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We Tested the Latest Bluetooth Speakers


The joy of a good Bluetooth speaker is that you can listen to music anywhere without sacrificing great sound quality. But not all Bluetooth speakers are good Bluetooth speakers. Some are so fragile you’re nervous to actually take them out of your house, which defeats the purpose. Others sound great — with deep bass and clear vocals — but they have a short battery life or an overly complicated setup process. And the market is saturated with different shapes, sizes, and sounds, giving you hundreds of options to choose from at a variety of prices.To get more news about bluetooth bike speaker, you can visit magicyclebike.com official website.

As the Strategist’s resident tech writer, I’ve researched dozens of models and tested 14 Bluetooth speakers over the past six months. Some of the best Bluetooth speakers I tested are also the simplest. You tap that power button and you’re off to the races. But there are others with such good sound quality — or at such a low price — that they’re worth compromising on ease of use. Use the links here to hop to what you’re looking for, or scroll down to learn more about how I tested.
What we’re looking for
Weight and portability: Bluetooth speakers are mostly designed around the idea that you may want to bring them to different places, whether you’re blasting music in the back of your truck, at a campsite, or on your desk. The speaker’s weight will help determine how easy it is to carry around. For context, most earbuds weigh little more than a stack of pens, and a pair of AirPods in a case weigh about 0.14 ounces. The weight of a Bluetooth speaker varies more widely; I tested many under one pound, but some can weigh up to about three pounds. I’ve found that more rugged speakers weigh more, and smaller home-office speakers weigh less. For my purposes the ideal weight is about one pound; that’s big enough to project a good sound in a variety of spaces but small enough to throw into a bag for a trip. When choosing speaker, consider how you plan to use it: Will it sit in a corner most of the time, or do you intend to bring it on outdoor adventures?
Dust and water resistance: A Bluetooth speaker is the Swiss Army knife of speakers — and if you are taking your Bluetooth speaker on frequent adventures, it has to be able to withstand some bumps and bruises. I’m not saying it should take a beating like Bruce Willis in Die Hard, but it shouldn’t shatter like a piece of glass when it hits the floor. All of the speakers I tested were either waterproof or dustproof or both, but in some cases they were only slightly resistant to water or dust.

Each speaker has an Ingress Protection rating, which tells you how much protection it has against water or solids like dust. The higher the IP rating, the more resistant it is. The IP rating sometimes has two numbers like IP57; the first indicates how the product is protected against solids like dust, and the second indicates how the product is protected against liquids. Sometimes products are specifically tested for solids resistance, so you might see an IP rating of IPX7, indicating that it has resistance to water but wasn’t tested for dustproofing. The speakers I tested had at least some water- and dustproofing — but some, like the Ultimate Ears Wonderboom, can float in water like a rubber duck. Others have rubber coating on their corners to deflect damage from falls or rubberized buttons meant to withstand splashes of water, all of which play into that IP rating.

Battery: The way a speaker sounds will lure you in, but the battery life will determine whether you continue to use it. During my testing, I found that the speaker with longer-lasting battery life naturally happened to be the one I was most interested in (because there’s nothing more miserable than the chirp-chirp sound of a Bluetooth speaker slowly dying as you tried to play an album or a podcast). I was looking for anything between a ten-hour and 20-hour range. Every speaker on my list was able to clock more than ten hours with decent recharge times. Naturally, larger speakers will have larger batteries, but even small speakers should offer over ten hours of battery life.

Sound quality: Whether you want a speaker with a heavy bass or bright and transparent vocals, there’s no denying that sound quality is one of the most important factors in deciding which speaker works best for you. During my tests, I made sure to pick speakers that had a well-balanced sound with clear vocals and a natural-feeling bass that didn’t overpower the other midrange sounds. I also made sure to test how the speakers sound at a normal volume compared with how they perform at the higher volume levels. Some speakers can sound distorted when the volume is fully raised, turning a relatively good-sounding bass and vocals into a shrill mess. I made sure to focus on the clarity and quality you might want while listening to music or podcasts.
For a long time, my favorite Bluetooth speaker was an old UE Wonderboom; it was even a Strategist favorite, getting praise from other writers and editors. I loved the iconic and sometimes comically large buttons that were easy to press, the simple setup, and its overall ruggedness. It survived enough drops and falls to be in a John Wick movie. The UE Wonderboom 2 is the newest version of my longtime favorite — and it’s just as good if not even better. From the plastic door around the back that’s meant to block any water leaking into the USB-C charging port to the squishy and easily identifiable buttons, every part of the 15-ounce Wonderboom 2’s design is built to resist water damage. It floats too.

Most of these Bluetooth speakers are portable, but the Clip 4 is the lightest and smallest speaker I tested, coming in at just over a half-pound. Despite that fact, its battery still lasts up to ten hours. And though I initially thought there was no way you could fit a good speaker into something as small as the Clip 4, I was quickly proven wrong. When I set the speaker in the sand on a small beach in California, it managed to sound clear and vibrant while playing Haim’s Women in Music Pt. III even with waves crashing quite loudly nearby. While walking around the city, I saw different delivery workers and couriers who had attached their own Clip 4s to the back of their bags while they weaved in and out traffic, their music playing loud enough for the rest of us to hear clearly, too (whether we wanted to or not). The clip design allows you to attach it to nearly anything — it held just as well on to a hiking pack as it did a bike basket. It has rubber ribs on the back that allow you to place it flat on smooth surfaces without having to worry about it sliding all over the place. This makes sense because, at the peak of its volume, the Clip 4 is prone to shaking like a SpaceX launch. The speaker is also incredibly durable. It’s waterproof and dustproof, and I’ve knocked it against hard surfaces, had it roll through a pile of sand, and fall flat on its face against a hardwood floor without the music skipping a beat.