11 Best Bluetooth Speakers (original) (raw)
For listening to music just about anywhere.
By ,a technology and gadgets writer at the Strategist. He’s been covering technology since 2017 and previously wrote for Wired, Wirecutter, and Reviewed.com.
Photo: Marcus McDonald
- Best overall
- Best small portable
- Best for multi-room audio
- Best LED Bluetooth speaker
- Best for indoor gatherings
- Best for outdoor gatherings
Bluetooth speakers have been a major fixture in my life ever since I picked up the original Ultimate Ears Boom in college. I use them to listen to podcasts or my favorite playlists while I’m cooking and cleaning my house, and if I’m going on a trip, I’ll take a travel-size speaker to make sure I’ve got my shower tunes.
To find the best Bluetooth speakers for listening at home, traveling, or multi-room audio, I tested 27 speakers from the biggest names in the space, including Ultimate Ears, JBL, Sonos, and Bose, and used each one for at least eight hours while listening to music in a variety of genres throughout my home.
Updated on October 3, 2025
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The speaker’s weight will help determine how easy it is to carry around and varies widely: Many models come in under one pound, but some can weigh over ten pounds. Rugged speakers tend to weigh more, and smaller home-office speakers weigh less, though the smaller size may also result in a slight drop in sound quality. I’ve found that 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. If you’re not planning on moving the speaker around, or don’t mind hauling around the extra weight, bigger speakers may be worth the trade-off for better sound. For larger speakers, I focused on those with some sort of handle to ensure they’re not cumbersome to move.
Most Bluetooth speakers have an IP rating, which tells you how protected the device is against water and dust. The first number indicates dust resistance and the second tells you how waterproof the speaker is — in both cases, the higher the number, the better the protection. But if you’re going to use your speaker near any water — like in the shower or near a pool — you should get one with a waterproof rating of at least 7 for protection against submersion.
Every speaker on this list can clock at least seven hours with decent recharge times. Naturally, larger speakers will have larger batteries, but even small speakers should offer over six hours of battery life.
Some manufacturers make Bluetooth speakers that also have built-in voice assistants (either Alexa or Google Assistant, or both). Most of these speakers don’t have a rechargeable battery, though, and only work when connected to an outlet.
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Weight: 0.93 pounds | Dust and water resistance: IP67 | Battery life: 14 hours| Smart assistant: No
Among all the speakers I’ve tested, none have impressed me quite as much as the Wonderboom 4, mainly owing to the quality of sound it’s able to produce in such a small package. It’s about the size of a small candle and can easily fit into a backpack, carry-on, or even a tote, yet it’s loud enough to hear from across my living room, all the way into my kitchen.
Pairing is simple: All you have to do is hold the pairing button and it shows up in your phone or tablet’s Bluetooth menu right away. It will connect immediately when powered back on. You can easily pair two Wonderbooms together for a stereo experience with a couple button pushes.
At louder levels, usually around 80 percent or higher, sounds can start to get muddled, especially with genres like hip-hop or metal (I tested with Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter II and Lamb of God’s Sacrament), and the vocals can drown out instrumentals. It’s not enough to detract from how good the Wonderboom sounds, though. When kept below that threshold, songs sound as clear and vibrant as on other UE speakers such as the Boom. As for podcasts and audiobooks, I was able to play those at louder volumes without audio quality suffering, and could hear them over the water running as I washed my dishes.
The Wonderboom 4 is chunkier than the JBL Clip 5, so it’s slightly less portable, and its elastic loop is less effective than the Clip 5’s metal clasp for attaching it to things, but the speaker also produces clearer sound, likely owing to its larger size.
To test its IP67 rating, I dropped the Wonderboom into a pool of water in my sink three times while playing music. The music sounded muffled and quite terrible at first, but once the water dripped out, the speaker was back to sounding good as new. You absolutely should not try this, but know that if you’re using this as your pool-party speaker, it’s safe. It has a plastic door that covers the charging port when not in use to prevent water from sneaking in and mucking things up. It’s rugged enough to withstand being carried with you on your next vacation, or just getting moved from room to room.
