![]() READ NEXT: UE Wonderboom review: Portable, stylish and pool-friendly Ultimate Ears Blast review: Sound quality When you’re out of the house, the smart features are essentially useless. The catch is that the speaker needs to be set up and used on a Wi-Fi network for this to work. You can ask about the weather and or the football scores and it can also be used to play a specific song from a streaming service, such as Spotify or Amazon Music. I needed to shout at it in before it was able to pick up my voice.įor those new to Alexa, Amazon’s voice assistant allows users to ask questions and control various services and devices with your voice. However, it struggled when music was blazing through it. I found the far-field microphones on the speaker (similar to what’s found on the Amazon Echo speakers) to be able to accurately pick up my voice in a quiet room from over ten to 15 metres away. And the speaker’s Alexa feature is similarly middling in its performance. That’s fine, but hardly earth-shattering. ![]() If you aren’t interested in smart features, Ultimate Ears has the waterproof UE Wonderboom at £58, down from £90 and the UE Boom 2 at £100, which looks just like the UE Blast but doesn’t have Amazon Alexa built-in.Īs for battery life, Ultimate Ears quotes a 12 hours battery life, which in a real-world scenario might be a little less depending on how much you interact with the speaker. Keeping all things Amazon, there’s the 2nd generation Amazon Echo costing £90 and its larger, more capable sibling, the Echo Plus at £140. If portability isn’t important to you then the impressive Sonos One speaker can be yours for £200 it has Alexa built-in and a powerful set of drivers that deliver excellent sound quality. The UE Megablast is a brilliant deal right now at £180, and does all the same stuff as the Blast but sounds better. There’s the JBL Link 10 and Link 20, which cost £149 and £179 respectively, and the Sony LF-S50G at £129, too, all of which have Google Assistant built-in, are splashproof and portable. That’s significantly lower than its 2017 launch price of £200 but even at this reduced price, the UE Blast faces a lot of competition. It’s not only a Bluetooth and Wi-Fi based smart speaker but also one that’s waterproof and offers 360-degree audio.Īt the time of writing, the Blast costs £109. Look at the specifications, though, and something rather special begins to emerge. In fact, it looks very similar to the venerable UE Boom 2, which has been around for ages. On the outside, the UE Blast looks fairly unremarkable. ![]() READ NEXT: Best Bluetooth speakers – our favourite wireless speakers Ultimate Ears Blast review: What you need to know It’s very similar to the UE Megablast, a speaker we rather liked when we reviewed it last year, but a touch smaller and a little cheaper. Thankfully, there’s a small handful of speakers beginning to buck this trend and the UE Blast is one of them. Smart speakers are everywhere these days but, unfortunately, most cannot be taken out and about as they require power from the wall. I originally reviewed it at its lowest price, but even at £120, the speaker is still the best smart speaker money can buy. So, be sure to keep a close eye on it on Amazon, as you can grab yourself a good deal if you shop at the right time. We don’t consider any of these features essential, but they can be convenient add-ons.UPDATE: The Ultimate Ears Blast fluctuates in price – I’ve seen it as low as £109 and as high as £200. Special features: Bluetooth speakers may offer extra features, including speakerphone capability, multi-speaker pairing (the ability to play the same material through two Bluetooth speakers at once), and built-in lighting.The sonic differences among these codecs are insignificant next to the easily heard differences among the speakers themselves. Bluetooth codecs: We don’t award extra points for inclusion of additional Bluetooth codecs beyond the standard SBC codec found in all Bluetooth devices.Playback controls: Because you can control the playback from your Bluetooth source device (usually a phone or tablet), we don’t require the speaker itself to have playback controls, but it’s a convenient perk.Less-expensive models often don’t sound better or play much louder than a phone’s built-in speakers. We prefer speakers with an Ingress Protection (IP) rating, which tells you exactly how dustproof and waterproof a speaker is. Ruggedness and waterproof design: We give priority to speakers that are built to survive the knocks and bumps of travel.In selecting our top pick, we prioritize speakers that are compact and easy to toss into a backpack or beach bag. Portability and battery life: We focus on models that have rechargeable batteries and are designed to take a trip to the beach or the park with no hassle.
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