extremely powerful system – the H7 soundbar has a maximum power output of 500W, with 220W for the W7 sub and 100W per M7 speaker. Combined, that means you’re getting a power output well in excess of 1,000W, which in turn provides listeners with seismic bass, direct-sounding dialogue, and energetic highs.

When tuning into a scene 2024’s Nosferatu, the deep, imposing voice of Count Orlok tore through me, and as tensions heightened, deep bass rumbled throughout the scene with gigantic impact, but still didn’t veil sounds elsewhere in the frequency range. Alongside that, eerie sound effects oozed from the four surround speakers, creating a real sense that I was right in the middle of a horror spectacle.

In another scene, I could hear chanting from each corner of the room, while the higher-pitched noise of scurrying rats sounded tonally convincing rather than shrill or tinny. This was followed by a gut-wrenching screech, which came through forcefully and sharply, highlighting the impressive dynamics of the system.

More generally, I found dialogue to be clear and easily discernible across various movies, and I never felt the need to dip out of the standard sound mode. See, there’s a couple of AI sound settings, but to me, these actually sounded less nuanced and balanced, so I’d advise against them.

Even if we stray from movies and tread towards the music domain, the Quad Suite 7 performs pretty well overall. When listening to a Dolby Atmos mix of Brick House by the Commodores, I could hear drums playing in the left corner of the room, guitars strumming on my right, and vocals flowing from the center. The system provided a nuanced presentation with well-placed instruments, but the overall sound was still cohesive.

Unsurprisingly, I felt that the Quad Suite setup provided a significantly more expansive and enveloping music listening experience than the Immersive Suite 7 Pro, although one small nitpick I had carried over to the larger build, which was my feeling that some sounds in the mid-range — typically vocals — sometimes lack the separation I’d expect from a more premium hi-fi setup.

Wait, how much?!

Anyway, it’s clear that the LG Immersive Quad Suite 7 is a very strong performer overall, and it really is awesome for movie-watching, in the truest sense of that word. That full-bodied, spatial sound basically demands your attention. But you may be wondering just how much this all costs, and spoiler alert: it’s a lot.

OK, so LG isn’t selling the Quad Suite 7 as a whole package — at least not yet. Instead, you’ll have to buy its constituent parts separately, and… it’s about to get pricey in here. The system’s core, the LG Sound Suite H7 soundbar, comes in at $999 / £899, but you’ll also have to splash out $599 / £599 on the LG W7 sub, and $399 / £399 per LG M7 speaker. You could go for the cheaper LG M5 speaker instead, which are $249 / £249 a pop, but I can’t speak to their quality.

So, let’s say we’re going for four M7 speakers here — in that case, you’d be looking at a spend approaching $3,200 / £3,100.

But look, as expensive as that is, the real question should be about value for money. Even if the LG Immersive Quad Suite 7 costs more than $3,000 / £3,000, is it still worth it? Well, for most people, I’d probably say no.

Sure, the FlexConnect technology is amazing, and the audio you’ll experience — especially for movies — is seriously gripping. But you can regularly scoop up a traditional surround sound system — such as the phenomenal Samsung HW-Q990F or almighty JBL Bar 1300MK2 — for essentially half the price.

OK, these systems lack FlexConnect, and they have two smaller rear speakers as opposed to four larger alternatives. But as someone who’s tested both, I can say with confidence that they still sound spectacular, and for half of the money? I think I’d have to skip on the Quad Suite 7, assuming you can place the speakers in the correct positions.

Having said that, if you’ve got the cash, you’re willing to go all out, and the ability to place speakers wherever you want is useful to you, it’s hard to look past the Quad Suite 7.

Its integration of Dolby Atmos FlexConnect tech makes it genuinely unrivaled in terms of versatility, and the power you get from four M7 speakers — alongside the sleek-looking W7 sub and expansive H7 soundbar — is palpable.

So yes, if you’re looking for an incredibly immersive home theater experience, the Quad Suite 7 is almost certain to impress – but for most people, I’ll continue to recommend more cost-efficient alternatives.

KEF Coda W: Two-minute review

KEF, it seems, has identified a customer for whom its existing lineup of wireless stereo speaker systems is not absolutely perfect. This customer can live without network streaming, but would like to be able to listen to a turntable. They don’t need their system to work on a desktop, but they would like it to be available in a fairly wide choice of finishes. And so here’s the Coda W.

As well as the network streaming/phono stage trade-off and the ‘regular’ size of the cabinets compared to the dinky dimensions of some predecessors, the Coda W has cutting-edge Bluetooth connectivity (the aptX Lossless codec is supported), an HDMI eARC input and properly hi-res functionality via its digital optical and USB-C inputs. Four discreet modules of Class D amplification power the 12th generation of the company’s Uni-Q driver array – 30 watts goes to each 25mm aluminium dome tweeter, 70 watts to each 130mm magnesium/aluminum mid/bass driver. And if that all sounds a bit tentative, there’s a pre-out for a subwoofer too.

In practice, it works either ‘pretty well’ or ‘very well indeed’, albeit maybe not quite well enough to sit among the best stereo speakers on the market. The phono stage is probably the least effective of the input options, which is a pity, when you consider it’s one of the real differentiators between this system and the slightly more expensive KEF LSX II LT, its most obvious stablemate. If, however, you switch to one of the digital inputs (either wired or wireless) and the Coda W has plenty going for it. There’s detail and drive, plenty of well-behaved low-frequency presence, a really even-handed attitude towards tonality and frequency response, and a level of energy and engagement that’s a match for the best that any even remotely price-comparable rival can muster.

Turn the volume down to the sort of level that conversation can easily be heard over, though, and quite a lot of this attitude is replaced by a more pedestrian, less energetic character that sucks some of the animation out of recordings. Mind you, if you want to listen at low levels in order to engage in conversation, it could be argued that this isn’t all that much of an issue.

KEF Coda W review: Price & release date

• $999 / £799 / AU$1449
• Released in October 2025

The KEF Coda W wireless active stereo speaker system is on sale now, and in the United States it costs $999. The asking price in the United Kingdom is £799, while in Australia it goes for AU$1449.

There are a few very credible alternatives around, of course, not least from KEF itself in the shape of its slightly smaller, slightly pricier, slightly differently specified LSX II LT wireless stereo speaker system. So does the Coda W have what it takes to, um, undermine its sibling and cannibalize its sales?

KEF Coda W review: Features

• 200 watts of Class D power
• Wireless and wired connection options
• 12th-gen Uni-Q driver array

In most respects, the Coda W is specified as extensively as seems reasonable, given the asking price. Then you consider the way its (admittedly more expensive) LSX II LT sibling is specified, and you realize you’re engaged in a game of ‘swings and roundabouts’.

Still, the gain outweighs the pain here more than a little. The Coda W is an active stereo speaker with 200 watts of Class D power available – naturally enough it’s divided half-and-half between the two speakers. Slightly unusually for an active – rather than a powered – system, is that only one speaker requires mains power. This ‘primary’ speaker connects to its ‘secondary’ partner via a supplied length of USB-C-terminated cable which transfers power as well as digital audio information.

The secondary speaker has just a USB-C input on its rear panel – it’s positioned beneath a bass reflex port that vents from higher up. The primary speaker, by way of contrast, is all action. It has a USB-C output for connection to its partner and a matching bass reflex port, of course, but in addition, the rear panel features (in no particular order): a connection for mains power and an ‘on/off’ switch, an HDMI eARC socket, a digital optical input, a USB-C slot for data transfer, a line-level stereo RCA input, a moving magnet phono input (also on stereo RCAs) with a ground post, and a pre-out for a subwoofer. There are also buttons to initiate Bluetooth pairing (the KEF uses Bluetooth 5.4 with aptX Lossless codec compatibility) and to reset the whole shebang. There’s a switch to turn the ground lift circuit on or off, too.

What’s missing? Well, there’s no Ethernet socket, and no Wi-Fi connectivity either. So network streaming is unavailable, which puts the Coda W at a disadvantage compared to the LSX II LT, although it hits back with its integrated phono stage. No network capability means no Spotify Connect, Tidal Connect etc, so if you’re using Bluetooth to enjoy some wireless tunes, it means your smartphone (or what-have-you) will be fully occupied.

The input resolution of the USB-C is 24bit/192kHz, while the digital optical is 24bit/96kHz and the HDMI eARC operates at 16bit/44.1kHz – analog signals are digitized on entry to 24bit/96kHz. All these wired sources are (re)sampled to 24bit/96kHz before being decoded to the analog domain the driver arrays can understand.

Unlike the LSX II LT, which features a compact version of the 11th generation of KEF’s instantly recognizable Uni-Q driver arrangement, the Coda W is packing the 12th version. There’s a 25mm aluminum dome tweeter behind an elaborate waveguide and positioned in the throat of a 130mm magnesium/aluminum mid/bass driver. Each tweeter is in receipt of 30 watts of power, while each mid/bass driver gets 70 watts. This arrangement, reckons KEF, is good for a frequency response of 41Hz - 20kHz.

• Features score: 4.5 / 5

KEF Coda W review: Sound quality

• Energetic and confident sound with detail to spare
• Loses some animation at low volume levels
• Phono stage is nothing special

At its best, the KEF Coda W sounds very, very good indeed. Unlike some of its most obvious rivals, though, getting away from ‘its best’ is not especially difficult to do.

With a genuinely hi-res (24bit/96kHz) FLAC file of Prince’s U Got the Look incoming via the USB-C socket, there’s plenty to enjoy about the way the system performs. It maintains a strictly neutral tonality, adding no discernible heat to any part of the frequency range and not cooling any part of it down either. The top end attacks with crisp determination, but despite what you might have read about metal tweeters, there’s no suggestion of hardness or glassiness to the treble sounds the Coda W delivers.

The transition into the midrange is smooth to the point of inaudibility, and once there the amount of detail the KEF is able to extract and contextualize allows both the voices in the recording to come across with all their attitude (horny, mostly) and character intact. Beneath here, the lowest frequencies hit hard but control their attack well, so the four-square rhythm is expressed confidently. As with the rest of the frequency range, detail levels down here are high, with plenty of subtlety and variation to go along with the straightforward punch available.