While the Clip 5 and Go 4 are both smaller than the Wonderboom 4, this is the most portable speaker I’ve tested that gets closest to the sound quality of bigger speakers like the Pulse 5. It’s quite similar to our previous best Bluetooth speaker overall, the Wonderboom 3: Its sound is nearly identical, and the design hasn’t changed. The biggest improvement is the switch from micro-USB to USB-C, which will make the Wonderboom 4 easier to travel with if you have a phone or laptop that charges over USB-C (as most do these days). For this model, Ultimate Ears also added a podcast mode to the equalizer, and while it did make voices sound more crisp, I didn’t find the difference noticeable enough to change modes when listening to audiobooks or podcasts.
The Wonderboom 4 has a fabric loop that you can use to clip it onto other objects, like a backpack.Photo: Jordan McMahon
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Weight: 0.56 pounds | Dust and water resistance: IP67 | Battery life: 16 hours| Smart assistant: No
If you want to get a speaker that’s affordable and doesn’t cut corners on audio quality, Sony’s SRS XB100 sounds surprisingly good for costing well under $100. The sound isn’t quite as clear at loud volumes as with the Wonderboom, but the Sony has louder bass, which some people may prefer. While listening to Elton John’s Madman Across the Water, I found the vocals easy to hear without the instrumentals being washed out. For hip-hop tracks like Run the Jewels’ Blockbuster Night Pt. 1, the bass felt punchy without overpowering Killer Mike or El-P’s vocals, even with the volume turned up while I was running a robot vacuum in another room.
While JBL and Logitech use a fabric covering over their speakers, Sony uses a matte plastic finish that’s more durable, easy to grip, and pleasant to look at (the speaker comes in four colors, including vibrant shades of orange and blue). The speaker has a fabric loop that you can easily attach to a backpack (though the Clip 5’s mechanism is more effective). It also has the longest battery life of any travel-size speaker I’ve tested, lasting about 13 hours.
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Weight: 0.62 pounds | Dust and water resistance: IP67 | Battery life: 12 hours| Smart assistant: No
Most of these Bluetooth speakers are portable, but the Clip 5 is the most travel-friendly I’ve tested thanks to the built-in eponymous clip that lets you attach it to nearly anything, including a bike basket or showerhead. The speaker has rubber ribs on the back that allow you to place it on smooth surfaces without having to worry about it sliding all over the place — helpful since it can’t stand upright like the other speakers I’ve tested. The speaker is waterproof and dustproof, and it can withstand a few knocks against a hard surface.
It’s easy to underestimate the sound quality of a speaker as small as the Clip 5. In my testing, it managed to sound clear and vibrant even with outdoor sounds like waves and wind in the background. In the shower, podcasts were easy to hear over the water, and I never had to blast it to full volume just to catch what someone said. Over a couple weeks of testing, I was able to get about 12 hours of battery life out of the Clip 5. If you mostly use this in the shower or when you’re traveling, you can easily go a month between charges.
My only gripe with the Clip 5 is that, unlike the Clip 4, the buttons for turning the device on and off and pairing to other devices aren’t raised buttons. That makes them harder to operate if you can’t see them, like when the speaker is clipped behind a showerhead. The buttons for play/pause and volume are all raised and are on the front of the speaker so they’re easy to see and access, but I wish that were true of all the buttons.
The Clip 5’s built-in carabiner makes it the most convenient speaker for hooking onto something like a showerhead or backpack.Photo: Jordan McMahon
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Weight: 6.61 pounds | Dust and water resistance: IP56 | Battery life: 24 hours | Smart assistant: Yes
Many speakers I’ve tested can be connected to other speakers for a richer sound experience, but Sonos still does it best. The Move 2 is significantly larger than the Wonderboom (though much smaller than the JBL Boombox), so you probably won’t want to take it with you on your weekend getaway, but it’s still small enough to carry from room to room, and the built-in handle lets you do so easily. I’m also impressed that, unlike nearly every other speaker I’ve tested, the Move 2 has a removable battery, which should make it straightforward to replace. To do so on most other speakers, you’d have to buy a third-party kit and do it yourself.
While the Move 2 is pricier than similar-size speakers like the JBL Pulse 5, its sound is nearly unmatched. The bass is loud and powerful (though not as heavy as the Brane X), vocals sound crisp, and everything sounds clear even at full volume.
The Move 2 has all of Sonos’s smart features, like multi-speaker pairing and adaptive audio (altering the sound to fit your room), and can easily be controlled and adjusted from within the Sonos app. It also has direct Amazon Alexa integration, so you can use it as your main smart speaker, and AirPlay integration that lets you stream directly from your Apple Devices without having to pair over Bluetooth.
