JBL Boombox Bluetooth speaker: Large, loud, and sonorous

This large Bluetooth speaker marries the famous JBL sound with a ton of volume and long run time.

- JON L. JACOBI

JBL named this product well: Macworld The Boombox booms and EDITORS' CHOICE then some. It's easily the loudest portable Bluetooth speaker I've tested and, even better, one of the best sounding. Considering that it employs waterproof materials and carries an IPX7 rating, something I've found often inhibits successful sound reproduction, color me impressed.

DESIGN AND FEATURES

As you might expect from its moniker (assuming you're old enough to get the reference), the Boombox is on the large side: 19.48 inches long, 7.69 inches high, and 10.01 inches deep, to be exact. It also weighs a rather hefty 11.57 pounds. Fortunately, the thick and comfortable handle makes that less of a burden than you might expect.

The buttons are on the upper front of the Boombox. In the center are the power button and pairing status light. Surrounding those are the Bluetooth pairing, volume up and down buttons, as well as a multifunction play/pause/next button (double-click). While the image above shows the non-power buttons in a lighter gray, on my shipping version they were the same black as the rest of the speaker and from certain angles the volume-down button was very difficult to make out. Lower down on the face of the Boombox is a battery status indicator.