The frequency response is even-handed, with no area underplayed or overrepresented, and the soundstage the KEF creates is big and plausible. Like all the best Prince songs, U Got the Look sounds like an expensive demo, with great big spaces and silences playing their part. The Coda W has no problem laying the stage out coherently, and it gives just as much emphasis to the absences as it does the actual occurrences. Dynamic headroom is significant, and the lower-key dynamics of harmonic variation are also paid close attention. The KEF sounds keen to entertain, and it preserves all the energy the recording wants to communicate.

All of this is true, to a lesser or greater extent, when listening to the same song wirelessly via a FiiO digital audio player running the Tidal app or to a CD-borne copy of the song delivered into the system’s digital audio input. The Coda W remains a lively, informative and quite vibrant listen that seems to revel in the vivid and upfront nature of the recording.

It’s possible to move away from this best-case scenario, though, either by turning the volume down to a modest ‘background’ sort of level or by listening to a vinyl copy of the song through the integrated moving magnet phono stage.

The differences are probably less pronounced when playing the record, so I may as well start here. The phono stage fitted to the Coda W just isn’t anything special – for all of the cliches regarding the vinyl format and its facility with rhythm and tempo-management, the song sounds just fractionally lumpy and leaden-footed when heard this way. It’s from the 80s, sure, when every rhythm was mechanical and regimented, but there was always more swing to Price than the Coda W is willing to reveal via its phono stage. The knock-on effect is a minor dialling down of the energy in the recording, and a mild loss of engagement as a result.

Turning down the volume results in a slightly more fundamental shift in emphasis. I know it’s quite easy to argue that ‘background’ levels would tend to imply that not all that much attention is being paid to the music, and certainly no critical listening is likely to be happening, but there are more than enough systems around that don’t change their sonic character at lower volumes to understand that the changes that the Coda W goes through aren’t inevitable or, to a lesser extent, excusable.

Turning the wick down means a lot of the system’s previously vivid and energetic attitude towards music goes astray, replaced by a slightly matter-of-fact and unengaged alternative that’s not especially welcome. Particularly not when you know what the system is capable of if only it were playing a little louder.

• Sound quality score: 4 / 5

KEF Coda W review: Design

• 285 x 168 x 268mm (HxWxD)
• Choice of five finishes
• Optional SQ1 stand

The Coda W may cost less than the LSX II LT, but there’s more of them. At 285 x 168 x 268mm they’re bigger than their siblings in every direction – if you were hoping to position these on a desktop, think again. Unless you have a mahoosive desk, anyway.

A pair of speaker stands is the way to go. Any decent product will do, of course, but KEF will happily sell you a pair of its SQ1 stands that have been developed with the Coda W (and a few other KEF models) in mind.

The standard of build and finish is well up to standard. The Coda W may lack the exciting curves of their LS and LSX stablemates, but they look and feel good. And the choice of five finishes – my review sample's dark titanium, midnight blue, moss green, nickel gray and a vintage burgundy version that’s only available from very select outlets – means there really ought to be something to suit your mood and/or decor here.

• Design score: 5

KEF Coda W review: Usability & setup

• Truncated version of the KEF Connect control app
• Physical controls on the primary speaker
• Small remote control handset

KEF supplies a little remote control handset to operate the Coda W. It deals with ‘power on/off’, ‘volume up/down/mute’, allows you to cycle through the inputs and, if you’re streaming via Bluetooth, to access ‘play/pause’ and ‘skip forwards/backwards’.

The controls, with the exception of the Bluetooth stuff, are duplicated as touch-controls on the top of the primary speaker - although you can only scroll through your inputs in one direction, which is a (very) mild irritation.

There’s also a very brief version of the KEF Connect app available too. It connects via Bluetooth, offers input selection and volume control, allows you to check for updates, and also features a balance control and rudimentary EQ adjustment in the shape of ‘treble cut/boost’ and ‘bass cut/boost’ controls. It’s also where you can let the Coda W know if it has a subwoofer attached.

• Usability & setup score: 4.5 / 5

KEF Coda W review: Value

• Very high standard of build and finish
• Enjoyable sound quality...
• But it's variable depending on the output used

It’s difficult in the extreme to suggest the KEF Coda W is anything other than very decent value for money. It has some real highlights where specification is concerned, is built and finished to a very high standard, and is capable of uncomplicatedly enjoyable sound quality too.

The fact that it lacks some features available in a very similarly priced product from the same manufacturer is, ultimately, less concerning than the fact that its sound is quite variable depending on the input you’re using.

• Value score: 4 / 5

Should I buy KEF Coda W?

Buy them if…

Don’t buy them if…

KEF Coda W review: Also consider

How I tested the KEF Coda W

I positioned the speakers on a pair of Custom Design speaker stands, connected them together using the supplied USB-C cable and plugged the primary speaker into the mains.

Then I connected a Technics SL1300G fitted with a Goldring 1042 cartridge to the phono input (and also to the line-level input, having positioned a Cambridge Alva Duo phono stage between the two), and plugged a Rega Apollo CD player into the digital optical input.

I used an Apple iPhone 14 Pro and a FiiO M15S digital audio player as Bluetooth sources, and connected an Apple MacBook Pro (running Colibri software) to the USB-C input. After this, I put the speakers either side of my Philips 48OLED806 TV and connected them via HDMI. Lots of sources, meaning lots of content – and for quite a length of time.

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• First reviewed: March 2026

Cambridge L/R S: Two-minute review

The Cambridge L/R S is the first out of the gate of the British audio brand's new ‘L/R’ wireless range to attack the best stereo speaker systems market. It's also the most affordable: this L/R S sells for Ruark MR1 Mk3-adjacent money, which seems less than accidental.

The money buys a crisply accomplished standard of build and finish, as well as some proper specification highlights — not least of which is that this is an active, rather than a powered, speaker system with a dedicated block of amplification for each of its drivers and an active DSP crossover. A choice of five quite fetching colors doesn’t do any harm, and neither does the option of a real walnut veneer alternative — even if the latter comes at additional cost. Support for aptX HD Bluetooth connectivity, along with line-level analog, USB-C and digital optical inputs, means the L/R S can support a reasonably diverse and expansive set of sources. The provision of a pre-out for a subwoofer is a nice touch, too, although (as we shall directly see) not super-necessary.

No matter the source of the music it’s playing, the L/R S is a big, bold and quite assertive listen; but that’s not the same as saying it’s unsubtle. There’s plenty of detail retrieved to go along with the attack, good insight to complement the dynamism, and a fairly natural and neutral way with frequency response and tonality. Or, at least, there is until you reach the bottom of the frequency range — here the L/R S is rather too confident, and gives a little too much weighting to bass information. This isn’t at the expense of rhythmic expression or forward drive, though.

All of which means the Cambridge L/R S is immediately one of the very best pound-for-pound desktop stereo systems around, and one that demands very careful consideration indeed.

Cambridge L/R S review: Price & release date

• $549 / £399 / AU$949
• Released April 1, 2026 (in US/Europe)
• Originally announced in January 2026

The Cambridge L/R S wireless active stereo speaker system is on sale from April 1, 2026 in Europe and the USA — in APAC (Asia-Pacific) countries it’s already available.

In the United States it will cost $549. Or, at least, it will in any of the five colors in which it will be available — if you fancy the real walnut veneer you're looking at $599. In the United Kingdom it's going to go for £399/£449, while in Australia it is already selling for AU$949/AU$1049.

So the price, as well as the basic configuration, is very close indeed to Ruark’s class-leading MR1 Mk3. Coincidence? Hmm…

Cambridge L/R S review: Features

• 100 watts of Class D amplification
• 21mm tweeter, 76mm mid/bass driver
• Wired and wireless input options

First things first: this is a genuinely active, rather than a powered, stereo speaker system. Any rival product at this sort of money uses one powered speaker to deal with inputs, outputs, amplification, decoding and all the rest of it, and then sends amplified analog information to a passive partner.

With the L/R S, though, Cambridge has gone another, more complex and inevitably more expensive way: although only the primary speaker receives mains power, there are two channels of amplification for each speaker, and a full DSP crossover which serves a PWM (pulse-width modulation) signal to each of the amplifiers. A bespoke four-conductor cable connects the primary speaker to the secondary, along which all power and digital audio signals travel. I don’t think I can be criticized if I use the word ‘over-engineered’ here, so I will – but I am also quite happy to use the word ‘admirable’.

The rear of the secondary speaker features a screw-down socket for connecting that inter-speaker cable, and a bass-reflex slot along the top. The primary speaker has these features too, but it also includes USB-C, line-level stereo RCA and digital optical inputs, plus a pre-out for a subwoofer, and Bluetooth wireless reception (with aptX HD codec compatibility). The optical and USB-C inputs support resolutions of up to 24bit/96kHz PCM – every incoming signal is resampled to 24bit/48kHz in the DSP before its delivery in PWM form to the amplifiers.

Power, incidentally, is of the Class D variety, and there’s 100 watts of it. Each driver gets 25 watts to play with — there’s a 21mm hard-dome tweeter behind a waveguide and phase cap above a 76mm mid/bass driver in each speaker. Cambridge suggests this layout results in a frequency response of 55Hz - 24kHz. The rear of the primary speaker also includes a button that operates as both a power on/off switch and as an input selector. It also features three toggle switches: one to let the speaker know if it’s the left or the right channel, one to tell it if the system is being used on a desktop or not, and one to let it know if it’s in free space or near a wall. And there’s a figure-of-eight socket for mains power, too.

• Features score: 5 / 5

Cambridge L/R S review: Sound quality

• Expansive, detailed and upfront sound
• Direct and positive sonic attitude
• Slightly overplays its low-end hand

Yes, the L/R S is on the larger side for a desktop system but the sound it delivers is appreciably larger than that. Connected via USB-C and with a 24bit/44.1kHz FLAC file of Cate Le Bon’s Are You With Me Now? incoming, the scale and spaciousness of the presentation is initially quite startling.

The overall sense of scale is complemented nicely by the Cambridge’s ability to generate an organized, convincing soundstage and to focus well. There’s a fair amount of separation to the overall presentation, but at the same time a decent sense of singularity that prevents even complex recordings from sounding disjointed or untogether. Add in sufficient dynamic headroom for when the going gets especially loud or intense, and the Cambridge system sounds both bigger and more confident than its physical dimensions might suggest.

The tonal balance is fairly neutral despite a suggestion of heat at the bottom end, and frequency response once you get above the lowest of the low frequencies is smooth and even – the crossover between the two drive units is all-but imperceptible. The top of the frequency range balances attack against substance nicely, while the midrange communicates in a manner easily described as ‘lavish’. The system’s ability to reveal detail of any significance and give it appropriate weighting means voices are delivered with plenty of character and attitude.