Given its name, it’s no surprise that the Move 2 is so easy to lug around, but its charging method isn’t quite as mobile. Instead of using a simple charging cable like most companies, Sonos gave the Move 2 a docking station, which is basically a ring that you plop the bottom of the speaker into when it needs to charge.
With an IP rating of IP56, it’s not as protected from the elements as the Pulse 5 or the Brane, but it’s still protected from heavy jets of water, so it should be safe from some raindrops (but not from a drop in the pool).
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Weight: 10.8 pounds | Dust and water resistance: No IP rating | Battery: 8 hours | Smart assistant: Yes
For those who talk to their speakers as much as they listen, JBL’s Authentics 300 speaker balances functionality, good looks, and quality sound in a relatively portable design. It’s bigger than every other speaker we recommend, aside from JBL’s Boombox, but that also gives it louder sound, and the included handle makes it easy to tote around the house (but note that it weighs nearly 11 pounds). That handle is easier to grip than the one on the Move 2, though given the Authentics’s larger size, the Move 2 is easier to take with you when you leave the house. If you do want to travel with the Authentics 300, it’s small enough to store behind the passenger seat.
Of the speakers I’ve tested, this one’s classy ’70s style makes the Authentics 300 one of my favorites to display. The front of the speaker is covered in a patterned fabric that’s reminiscent of JBL’s classic L100 bookshelf speaker, and the top has three large knobs you can turn to control the volume, as well as the speaker’s treble and bass levels. Each knob has an LED that wraps around the dial and lights up to indicate the current levels for each toggle. The controls on the 300 are more fun to play with than the clicky buttons of the Wonderboom 4 and Clip 5, but I prefer the dials on the Teenage Engineering OB-4 of all the speaker controls I’ve tried.
Sound on the Authentics 300 is loud and impressive: While blasting music at 80 percent volume from my living room, I could hear it from across my three-bedroom home, and in some cases, podcasts were discernible as well. Given its size, it makes sense that the speaker is louder than the Move 2 or Pulse 5, but I’ve been impressed with how clear the sound remains, even at high volumes.
The speaker’s defining feature is its ability to connect to both Google Assistant and Alexa. I’ve found that Alexa is better for controlling smart home gear like light bulbs and robot vacuums, but I prefer Google Assistant for asking general questions and getting info about the weather. While alternating between the assistants in succession, responses were as quick as they are with a dedicated smart speaker like the Echo Dot or Nest Hub. The Authentics also has an ethernet port if you want to make sure it has a reliable internet connection. On the other hand, if you want to disable this speaker’s smart features altogether, there’s a switch to turn off the microphone on the back, which is not something many speakers with microphones offer.
Unfortunately, unlike most speakers we recommend, the Authentics 300 doesn’t have any official IP rating, so I wouldn’t recommend bringing this speaker anywhere it might get wet. For outdoor use, you should get either the JBL Boombox 3 or Brane X, depending on how large your gathering is.
The Authentics 300 looks like a vintage JBL speaker but has upgraded features like Alexa and Google Assistant integration.Photo: Jordan McMahon
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Weight: 7.7 pounds | Dust and water resistance: IP57 | Battery: 12 hours| Smart assistant: Yes
For those who prefer to control their music over Spotify Connect instead of Bluetooth, the Brane X strikes a nice balance between connectivity and portability. It has traditional Bluetooth pairing for when you’re on the go, but if it’s connected to Wi-Fi, you and others connected to your network can cast songs to it using Spotify or AirPlay. It also sounds incredible.
Despite being relatively portable, the Brane is one of the loudest, bassiest speakers I’ve ever tested. When I played it alongside the JBL Boombox 3, the Brane’s bass felt at least as powerful, if not a bit more noticeable. That doesn’t seem possible, given that the Brane is less than half the size of the Boombox, but Brane has managed to pack a party’s worth of bass into a speaker that won’t take up much room on your desk. Its mids and treble sounded just as good, even with the volume cranked all the way up.
Just like the JBL Authentics 300, this speaker has built-in Alexa integration so you can control your music and smart-home gear hands-free. It also works with Spotify Connect and Pandora, as well as a few other music services. