Which Portable Bluetooth Speaker is Right For You?

Which Portable Bluetooth Speaker is Right For You?

There's more to a portable speaker than just being small enough to tuck into your backpack or purse: it needs to offer good battery life, be durable enough to stand up to jostling in transit and, most importantly, sound incredible. Fortunately, many Bluetooth speakers that are categorized as portable meet all of these criteria. But with so many to choose from, which one is right for you? To make the process easier, we've assembled a list of our favorite portable Bluetooth speakers below.

Generally, the more you spend on a portable Bluetooth speaker, the better it will be. That's because you'll get more features, including support for higher-quality Bluetooth codecs like aptX and aptX HD, the ability to double as a speakerphone when calling someone on your phone and the option to charge your device via the speaker.

That said, it's also possible to find a portable speaker that offers surprisingly good value. For example, our top pick for best budget portable speaker, the Tribit Stormbox Blast, offers impressively robust audio performance and battery life for a fraction of the price of some other Bluetooth speakers we've tested.

The UE Boom 3 is another great budget portable speaker that comes in at under $200. It's not as big as our premium pick, the Bang & Olufsen Beosound A1 (2nd Gen), but it sounds incredibly good for its size (and price) and can be used in wet environments thanks to a IP67 waterproof rating. It's worth noting that the UE Boom 3 doesn't support the latest aptX Adaptive Bluetooth 5.1 codec, and it uses a micro-USB cable instead of USB-C like many other competing Bluetooth speakers.

JBL's Authentics 300 is another excellent affordable portable speaker that's available for under $300. It has a sleek and eye-catching design, is fully waterproof and dustproof and can play music for up to 27 hours at moderate volume levels. It's worth noting, however, that it doesn't support multi-room audio with wi-fi and JBL's Alexa multiroom audio, as our other top picks do.

If you're willing to spend more money on a portable Bluetooth speaker, we recommend checking out the new JBL Pulse 5. It's the fifth generation of the company's popular compact waterproof wireless speaker and offers improved music quality, a cool customizable light show and support for high-quality aptX 5.1 Bluetooth audio codec. It's also still one of the loudest portable Bluetooth speakers you can buy for a reasonable price.

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