There’s a little issue at the bottom of the frequency range. Basically, the Cambridge is slightly too pleased with the amount of low-frequency presence it’s able to liberate from recordings and just fractionally overplays its hand. There’s a little too much emphasis on the bottom end in the context of the overall frequency response available here, a minor bloom at the very bottom of the extension that can make bass sound just a touch too prominent and therefore slightly too remote from everything that’s going on above it.

Despite this, the L/R S controls its low-end activity carefully enough to ensure rhythms are expressed convincingly and momentum levels never dip below where they should be. And besides, I know perfectly well that if it comes to a straight choice, there are plenty of listeners who would choose ‘a little too much bass’ over ‘not quite enough bass’ every time.

All of the above applies if you choose to listen at volume levels somewhere between ‘background’ and ‘really quite loud’. Go beyond that and the L/R S loses a little of its admirable composure and its previously nicely open stage starts to sound a little flat and two-dimensional. It’s hardly a fatal flaw, though, and besides… it’s easily fixed. Just turn it down a touch.

• Sound quality score: 5 / 5

Cambridge L/R S review: Design

• 226 x 134 x 180mm (HxWxD)
• Choice of six finishes, including a (cost-option) real wood veneer
• No grilles supplied

It is, admittedly, a little larger than the Ruark MR1 Mk3 that would appear its primary target, but the Cambridge L/R S is nonetheless compact enough at 226 x 134 x 180mm (HxWxD) to sit happily on even a modestly sized desk (as long as it’s reasonably tidy). At the same time, it’s just about big enough to not look too lost on a pair of regular speaker stands.

No matter where you want to position it, though, there are lightly rubberized little feet integrated into the bottom of the recessed plinth on which the main body of the speaker sits (which is why, from some angles, it seems to float), and there will be the option of a pair of angled ‘tilt’ stands to help aim the tweeters more overtly at your ears if the system is on your desk. These stands, of course, are a cost option.

There’s not even the option of any grilles, though. Having said that, there’s a hint of visual interest thanks to the identically sized black circles on the front baffle inside which the drivers are positioned which wouldn’t be available if grilles were fitted. Nor is there much to be gained in aesthetic terms by hiding away the orange tweeter or its waveguide, either.

The standard of construction is beyond reproach. The cabinet edges and corners are crisp rather than pointy, the recently updated brand logo at the rear of the top surface looks confident, and the sort-of kind-of matte finish feels as good as it looks in any of the five colors that are available. Take your pick from the white of my review sample, black, a bright orange, a fairly dark green or an unarguably dark blue — or if you don’t object to some extra expenditure, you can choose a real walnut veneer that tackles the L/R S even further into Ruark MR1 Mk3 territory.

• Design score: 4.5 / 5

Cambridge L/R S review: Usability & setup

• Bluetooth LE remote control
• Selection of EQ presets
• ‘DynamEQ’ technology included

First of all, of course, the primary speaker must be plugged into the mains. Then use the supplied 2m length of cable to join the two speakers together (Cambridge is readying a 5m alternative, for which it will naturally want some more money). After that, it’s just a question of establishing the physical or wireless connections you need to make.

There is no control app here, of course — this is not a networked system, after all. Nor are there any physical controls on either of the speakers (except that trio of toggle switches that help orientate the system before it’s running, the on/off power button or to cycle through the inputs), which could be considered an oversight. The only way to control the L/R S is by using the remote control handset that’s supplied in the packaging.

The handset itself is small, made of quite hard plastic and is not backlit but it covers off every function, and because it’s a Bluetooth rather than an RF device it’s far less reliant on having line of sight to the ‘primary’ speaker. It also gives access to a trio of EQ presets: they’re designated ‘normal’, ‘movie’ and ‘voice’.

Cambridge has included its ‘DynamEQ’ technology here, which is a gesture towards automated usability. It’s described as ‘intelligent optimization’, and makes bass and treble adjustments in response to any changes in volume you might indulge in.

• Usability & setup score: 4.5 / 5

Cambridge L/R S review: Value

• Excellent sound for the price
• Lots of colorways, even if you have to pay extra for the walnut finish
• Expansive specification

Judge it in terms of engineering excellence, obvious competence where construction and finish are concerned, and the useful and reasonably expansive nature of its specification, and it’s hard to suggest the Cambridge L/R S doesn’t represent decent value for money.

And when you factor in the sound it’s capable of producing, well, it then starts to put it squarely in the 'market leaders' bracket for active speaker systems.

• Value score: 5 / 5

Should I buy Cambridge L/R S?

Buy them if…

Don’t buy them if…

Cambridge Audio L/R S review: Also consider

How I tested the Cambridge L/R S

I tested the L/R S on a desktop, where it was wired via USB-C to an Apple MacBook Pro running Colibri software.

It was also connected wirelessly to an Apple iPhone 14 Pro (via the AAC codec) and a FiiO M15S (using aptX). It was also tested when positioned on a pair of Custom Design speaker stands and with a (pre-amplified) Technics SL-1300G turntable and Rega Apollo CD player connected to the analog RCAs and the digital optical socket respectively.

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• First reviewed: March 2026

• A reliable leaker says a Sonos Era 100 SL is coming
• It would be a cheaper version of the Sonos Era 100 speaker without mics
• It follows the recent leak of a new Sonos portable speaker and app refresh

It looks like Sonos is planning to launch a new Sonos Era 100 SL speaker, which would essentially be a cheaper version of the Sonos Era 100 that cuts out voice control in order to lower costs — at least, that based on previous Sonos 'SL' products, which have all done exactly that.

The leak comes from well-known tech leaker Evan Blass on X, with images of the bottom of the new speakers, in black and white, with the name clearly visible.

When I reviewed the Sonos Era 100 upon its launch, I thought it was a great speaker overall, but the price was a just a little too high. Since then, Sonos has cut the price from $249 / £249 / AU$399 to $219 / £199 / AU$319 (and often further during sales events), which I think is more where it should be.

With the promise of the SL offering an even cheaper option, I think this new model will probably become the default wireless speaker. We've been recommending the JBL Authentics 200 over the Era 100 in our guide to the best wireless speakers, but this could turn things in Sonos's favor.

What price should you expect for this? To be clear, it's not like the Sonos Era 100 SL is likely to be half the price of the current model, but the Sonos One SL was $20 / £20 cheaper than the Sonos One, and the Sonos Roam SL was about the same difference from the Sonos Roam. So I'd expect the same here, with the Era 100 probably launching for the same $199 / £179 / AU$389 price that the Sonos One SL launched for back in its day.

Bearing in mind that Sonos happily takes part in Black Friday and other sales events, you could end up paying under $170 / £150 for this new speaker, and I think it'll be wildly popular at that kind of price, including as a pair. Simple, good-looking, well-made, with nice sound – it's the kind of thing that'll get Sonos's reputation back at the top of the pile.

In the past, the microphones and voice assistant feature have been the only thing that Sonos has cut from the SL models, but it's possible that it will choose to cut more here – for example, it would be a shame to lose the USB-C port that enables you to connect a line-in adapter, but people might be happy to live with it in favor of the savings.

Sonos is back in action

It's been a busy week in the world of Sonos leaks. First was news that the company is planning a new refresh to its app, including some fast-access music controls on iOS, which is something I've wanted for a while.

Then we saw clear leaks that the company is planning to launch a new portable speaker mid-way between the Sonos Roam 2 and the Sonos Move 2 for price and size. (Something that we anticipated in our round-up of what we hoped to see from Sonos, so well done to my colleague James Davidson for nailing that.)

Now we have the Era 100 SL appearing too (pictured along with more images of the Sonos Play portable speaker in that leak). We already knew that Sonos was planning to "ramp up" its launches after releasing nothing in 2025, and it looks like it's going to come racing out of the blocks with two early speakers, any maybe more to follow.

• Best Buy Canada leaked a listing page for the 'Sonos Play' speaker, but it has since been deleted
• It's set to arrive March 31, and costs $399.99
• The new Bluetooth speaker could be Sonos' mid-range option alongside the Roam 2 and Move 2

Apple isn’t the only one with new devices on the way, as leaks of a new Sonos portable Bluetooth speaker hint that the audio giant could be dropping the device imminently — and people already like what they see.

Dubbed ‘Sonos Play’, the speaker was leaked on Best Buy Canada’s site with a full gallery of images and a thorough list of specs, but has since been taken down. Luckily, a user on Reddit managed to snap some images before the listing was removed from Best Buy’s online store (see below).

sonos from r/sonos/comments/1ri2yqr/upcoming_sonos_portable_speaker

According to the listing, the Sonos Play portable speaker will be available in black or white and will cost CAD $399.99 (or around USD $300 / AUD $420), though international prices have yet to be announced. It’s supposedly arriving as soon as March 31, but Sonos hasn’t confirmed or denied the launch date.

At first glance, it seems that the Sonos Play will serve as the mid-range option in Sonos’ lineup of Bluetooth speakers, which consists of the Sonos Roam 2 ($179 / $179 / AU$299) and the significantly larger, higher-end Sonos Move 2 ($499 / £449 / AU$799) — both of which are some of the best Bluetooth speakers we know. But let’s get into the specs.

Bigger than the Roam, smaller than the Move 2

Prior to taking the listing down, Best Buy’s product overview shared the following: “Take quality sound wherever you go with the Sonos Play Bluetooth wireless speaker. Its compact design fits easily in your hand, while automatic Trueplay tuning optimizes audio for any environment. Wi‑Fi and Bluetooth let you stream high‑quality audio from different devices and sources. Up to 24 hours of battery life avoids the need for frequent recharging.”

Design-wise, Sonos keeps it cohesive, and the new Bluetooth speaker doesn’t have any crazy design changes that are out of the ordinary for the brand. Its shape is reminiscent of the UE Epicboom speaker, packing a handy carrying strap, 24-hour battery life, a wireless charging base, an aux port for connecting to other audio devices such as turntables, and a USB-C port, allowing you to use the speaker as a battery pack.

As for dimensions, it’s likely that Best Buy messed up on this one. The screenshots of the listing show the Sonos Play speaker to be W19.23cm, D11.25cm, H7.67cm, which, looking at the product image, is definitely not just under 8cm tall. It’s likely that these have been mixed up (I’d guess that the real dimensions are H19.23cm, W11.25cm, D7.67cm), hinting that someone from Best Buy might have published the listing a bit too promptly.

