With the rise of the smartphone, as Steve Jobs rightly said, we have a jukebox in our pocket. You can store thousands of tracks on a single device.
When we head on vacation, we always remember our headphones so we can listen to our music on the plane or around the pool. Problem is, what happens when we want to include other people on our playlist or want to encourage a pool party, you need something far more powerful than your iPhone speaker.
Here at Short Motivation, there are a few key essentials we remember to bring on any trip. One of these is a portable speaker. One of our two favourites is the Beoplay P2. This is a tiny little Bluetook speaker which you can easily take with your hand luggage. Packs a punch and lasts ages. The other is an Ultimate Ears BOOM speaker, which is designed to provide 360-degree audio.
Ultimate Ears has just announced BOOM 3 and MEGABOOM 3 and we’re excited. The BOOM range is the ultimate travel speaker, designed for the pool, with fantastic sound. The latest BOOM 3 has gone through 25 rigours tests and Ultimate Ears are describing it as ‘virtually indestructible’. With a rubber casing and brand new high-performance fabric, the BOOM 3 is completely waterproof, too, boasting an IP67 water and dustproof rating and can be fully submerged in water for up to 30 minutes. We’d never recommend dipping any speaker in water, but if it falls in the pool, you know it won’t be damaged.
Both the BOOM 3 and it’s bigger brother, the MEGABOOM 3, include an all-new ‘Magic Button’ which enables you to quickly play, pause and skip tracks from a single accessible button located on the top of the speaker. If you want additional control, simply dig out the Ultimate Ears app.
If you want more power, move up to the MEGABOOM 3 speaker, which offers thundering bass, a wider frequency range and designed for a 20+ party crowd – it’s that powerful. It has a slightly longer battery range of 16 hours (rather than the 15 hours for the BOOM 3). The downside is the weight and size, coming in at 22cm high (compared to the 18cm tall BOOM 3) and a few grams under 1Kg, at 900g (the BOOM 3 is a shade over 600g). The MEGABOOM 3 is designed to be packed in your hold bag rather than cabin luggage.
It’s worth adding you can pair up a number of BOOM 3 speakers, 150 in total, so you could – at least in theory – scatter them all over your home for the ultimate indulgence. Move between rooms and you’ll hear the same unbroken sychronised audio experience between speaker.
One annoying downside is Ultimate Ears insistence on using an old Micro USB cable rather than a more modern USB-C. The advantage of the Beoplay P2 and A1 is that you can power the same unit with your MacBook supply, meaning fewer cables.
Another downside is the lack of Amazon Alexa support, which Ultimate Ears added to the BLAST and MEGABLAST speakers, meaning you can control the speaker by shouting commands, rather than touch or device control.
Waterproof portable speaker in larger MEGABOOM and smaller BOOM variations
What we love about the BOOM 3 and MEGABOOM 3, performance aside, is the eye-catching colours. You’ll find the regular black, blue and purple models from Ultimate Ear’s, but Apple will be promoting two exclusive colours, light blue and denim (which looks fantastic) and a dark blue speaker.
Watch the launch video, below.
BOOM 3 and MEGABOOM 3 will ship in the US, Europe and Asia in September 2018. BOOM 3 will be available for $149.99, whilst the MEGABOOM 3 is $199.99.
Head to the Ultimate Ears website for more information.