Despite this mix-up, its size is a perfect starting point for Sonos’ venture into mid-range speakers. Though the Sonos Move 2 is a powerful speaker fit for both indoor and outdoor use, its bulky size contradicts the portability aspect of Bluetooth speakers, while the Sonos Roam is the ideal portable audio companion, but doesn't quite pack a punch on the battery life front.

As well as WiFi connectivity, the Best Buy listing reveals that the Sonos Play will support Apple AirPlay 2 and Alexa, in addition to Spotify and Sonos app compatibility. As per the listing overview, Sonos’ flagship sound-optimizing tool Trueplay is coming to the Play speaker, which tunes the audio based on your surroundings and speaker placement.

Though Best Buy was quick to eradicate all traces of its Sonos Play listing, its first-look images have been well received online, even though it comes in at $400 – though that price level is standard for Sonos. That said, we know that Sonos has other tricks up its sleeve – it’s apparently got another app overhaul in the works — so a new Bluetooth speaker would be highly welcomed alongside a fresh app redesign.

Look, I love a hulking boombox just as much as the next person, but sometimes I need a smaller Bluetooth speaker to enjoy my tunes. Yep, whether I’m on the go or taking a shower, I always appreciate having a pocket-sized audio companion at my disposal. So, today I want to compare two of the very best Bluetooth speakers in the flyweight class.

First up, we’ve got the JBL Clip 5. This carabiner style Bluetooth speaker is a real stand-out, combining a practical design with surprisingly strong sonic capabilities. It’s a couple of years old now, but it remains a real favorite of mine and other colleagues here at TechRadar, with some killer features and an ultra-rugged build.

But it’s got some serious competition. That’s right, I’m pitting the Clip 5 against the Ultimate Ears Wonderboom 4, which is an astonishingly punchy Bluetooth speaker given its mini size. It’s pretty rugged as well, and I’m a huge fan of its eye-catching aesthetic. But is it actually better than the Clip 5? You can find out down below…

JBL Clip 5 vs Ultimate Ears Wonderboom 4: price and availability

The JBL Clip 5 hit the shelves in June 2024, and came with a list price of $79.95 / £59.99 / AU$89.95. Given that it launched a fair while back, you can often grab the Clip 5 on sale now – I’ve even seen it discounted to under $50 / £40 / AU$65 before.

It’s a very similar story for the UE Wonderboom 4. It was also released in June 2024, and is regularly on offer for a tasty low price. However, due to its higher power output, it will set you back a little more than the Clip 5. It has a list price of $99.99 / £89.99 / AU$149, although I’ve spotted it going for less than $60 / £60 / AU$90 now and then.

JBL Clip 5 vs Ultimate Ears Wonderboom 4: specs

JBL Clip 5 vs Ultimate Ears Wonderboom 4: features

The first category isn’t actually that close. You see, as much as I love the UE Wonderboom 4, I’d be lying if I called it a marvel in the features department.

Why? Well, above all, it leaves out companion app support – something that’s a bare minimum for speakers in this price range as far as I’m concerned. This means you can’t customize the speaker very much or remotely alter its EQ for instance. Yes, it does have a podcast mode and outdoor calibration, which can be activated with the UE’s onboard button controls, but that’s really it.

The Clip 5, however, has a nifty app that comes equipped with a custom equalizer as well as a few handy presets. This companion software also enables you to activate PlayTime Boost for some extra hours of listening, and has a display for the speakers remaining battery life.

Speaking of battery life, both models offer a pretty decent helping here. You get up to 12 hours with PlayTime Boost active on the Clip and 5 – 10 hours without. Meanwhile, the UE plates up 14 hours of playtime, which is very respectable indeed.

Even still, the JBL does surpass the UE Wonderboom 4 in basically every other area. For instance, both speakers support multi-speaker playback – including stereo pairing if you’ve got two of the same model. But the Clip 5 brings Auracast connectivity to the table, enabling it to seamlessly link up with a ton of other compatible JBL speakers, including the JBL Grip, JBL Flip 7, and even the rear speakers on the JBL Bar 1300MK2.

Ultimately, the Clip 5’s companion software support, better EQ controls, and Auracast connectivity make it the clear victor in the features department.

JBL Clip 5 vs Ultimate Ears Wonderboom 4: sound quality

OK, so the features head-to-head was a bit of a blow out. But things are going to be way tighter from here on in. Especially because both the JBL Clip 5 and UE Wonderboom 4 are amazing sounding speakers given their limited confines.

Let’s begin with the JBL Clip 5. It uses a single, full-range 45mm active driver, and has a maximum power output. As you can imagine, this means that it’s hardly the most booming speaker out there – though it does still pack a solid punch, all things considered.

I was struck by the Clip 5’s talents when playing Copricolori by Marco Castello. In this track, leading vocals were incredibly clean, never smothering keys in the mid-range. The track’s funky bass was well-balanced in the mix too, and didn’t sound sluggish or muddy at mid-volume. Sure, the Clip 5 can’t reach any lower than 95Hz, so don’t expect rippling sub-bass, but mid-bass sounded decently impactful when I sifted through various house tunes.

The UE Wonderboom 4 is a pretty different-sounding model, but it’s also very strong. As soon as I started playing tracks on this thing, I was struck by one thing above all: its seismic low-end output. There’s more of a thump here than the Clip 5 can muster – perhaps unsurprising given the Wonderboom 4’s dual driver configuration and mightier 10W maximum power output.

Although bass is undoubtedly the main event, that doesn’t come at the cost of enjoyable mid-range or treble performance, though. Don’t get me wrong – you’re not getting the intricate mids that a speaker like the Edifier ES20 can relay, but you’ll experience commendable clarity right across the frequency range.

So yes, both speakers are top performers in their weight class. But it’s worth noting that neither of these support higher-res Bluetooth codecs, and neither have a 3.5mm port or USB-C audio passthrough for wired listening. As a result, you’re not going to get the most detailed listen imaginable. You’ll also experience compression at top volumes with both the Clip 5 and Wonderboom 4 – that’s pretty common for speakers of this size, but it’s worth noting.

But which model sounds better? Well, I’d argue that the Clip 5 offers a little more balance overall, and its customizable EQ makes it easier to tailor to your preferences. But even with EQ tweaks, you won’t be able to match the pure bass weight of the Wonderboom 4. Its higher power is also a big plus, and its 360-degree wraparound design helps it to deliver a more engrossing soundstage than the Clip 5.

Even if bass is the focus on the Wonderboom 4, it still plates up sophisticated mids and highs, resulting in a fun, engaging sound. As a result, UE takes a slight edge for me here.

JBL Clip 5 vs Ultimate Ears Wonderboom 4: design

If there was ever going to be a close category, it was going to be this one.

I think it’s safe to say that there are a fair few similarities between the Clip 5 and the Wonderboom 4 – their numerous colorful variants, their rugged fabric build, and their high standard of build. In fact, both of these models also share an IP67 rating, meaning that they’re fully dustproof and can be submerged in a meter of water without accruing damage for as long as 30 minutes. Pretty cool, right?

But still, there are a few differences worth exploring, with the most striking being their different forms. The aptly named JBL Clip 5 has a carabiner design, meaning you can attach it to just about anything – a bag strap, a shower hose, a bicycle… you name it. It’s the main thing that sets the Clip 5 apart from other small-sized rivals, and I’m a big fan.

The UE Wonderboom 4 takes up a slightly more traditional build. It’s a palm-sized, stubby cylinder that’s simple yet sleek. It has a fabric loop, which you could put on a hook, for instance, but it’s not quite as versatile as the Clip 5. Still, I’d argue that it’s a little more attractive than JBL’s model, with the rounded look and eye-catching button controls making quite the impression.

With that said, I do still like the look of the Clip 5, and it’s available in a much wider range of colors than its UE rival. Still, both can be purchased in a range of vibrant colorways – or more understated ones if that’s your style.

For me, the UE Wonderboom 4 is a bit more stylish, but it’s hard to deny the practicality of the Clip 5. As a result, we’ll call this one a tie.

JBL Clip 5 vs Ultimate Ears Wonderboom 4: value

Right then, it seems we’re all tied up in the approach to our fourth and final category: value for money. But before we get into things, it’s worth flagging again that the UE Wonderboom 4 is more powerful, and a little larger too. This means that it’s reasonable to pay a little more for its services.

And indeed, you’ll almost certainly have to splash a bit more to get your hands on the Wonderboom 4, which typically comes in at around $99.99 / £89.99 / AU$149. Having said that, it is often on sale, and I’ve seen it drop below $60 / £60 / AU$90, which is an excellent price given the raw power of its bass output, its attractive design, and its strong battery life.

Meanwhile, the Clip 5 comes with a list price of $79.95 / £59.99 / AU$89.95, although it’s discounted almost every time I see it on Amazon, and has been available for less than $50 / £40 / AU$65 in the past. Again, that is a ridiculously good price for such a practical model with brilliant waterproofing, well-balanced sound, and a fleshed-out feature suite.

So, is it worth spending more on the UE Wonderboom 4? I’m actually quite conflicted. I think that the answer is yes for anyone seeking out more punchy low-end sound and attractive looks. But the lower price of the Clip 5 is incredibly tempting, especially given its inclusion of a companion app and a carabiner for easy fastening.

OK, the Clip 5 hasn’t got quite as much power, and that low-end kick is a little less prominent. But it still sounds great, and when I look at the speaker as a whole package, I think that lower price gives it the tiniest of advantages over UE.

JBL Clip 5 vs Ultimate Ears Wonderboom 4: verdict

It’s very tough to pick between these two, but as I suggested in the value section, I think the JBL Clip 5 just about stands as my overall winner. It just has a few too many one-ups on its UE rival, like a convenient companion app, a practical carabiner design, and Auracast connectivity. It’s also ultra-cheap, but still sounds great, which is no mean feat.

Having said that, I think the Wonderboom 4 sounds great too – I just wish it had a few more features. It’s an awesome mini model, and if you’re more of a bass-head, I’d perhaps pick this over the Clip 5. In truth, I expect you’ll love either of these speakers, no matter which one you opt for.

But what do you think? Did I make the right call? Do you want to share your experience with either of these models? I’d be interested to hear your thoughts, so let me know down in the comments.

Philips Fidelio FA3: Two-minute review

I don’t often think ‘this is too good to be true’ when confronted with the details of an audio product’s make-up, but a glance at the spec sheet accompanying the Philips Fidelio FA3 made me double-take.

The Fidelio FA3 is an active wireless speaker system that can connect its speakers together either wirelessly or via a cable, that has high-end Bluetooth connectivity along with a fistful of physical inputs to handle hi-res content, that is controllable by an extremely extensive app, has Auracast functionality in order to become part of a multi-speaker set-up, and uses a lot of recycled material in its construction, with full-range frequency response. For $399 / £349 / AU$499? Really?

Then the system comes out of its packaging and the price still seems like it might be a misprint compared to most of the best wireless speakers. It’s nicely made and finished, looks and feels good, and arrives with a physical remote control to augment the app functionality – it even has grilles that attach magnetically to its high-gloss cabinets.

No, the slight ‘wedge’ shape that angles the speaker’s drivers upwards rather than straight ahead isn’t as useful in all circumstances as Philips obviously thinks it is – but still, the FA3 seems to have an awful lot going for it.

And that’s the case where sound is concerned, too. The Philips is a positive and quite forthright listen, with plenty of detail available in most areas of the frequency range and a very enjoyable facility with soundstaging and dynamic response. It allows itself to get carried away where low-frequency response is concerned, though, and its over-egged bass presence makes for a rather lop-sided, bottom-heavy presentation.

If that low-end enthusiasm could be dialled back a little, perhaps to be replaced with a more subtle and detailed low-frequency attitude instead, the FA3 could really go places. As it is, the Ruark MR1 Mk3 remains our favorite option in this kind of price range, even it's not quite as impressively specced.

Philips Fidelio FA3 review: Price & release date

• $399 / £349 / AU$499
• Released in January 2026
• Originally announced in September 2025

The Philips Fidelio FA3 wireless active speaker system is on sale now, and in the United Kingdom it costs £349. In the United States it sells for $399 or thereabouts, while in Australia it goes for something like AU$499.

This puts it in line with a lot of single-box wireless speakers, such as the JBL Authentics 200 – and a bit cheaper than the Sonos Era 300. But these are stereo speakers, and when it comes to the best stereo speakers in this price range, they're usually passive or not as quite well-equipped as this when it comes to features and options.

Philips Fidelio FA3 review: Features

• Bluetooth 5.4 LE Audio with LC3 and LDAC codec support
• Auracast-enabled for multi-speaker connectivity
• 24bit/96kHz via HDMI ARC and digital optical inputs

The specification of the Fidelio FA3 would be perfectly acceptable in a product costing a great deal more than this. To understand what Philips has included for the asking price is to be properly impressed.

The FA3 speakers are a two-way design, with a 25mm titanium dome tweeter above a 127mm glass-fiber mid/bass driver at the front, and a small reflex port venting towards the top of the rear of the cabinet.

Philips says this arrangement is good for a frequency response of 40Hz - 40 kHz — which, if it’s anything like accurate, is very impressive from such a relatively modest arrangement.

This is an active system, which means both speakers require power. After that, it’s very much a ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ speaker arrangement — the rear of the secondary speaker features just a coaxial input for a wired connection to its partner in addition to the reflex port and its power socket.

The primary speaker, though, adds a USB-C slot (which can be used for playback and for servicing), a digital optical input, an HDMI ARC connection, and a line-level analog input on stereo RCA sockets.

In addition, the primary speaker is where Bluetooth pairing takes place — the FA3 features Bluetooth 5.4 LE Audio connectivity and is compatible with SBC, AAC, LC3 and LDAC codecs. The system also features Auracast technology, which means it can easily become part of a multi-speaker system if given appropriate partners to work with.

As well as via a coaxial cable, the speakers can also be connected to each other wirelessly using a 2.4GHz wireless connection. Regardless of the method of connection between the speakers, though, the digital-to-analog conversion circuitry operates at a native 24bit/96kHz resolution, and anything that’s coming in via HDMI ARC, digital optical or USB-C that’s of higher resolution will be downsampled to 24bit/96kHz.

The ability to wirelessly connect a pair of speakers and still enjoy authentically high-resolution sound is not all that common, and rarer still in this area of the market. Streams coming in via Bluetooth using the LDAC codec will be served up at its maximum 990kbps resolution.

No matter the resolution of the stuff you’re listening to, it’s given the benefit of 50 watts of Class D amplification per channel. Philips is claiming a THD (total harmonic distortion) figure of less than 1%.

• Features score: 5 / 5

Philips Fidelio FA3 review: Sound quality

• Direct and full-scale presentation
• Low-frequency response is a blunt and oversized instrument
• Somehow able to sound loud even when playing quietly

If you’ve come for an assertive, positive sound that’s delivered at significant scale, stick around. The Philips Fidelio FA3 has you covered in quite some style.

No matter if you’re listening to something that sounds like a glorified demo (Boys Don’t Cry by The Cure, for example) or that’s dressed up to the nines (Nuits Sonores by Floating Points, say), the FA3 take it by the scruff of the neck and serve it up in the most direct and unequivocal manner.

Their fundamental character is confident, and they are capable of generating a large and quite nicely defined soundstage on which the action can occur. The Philips seem to genuinely revel in big dynamic shifts in attack or intensity, and are more than capable of summoning the sort of energy and momentum that makes for a lively and positive presentation.

The tweeter does fine work in delivering bright, crisp and detailed high frequencies that carry enough substance to balance out their undoubted bite. There’s plenty of variation in treble sounds and, even though the FA3 somehow contrive to sound loud even if they’re playing at quite low levels, the brilliance of the top end here is never problematic.

There’s scant suggestion of hardness or glassiness, even if you choose to listen at quite oppressive volume levels (and don’t for a moment doubt the Philips are capable of quite significant volume).

The handover to the bigger mid/bass driver is smooth, and the midrange is served up with a similarly careful attitude towards detail and variation as the top end demonstrates. There’s a stack of information made available regarding the tone and timbre of voices, and the FA3 are just as capable of teasing out the attitude and character in a voice as they are the minutiae of technique or texture.

Those more minor (but no less significant) dynamics of harmonic variation, those over- and undertones that exist either side of the fundamental, are put into quite convincing context, and the Philips are able to preserve a sense of singularity and togetherness from the very top end down towards the bottom of the midrange.

Beneath here, though, the speakers don’t so much ‘overplay their hand’ as seem to be engaged in a different game altogether. Low frequencies are overstated and overbearing, and exhibit less of the dexterity and variation that’s apparent further up the frequency range.

The quest for ‘punch’ seems a preoccupation, and the rather blunt and overstated nature of the bass response here makes for a lop-sided overall frequency response that seemingly prioritizes the low end at the expense of everything else.

This trait is obvious enough when listening to music, but if anything it’s even more apparent when listening to spoken word — especially with male voices. The moment the register of a speaking voice dips towards the bottom of the midrange and below, the bloom in that area of the frequency range becomes all too apparent.

The result is far from naturalistic, and it serves to undermine all the good work the FA3 does elsewhere in the frequency range.

It’s possible to mitigate this by dialing ‘bass’ response right back in the control app, but it doesn’t eradicate the issue — and it’s an issue that’s more apparent at lower volumes than it is at bigger levels.

Despite this rather pear-shaped frequency response, though, the Philips manage to express rhythms in a fairly convincing manner and somehow maintain a degree of momentum despite the drag those oversized bass sounds create.

• Sound quality score: 3.5 / 5

Philips Fidelio FA3 review: Design

• 170 x 303 x 211mm (WxHxD) per speaker
• 3.4kg per speaker
• Each cabinet features 45% RCS-certified recycled material

If you were considering the FA3 as a desktop audio system, I’d urge you to think again. Given the size of each speaker, you’d need a notably large and conspicuously tidy desktop to comfortably accommodate them — much better to consider this system for use on speaker stands or a shelf of appropriate depth.

The problem in this scenario, though, is that the cabinets are designed with a kind of ‘wedge’ foot integrated into the base which angles the speaker baffle so the drivers are firing slightly upwards rather than dead ahead. If the surface you’re putting them on is reasonably low, then this is definitely a good thing — it's somewhat common on desktop speakers.

But if you put them on stands or on a shelf that’s at a kind of regular shelf height, then the FA3 will be pointing above, rather than at, your ears. Unless you do all your listening while standing up, anyway.

The cabinets are very nicely built and finished, though, with gentle curves at each corner and that special sort of high-gloss black finish that’s very shiny and very keen to collect fingerprints.

They are supplied with magnetic grilles to cover the driver array if that’s your preference, and the plastic shell of each cabinet includes (deep breath) 45% RCS-certified recycled post-consumer acrylonitrile butadiene styrene in its construction.

• Design score: 4

Philips Fidelio FA3 review: Usability & setup

• Remote control handset included
• Philips Entertainment control app
• Physical controls on the primary speaker

To its credit, Philips has provided several options for taking control of the Fidelio FA3 — and each of them is reasonably well-implemented and reliable.

There’s a small and unremarkable remote control handset included in the packaging — it’s of quite hard plastic and has no backlighting. It doesn’t have quite enough buttons, either, since one button takes care of selecting the optical or the HDMI ARC input, another has to deal with selecting between USB-C and analog inputs, and a third chooses between Bluetooth and Auracast.

Still, it’s reliable enough, and the ability to raise, lower or mute the volume, play/pause, skip forwards or backwards, cycle through half-a-dozen EQ presets, and trim bass and treble independently of each other, is all very useful.

There are some controls on the rear of the primary speaker, too. These consist of a volume dial (which needs much too much turning to deliver any meaningful effect), a button to initiate wireless pairing between the speakers, a button to cycle through the inputs, and a power on/off switch.

You can exercise the greatest amount of control over the system, though, by using the Philips Entertainment app that’s free for iOS and Android. It offers playback control, those EQ presets (‘balanced’, ‘warm’, ‘bright’, ‘powerful’, ‘clear’ and ‘custom’, the last of which employs user-controllable ‘bass’ and ‘treble’ adjustment dials), enables you tell the primary speaker if it’s the left or right channel, and lets you dial through your input selection options.

It also gives access to a suite of ambient sound settings (everything from ‘ancient wind’ and ‘ocean’ to ‘bubbles’ and ‘sonar’) in case you’ve misplaced your collection of Brian Eno LPs. It can duplicate the layout of the remote control handset (except with a single button for each input, mercifully) and enables you to check for software updates too.

• Usability & setup score: 4.5 / 5

Philips Fidelio FA3 review: Value

• Big and powerful for the price
• Very well equipped and with a great app
• But the iffy bass pulls the down from being a bargain

Judged either by the size of its specification or by the size of the speakers themselves, there’s really no arguing with the value for money the Philips Fidelio FA3 represents — the sheer amount of glossy black finish your money buys is considerable all by itself.

It's reassuring to have a great app, too — it's something that companies often don't manage to achieve. If only the remote control was as neatly laid out.

The bottom-heavy nature of the sonic character you get for your outlay, though, is quite a bit more difficult to make a case for than the above.

• Value score: 3 / 5

Should I buy Philips Fidelio FA3?

Buy them if…

Don’t buy them if…

Philips Fidelio FA3 review: Also consider

How I tested the Philips Fidelio FA3

I connected the speakers together using their cable, but also wirelessly. I connected an Apple iPhone 14 Pro and a FiiO M15S digital audio player via Bluetooth, a Rega Apollo CD player via the digital optical input, an Apple MacBook Pro using the USB-C slot, and a Philips OLED806 television via the HDMI ARC socket.

I positioned them on the same equipment rack as the TV — I also used them on my desk (not for long, though; they’re pretty big when you put them on there) and on a pair of Custom Design speaker stands.

I listened to music streamed from Qobuz and Tidal apps, from my collection of compact discs, and to content from a Panasonic 4K Blu-ray player and Sony Playstation 5 connected to the TV.

• Read TechRadar's Reviews Guarantee
• First reviewed: February 2026

If you’re looking for a Bluetooth speaker that provides regimented bass and impressive fidelity, while still remaining pleasingly portable, then a mid-sized model is probably the path you’ll want to take.

In my search for the best Bluetooth speakers, I’ve tested a number of excellent middleweight options, but there are two that really stick out to me. Those being the JBL Charge 6 and the Marshall Middleton II. Both of these are phenomenal sounding, brilliantly built, and feature filled, offering just about anything you could want for listening at home or on the go.

But which one of these models is better? Well, I’ve spent hours with each model, comparing them directly to find out which is the best value for money, and which I’d recommend to all of you out there. Interested to know which model will come out on top? Then make sure to scroll on down. Oh, and I’d be interested to know whether you agree with my conclusion or not, so let me know any thoughts in the comments.

JBL Charge 6 vs Marshall Middleton II: price and availability

The JBL Charge 6 released in April 2025, and comes with a list price of $199.95 / £169.99 / AU$229. However, I have seen it going for less on a few occasions – it dropped below $130 in December 2025, for instance, and is selling for £125 on Amazon UK even as I type this.

If you’re looking to buy the Marshall Middleton II instead, you can expect to spend a fair bit more. It typically sells for $329.99 / £259.99 / AU$499, and sales are few and far between – perhaps unsurprising given its more recent July 2025 launch. I’ll speak more about the reasons for that, and whether it’s worth the increased cost down in the Value section.

Both of these models are available in a collection of colorways. There’s a Black and Brass or Cream variant for the Middleton II, as well as Red, Purple, Camo, Blue – among other options – for the JBL Charge 6.

JBL Charge 6 vs Marshall Middleton II: specs

JBL Charge 6 vs Marshall Middleton II: features

You get plenty of useful features on both the JBL Charge 6 and the Marshall Middleton II, although both offer a pretty distinct set of options.

For instance, the JBL Charge 6 supports USB-C audio passthrough, which opens up 24bit/96kHz audio quality – something that a lot of rivals don’t supply. You can get high-resolution playback from the Middleton II as well, but it employs a 3.5mm port instead of USB-C data transfer. This is a nice option, but USB-C is so much more ubiquitous now, and feels like the more practical route.

EQ options look a little different on these two as well. The Charge 6 has a seven-band custom equalizer, as well as various genre-related presets, making it an awesome pick for all listeners. The Middleton II only has a five-band equalizer, and its set of presets is smaller – it’s still absolutely fine, don’t get me wrong, but there’s more customizability with JBL.

It may seem like Marshall’s down a bit right now, but it does take the edge over JBL in a couple of areas.

First of all, it serves up superior battery life. You get 30 hours out of this thing, which is absolutely fantastic for a speaker with this much power and scale. Sure, you can get 28 hours from the Charge 6, but that’s only with PlayTime Boost on, which will reduce audio fidelity. Without this, you’re getting 24 hours – still very respectable, but inferior to the Middleton II all the same.

On top of that, the Middleton II has a built-in mic, handily enabling you to take hands-free calls. That’s something JBL decided to skip on the Charge 6, which may not suit the more avid chatters among you.

Having said that, the Middleton II does omit some of the features I love on other Marshall speakers, including placement compensation – a calibration option that optimizes the speakers’ sound for your listening environment. The Charge 6 doesn't have this either, although it does come with AI Sound Boost tech, which analyzes audio content in real time and optimizes output to reduce distortion – pretty cool.

Both models also support Auracast for multi-speaker connectivity, although you can pair two Charge 6 models the traditional way in order to access stereo sound instead. Unfortunately, the Middleton II doesn’t let you create a standard stereo pair, which is a shame, but not a total dealbreaker given it can output in stereo via a single unit.

This is a very close contest overall, and it’s really hard to separate the two. But as much as I love the Middleton II’s 30-hour battery life, I still think JBL offers a healthy dollop of playtime. And although the Marshall does have a built-in mic, JBL’s AI Sound Boost tech, better EQ options, and inclusion of USB-C audio passthrough just about give it the edge for me.

JBL Charge 6 vs Marshall Middleton II: sound quality

This is where things get interesting. See, the JBL Charge 6 and Middleton II sound pretty different, although both are very strong performers in their own right.

The Charge 6 is JBL all over. You get direct, powerful, yet beautiful audio in one rough ‘n’ ready package, with clean bass, rich mids, and expressive highs. Despite its 45W maximum power output, the Charge 6 punches well above its weight – especially in the low end. I was wowed by its regimented yet large low-frequency presence – it’s a considerable step up on the JBL Flip 7, which already plates up sumptuous bass.

With a USB-C connection, you can also experience surprisingly intricate detail levels on the Charge 6, with subtle percussion and vocal quirks easy to make out. Combine that with its effective handling of dynamics and genuinely impressive soundstage, and you’re onto a winner with JBL’s midweight audio companion.

But for me, the Marshall Middleton II takes things to new heights. In fairness to the Charge 6, Marshall’s rival is a lot more powerful, and packs in 80W of power across its two woofers and two tweeters. But the Middleton II really does make the best of what it’s working with, serving up a clear, intent-filled sound that’s instantly gripping.

When listening to deep house tracks, the Middleton II managed pumping, agile bass without a hitch. In smooth jazz songs, charismatic leading sax and subtle keys were ultra-clear in the mix. And even in energetic electronic tunes, high-pitched percussion never sounded harsh or uncontrolled – even at higher volumes.

What really sets this model apart from the Charge 6, though, is its impeccable stereo sound. For my review, I tuned in to Foxey Lady by Jimi Hendrix – an artist who loved to play around with the stereo field to create immersive listening experiences. And with the Middleton II, vocals on the left and percussion on the right were both expertly positioned, creating an engrossingly spatial impression.

The Charge 6 downmixes stereo content to mono, unless you have a second unit to pair it with, so if you’re after a more nuanced presentation, the Middleton II should be your go-to. It can also go louder, and some elements like instrument separation seem superior on Marshall’s model, so I’d give it the nod in the audio department.

JBL Charge 6 vs Marshall Middleton II: design

These two are worlds apart across multiple aspects of design – especially if we’re talking about looks.

Just like its sound, the JBL Charge 6’s appearance is incredibly on-brand. It’s a very rugged model, with a hardy fabric exterior, drop-proof build, and a trusty carry handle. Is it the most stylish speaker out there? No.

Despite coming in a range of enticing colorways, the aesthetic screams substance over style – it’s a reliable cylindrical audio companion, but not one that’s oozing with class and luxury.

It’s a different story for the Marshall Middleton II, though. This model is a feast for the eyes, featuring gorgeous golden details, a faux-leather exterior, and an attractive speaker grille. It’s got a real retro feel to it, and its amp-inspired aesthetic is timeless. If we were judging this on looks alone, the Middleton II would clear its JBL rival without question.

But there’s more to a speaker's design than looks alone. If we’re talking about more practical elements, the playing field begins to even out a bit. For instance, the JBL Charge 6 is IP68 rated, meaning that it’s fully dustproof, and capable of surviving a 30 minute dunking under a meter and a half of water. Pretty impressive, right?

Sure, the Middleton II has a similar IP67 rating – which means its waterproof, but can’t be submerged as deeply as the Charge 6 – but there are other ways in which JBL surpasses it. The most obvious for me is its portability. The Middleton II is seriously hefty for a speaker of its size, and doesn’t even come with a proper handle, unlike its larger cousin, the Marshall Kilburn III.

Meanwhile, the Charge 6 is considerably lighter, comes with a handle, and is generally much more portable. So, when it comes to design there’s really not a lot in it. The convenient nature of the Charge 6 is very appealing indeed, and it's built to a high standard. But for me, the premium look of the Middleton II makes Marshall’s speaker the top pick, even if it has slightly inferior waterproofing and a bit more bulk.

JBL Charge 6 vs Marshall Middleton II: value

This one’s been too close to call so far, but we’ve finally arrived at the most important category of all: value for money.

The Middleton II is, admittedly, a more premium model. It’s constructed from more fancy materials. It's got more drivers and power than its JBL rival. And yes, it’s got a higher price to match. Typically, this thing will set you back $329.99 / £259.99 / AU$499. That’s a lot of cash for a midweight model like the Middleton II, and as it’s still fairly new, there’s been little in the way of sales yet.

Does it earn that price-tag? I’m sort of on the fence. It’s an amazing-sounding speaker – better than the Charge 6 for me – and it’s dripping with style. But you’re still shelling out a lot of cash. A similar amount to what you’d need for the Charge 6’s larger cousin, the JBL Xtreme 4. Its slightly awkward size and considerable heft also prove to be a thorn in the Middleton II’s side – the speaker’s got a lot going for it, but it’s perhaps not the best value for money option on the market.

The same can’t be said for the JBL Charge 6. This Bluetooth speaker offers much of the good stuff we covered on the Middleton II – it sounds fantastic, it's well protected against the elements, and its build quality is commendable.

However, it’s way cheaper, typically coming in at $199.95 / £169.99 / AU$229 (but often on sale for less). Sure, it’s not as stylish, but it makes up for that with a superior feature-set, cementing it as the ultimate value pick in this clash.

JBL Charge 6 vs Marshall Middleton II: verdict

This is one close battle – perhaps even closer than I imagined in the first place. But as I mentioned in the Value section, the JBL Charge 6’s impeccable value for money just about gives it the edge for me. It supplies superb sound, an awesome IP68 dust and waterproof rating, and its portability is top-drawer.

There’s still a case for the Middleton II, though. If you need a mid-sized speaker that screams luxury and has some unbelievably good stereo sound, it’s a great pick.

For me, its slightly larger cousin, the Marshall Kilburn III, is a better value option. It’s priced surprisingly similarly to the Middleton II, but sounds better, looks classier, and has a handle for easy transportation. But that will cost far more than the JBL Charge 6, which comes out as the winner in its close-fought contest with the Middleton II.

Fluance Ri91: Two-minute review

The Fluance Ri91 floorstanding speakers are the third pair of Fluance's line-up that I’ve reviewed here at TechRadar with each model sounding better than the last – I don't mind sharing that this testing has turned me into a bit of a fan.

The Fluance Ri91 represent a modernized addition to the competitors for our list of the best stereo speakers – like the Fluance Ri71, they are a step up for the company since they include support for Bluetooth including aptX, plus an HDMI ARC input. Add in the reasonable price for what they are, and they're very tempting indeed.

There are issues with the Fluance Ri91, but they're minimal. Sure, the sound is a bit mid-focused, but most people looking for pleasing audio will appreciate this fact (and they sound great overall anyway). The lack of a phono preamp isn't a dealbreaker, and is easily remedied if needed.

The only real concern I have is about build quality, because the original pair of these speakers I received had an issue with the HDMI port (quite a major one: it didn’t work).

That said, the Fluance Ri91 speakers come with a warranty, and the replacement pair the company sent presented no issue during review.

Considering how expensive floorstanding speakers can get, I think these speakers at $799 (about £640 / AU$1,270) are very easy to recommend for any music lover or budding audiophile.

Fluance Ri91 review: Price and release date

• $799 (about £640 / AU$1,270)
• Released in March 2025

Being the big brother of the Fluance Ri71 I recently reviewed, the Fluance Ri91 is appropriately a bit more expensive, but thoroughly reasonable at $799 (about £640 / AU$1,270).

While the Fluance Ri71 is available in both the US and UK, the Ri91 reviewed here seems to only be available in the US.

At least these floorstanding speakers are available through a number of retailers like Amazon, Macy’s, and Walmart, as well as directly from the brand itself.

Fluance Ri91 review: Specs

Fluance Ri91 review: Features

• Comes with HDMI ARC input
• Bluetooth supports aptX HD
• Doesn’t come with phono preamp or Wi-Fi streaming

The feature set of these sorts of speakers – even active ones – is going to be pretty limited compared to what you find in the best soundbars, despite the addition of an HDMI port. But that’s because they’re not trying to do the same thing. The features here are focused on convenience and helping getting the best stereo sound possible.

Regarding convenience, it first should be noted that the Fluance Ri91 are an active set of floorstanding speakers, meaning that they don’t need an external receiver for power or connections. Also on the convenience front is the HDMI-ARC input, which is new for Fluance on the Ri91 and the Ri71 bookshelf speakers that were released at the same time.

There's Bluetooth 5.0 and aptX HD support for wireless streaming, with the allowing transmission of higher-res audio. That’s greatly appreciated for those using hi-fi-level streaming services – but not that there's no Wi-Fi, or for the highest-res support, except for wiring in the old-fashioned way.

These speakers pump out 150 watts of class D power using two 6.5-inch woven glass drivers and a 28x35mm AMT in place of a traditional tweeter. There’s no subwoofer, but there is a bass port at the bottom of each speaker cabinet.

All the connectivity is on the back of the active speaker, which is the right one by default, though you can hold the mute button down for three seconds and switch the configuration. Besides the ARC-supported HDMI port, there are also two RCA inputs, and a subwoofer out, along with the speaker wire hookups.

Lastly, while you can (and should) connect one of the best turntables to these speakers, the Fluance Ri91 do not come with a built-in phono preamp, so you’ll need to make sure your record player has one built in (or get an external one) to make sure the signal going to the speaker is loud enough.

• Features score: 4.5 / 5

Fluance Ri91 review: Sound quality

• Sound great when turned up and a little muffled when not
• Somewhat mid-focused
• Better for music than for movies

The Fluance Ri91 sound very good. And for any audiophiles out there, they sound like what you would expect from floorstanding speakers that cost about $800. They’re not going to wipe the floor with speakers that cost the price of a new car, but they’re good enough to blow away people that are not in the audiophile world, or are new to it.

I played all sorts of artists to test them, from John Coltrane to Kendrick Lamar to Smashing Pumpkins. I also listened to music from the ’60s and ’70s. After all my listening, a few things became clear.

First, as somewhat behemoth speakers, they don’t really come alive until you turn the volume up, in some instances even sounding a tiny bit muffled when lower. Also, when I was initially listening at lower volumes, I felt like I wasn’t getting a lot of low end. Turning them up fixed all these issues.

The sound was expansive when loud, with plenty of low-end, though you might want to add a sub if you listen to a lot of Hip Hop or EDM, as some songs didn’t translate as well. The high-end was clear and detailed, and the mid-range was rich, though it is a bit upfront.

Unfortunately, there’s no EQ for the mids, so you have to turn up the treble and bass a little if that bothers you (I prefer to cut the mids a bit when dealing with this problem, but obviously couldn't here).

I also used the Fluance Ri91 for some movie watching and gaming. The sound quality is there, but being a more traditional stereo setup makes this not as ideal for the immersive home theater experience.

With music, I can feel the wide stereo soundstage with accurate imaging when the speakers are correctly set up. With movies, it can feel a little one dimensional, especially at lower volumes.

Now, that’s not to detract from the Fluance Ri91, as they shine for a more traditional listening experience, and that’s what they’re really meant for. They do work well enough for movies and gaming, but using them right after testing a surround-sound system really highlights that these are speakers for listening to music first.

• Sound quality score: 4 / 5

Fluance Ri91 review: Design

• Tall and hefty as floorstanders
• Good connections and controls on one speaker
• Has EQ controls on remote

The Fluance Ri91 are fairly imposing, standing at just under 42 inches tall. And with a weight of about 40 lbs per speaker, they’re hefty as well. It’s a good thing that they look good (available in walnut, black, or white) since these aren’t the kind of speakers you can tuck away discreetly.

There’s a Bluetooth pairing button on the back, and two additional controls on the active speaker, one being the power switch. The other is a volume dial that sits atop the back of the speaker that can also be pressed in to change inputs.

But you’re more likely to use the included remote for any adjusting. The remote is pretty straight forward with all the usual stuff like volume controls, power, input, etc. But it also includes a Treble and Bass Boost and Cut that’s helpful for fine tuning the audio a little bit.

My only real issue with the Fluance Ri91 are some concerns about quality assurance. Not only were the styrofoam packing the speakers came in disintegrating, but the HDMI input didn’t work in my first pair, so I had to request another test unit.

The speakers were promptly replaced for me, and come with a two-year warranty for regular buyers.

• Design score: 4 / 5

Fluance Ri91 review: Setup and usability

• Setup is simple and straightforward
• Positioning the speakers takes some time but is worth it
• Using them is fairly intuitive

The functional setup of the Fluance Ri91 is very straightforward. Take each speaker out of the box, connect the active one to power, and connect the two speakers together with the included speaker wire. Then pop in the batteries for the remote and connect whatever sources you want. Flip the power switch and you’re good to go.

Of course, you should correctly set up the speakers to get the best sound and that can take a little time (and a measuring tape) – I found that you needed to be careful with positioning them next to walls. But it doesn’t take that long and it’s worth it.

Using the Fluance Ri91 is just as simple. The included remote is not all that complicated, and the color-coded LED indicator on the active speaker not only lets me know what source I’m on, but will flash when certain settings are reached, such as the mid, low, or high point for EQ settings.

• Setup and usability score: 5 / 5

Fluance Ri91 review: Value

• These are Fluance’s most expensive speakers
• Some other quality options at the same price
• The Ri91 are more feature-heavy than the competition

It's interesting to compare the Fluance Ri91 with the company’s previous floorstanding entry, the Ai81, which is a little cheaper at $599, versus to $799 for the Ri91. The Ri91 replaces the silk dome tweeter of the Ai81 with an AMT one, not to mention also includes an HDMI port.

Interestingly, the Ai81 reaches down to 30Hz instead of 40Hz like the Ri91, so does have a little more bass without adding a subwoofer. On the flipside, the Ri91’s 30kHz upper range is more impressive than the 20kHz of the Ai81 and is something I value more than the deeper bass.

Since Fluance generally fits into that budget-premium range, the Fluance Ri91’s price tag is about what one would expect. They’re not in the thousands like most boutique audio brands, but have some competition at the same price, such as the Q Acoustics M40 HD. The Q Acoustics were a little more expensive when released in 2024, but go for the same amount now, not to mention are also available in the UK and Australia.

Plus, the two products stack up fairly well against each other, though the Fluance Ri91 do include an HDMI port, 50 more watts of power, and a wider frequency response, probably thanks in part to those AMT tweeters.

• Value score: 4.5 / 5

Should I buy the Fluance Ri91 speakers?

Buy them if…

Don’t buy them if…

Fluance Ri91 review: Also consider

How I tested the Fluance Ri91

• Used regularly for a few weeks
• Listened to all kinds of audio
• Tested the various controls and ports

I used the Fluance Ri91 for a few weeks at home, listening to all sorts of genres of music – Hip Hop, EDM, Top 40 Pop, Rock, Jazz, and Folk, among others – to get a better feel for these speakers. They were also tested with some TV and computer games. I tested the various controls and ports as well.

I’ve tested a lot of tech gear over the years from laptops to keyboards and speakers, and so have been able to use my expertise towards giving an honest and fair opinion, not to mention a critical eye, to any product I test.

• First reviewed: February 2025
• Read TechRadar's reviews guarantee

JBL Boombox 4: two-minute review

The JBL Boombox 4 is the latest high-end option in JBL’s popular consumer Bluetooth speaker lineup, and so has some pretty big shoes to fill. Its predecessor, the JBL Boombox 3 Wi-Fi has become a mainstay recommendation for anyone searching for one of the best Bluetooth speakers on audio forums or social media thanks to its durable design, impressive sound, and decent level of portability.

All of these qualities remain true in this slightly more expensive follow-up, so the biggest question is whether the JBL Boombox 4 is actually an upgrade. For my money, the answer is yes.

Where the Boombox 3 offered a three-way system with a dedicated subwoofer, the Boombox 4 relies on a two-way system that replaces the subwoofer with a passive radiator. On paper this might seem like a bit of a downgrade, but in the real world the Boombox 4 sounds just as clear as the 3 Wi-Fi, though actually enhanced by noticeably richer bass.

It’s also significantly louder, capable of reaching up to an eardrum decimating 105dB – that’s about as loud as your average car horn and more than enough to ensure it can be heard across even large outdoor venues. Just be warned that the sound starts to hollow out the closer you get to these absurd volumes, though that’s to be expected in a speaker of this relatively modest 20 x 10 x 8inch / 51 x 26 x 21cm size.

I’m sure some audiophiles will argue the Boombox 4 reproduces sound less faithfully than the Boombox 3 Wi-Fi overall and that some of the mid-range is sacrificed for this loud and booming tuning. To that I would say go buy a Bose Soundlink Max, and steer clear of a product line that’s explicitly designed for party settings where loudness and bass are king.

Unlike the Boombox 3 Wi-Fi, there’s also no audible difference in performance when the Boombox 4 is unplugged (on paper you do lose about 5W of power in each of the two woofers, though I would challenge anyone to notice without a spectrogram) which makes it a more practical pick for events.

Adding to that practically is the fact that the JBL Boombox 4 is also more futureproof than any older model to date. It features a user replaceable battery (make sure you buy the JBL Battery 600, as there are a few similar looking models on the official website) so you don’t need to worry about your expensive speaker becoming e-waste after a few years thanks to battery degradation.

JBL even now sells battery charging cradles that allow you to keep a topped up cell on hand as a useful spare. You’re also getting Auracast support, letting you pair it up easily with any compatible models, such as the recently released JBL Grip or JBL Flip 7.

Are all these changes enough for existing Boombox 3 Wi-Fi owners to justify running out to drop $549.95 / £449.99 /AU$699.95 on a new speaker? I don’t think so given the lofty price tag, but if you’re buying for the first time, then this new version is a clear, and forward-thinking, choice.

JBL Boombox 4 review: price and release date

• Costs $549.95 / £449.99 /AU$699.95
• Launched in September 2025
• Has already dropped by almost $100 / £100

The JBL Boombox 4 launched in September 2025 and retails for $549.95 / £449.99 /AU$699.95 officially. That’s about $100 / £100 more than you can find the older JBL Boombox 3 Wi-Fi right now, though you should note that the Boombox 4 has already received some significant discounts at times.

Indeed, at the time of writing it can be yours for $449.95 / £355.99 via the official JBL website, with the potential for even better deals at retailers like Amazon – this goes great way towards close the gap between the two models.

At similar prices, the JBL Boombox 4 is the best bet as it boasts newer features like the Auracast support, plus louder sound, richer bass, and that user replaceable battery for longevity.

The JBL Boombox 4 is available in three colorways: the green camo inspired Squad, a cheerful Blue, and rather basic Black

JBL Boombox 4 review: specs

JBL Boombox 4 review: features

• Two bass boost modes with basic lighting
• Playtime boost for extended battery life
• Auracast support and robust companion app

The JBL Boombox 4 is loaded with all the bells and whistles that you would expect from a modern JBL speaker. There’s Bluetooth 5.4 support, plus the option to use a USB-C cable for lossless audio playback (or even charge your phone in a pinch).

It’s got Auracast with a pairing button to activate the feature, which allows you to easily pair (nearly) countless compatible speakers together. There are also two optional bass boost modes, Deep and Punchy, toggled via a dedicated button or in the JBL Portable app.

Although Punchy is definitely my preference of the two, I tended to stay away from either, because while they do increase bass noticeably, they tend to overpower the sound leading to a much less pleasant listening experience.

With Deep bass activated, the JBL logos on the two massive passive radiators on each end of the speaker illuminate in a bright pulsing orange which then turns white when Punchy is enabled. It’s a lovely effect, but I do wish there was a way to turn it on independently of these bass modes, or even just the option to customize the colors of either. You can at least disable it entirely if you wish.

Aside from your usual power, Bluetooth pairing, play, pause, and volume controls, the rest of the major features are accessible via the excellent JBL Portable app. This includes a range of equalizer settings plus a screen to create your own using a seven-band EQ.

If battery life is a concern, you can turn on Playtime Boost – a feature also found in other JBL speakers, and that my colleague Harry Padoan strongly recommends. It enables you to squeeze out an extra few hours of playtime, but in this case it leaves the Boombox 4 sounding incredibly hollow, with little bass and a totally obliterated mid and high range. It's good to have just in case, but you’re probably not going to want to use this unless you’re really desperate.

This is especially true given the already superb battery performance of the speaker. JBL quotes a battery life of up to 28 hours, though I was able to push it above the 35 hour mark on lower (but still very listenable) volume,s which is impressive.

If you slap the volume up on max and turn on a bass boost mode, you can expect a figure around the five to 10-hour range depending on your choice of music – enough to last for the bulk of a party and trigger a few noise complaints.

• Features score: 5/5

JBL Boombox 4 review: sound quality

• Clear sound with booming bass
• Sweet spot below 70% volume
• Prone to distortion in certain instances

For the most part, the JBL Boombox 4 delivers sublime sound – especially if you keep it below around 70% volume (that’s still plenty loud enough for a party unless you particularly loathe your neighbors, mind you).

The energetic percussion of Readymade by Ado packs a serious punch without diminishing the quality of the dramatic vocals, which come clearly with an impressive amount of detail, or the treble. The hectic Mirror Tune by Zutomayo demonstrates strong instrument separation in spite of the bold bass, with a rich and full sound that is a delight to listen to on repeat. Japanese hip-hop anthem Harenchi by Chanmina produced a delightfully rich sub-bass while simultaneously maintaining plenty of low-end detail.

I initially feared that more gentle tracks like Cö Shu Nie’s undress me and Artificial Vampire would be spoiled by overemphasized bass, but thankfully found them to be delightfully bouncy and detailed throughout.

As you start taking it louder, the sound does begin to strain, as the drivers reach their limits. It’s most noticeable above the 70% mark, where the mid-range becomes thin in the mix, and the treble relatively tinny, but this is a reasonable compromise when you’re pushing a speaker of this size this loud.

Importantly, the bass remains strong regardless of your chosen volume level, meaning that this is going to be a crowd-pleaser if you need to crank it up to fill a large space.

Unfortunately, the experience is not completely perfect. One track I tested, the recently released Butterfly by Wednesday Campanella, seems noticeably distorted in the lower treble, leading to an unpleasant sibilant sound that grated on the ears.

There is some sibilance present in the original track, but the JBL Boombox 4 definitely brings it to the fore more than any other audio device that I’ve tested – even other Bluetooth speaker models by JBL.

The cause of this is unclear and, hopping online, I soon was able to find a few users complaining of a similar effect in a handful of other songs by a range of artists. To be clear, this is not a widespread issue across my music, and I only noticed it occurring in one song out of the hundreds that I tested, so I’m not docking too many points for it, but it is unfortunate that the listening experience falls just short of flawless across the board.

Hopefully it’s the result of some kind of software issue, and will be remedied in a future update.

• Sound quality score: 4.5/5

JBL Boombox 4 review: design

• Hefty look and feel
• Classic rugged JBL design
• Easy to use controls

It’s impossible to fault the JBL Boombox 4 on an aesthetic front if, like me, you’re already a big fan of the brand’s now iconic rugged designs.

This speaker is a behemoth, with an overall shape reminiscent of a handheld battering ram. It’s clad in a thick fabric that’s remarkably resistant to cuts and grazes, with a massive handle on top. Despite being constructed primarily from plastic, with just a small strip of metal on top, the handle feels very solid with some pleasant textures that make the speaker a little easier to haul around.

Although lighter than the Boombox 3 Wi-Fi, which weighed a hefty 14.7lbs / 6.7kg, the Boombox 4 is still quite heavy at 13lbs / 5.89kg, so it’s not one that you’re going to want to carry around too frequently even resting on your shoulder in classic boombox fashion. Still, it’s portable enough to bring to a party or out to the park.

Each end of the Boombox 4 features a massive passive radiator surrounded by inches of thick rubber. I haven’t consciously dropped my review model from a great height, but this seems like it would be enough to provide some decent protection if the worst was to happen. Each radiator features a JBL exclamation mark logo, which illuminates with LED lighting when the speaker’s bass boost modes are enabled.

On the bottom there’s a flat rubber base flanked by two grippy strips. Look closely and you’ll see the screws necessary for removing the battery – a slightly fiddly affair, though this shouldn’t be too surprising given the speaker’s IP68 waterproof and dustproof rating, meaning it can take a full dunking in a pool.

On the rear of the speaker is a small rubber flap that hides the charging port to use with the included power adapter and a USB-C port for lossless audio. You can’t charge the speaker via USB-C, though you can use it as a power bank for your other devices if you need to.

In terms of controls, you get the usual JBL affair of play/pause, volume up and down, plus power, Bluetooth pairing, and Auracast. This is in addition to a button with a ‘B’ icon that toggles the bass boost modes. It’s all very intuitive and easy to use, and the most important buttons are illuminated to help you see them at night.

• Design score: 5/5

JBL Boombox 4 review: value

• A high-end party speaker
• You’re paying for the design
• Still, good value if you have the budget

There’s no getting around the fact that the JBL Boombox 4 is expensive. At $549.95 / £449.99 / AU$699.95, it’s significantly pricier than more budget-oriented competitors such as the Tribit Stormbox Blast 2 and even JBL’s own previous generation model, the JBL Boombox 3 Wi-Fi.

Of course, you are paying a premium for the quality of the design and construction, not to mention the excellent software, so those on a strict budget are better saving their cash and settling for something else.

If you are willing to splash out that much, or manage to find the speaker at one of its many attractive discounts, you’re going to be very happy with what you’re getting for your cash.

• Value score: 4/5

Should you buy the JBL Boombox 4?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

JBL Boombox 4 review: also consider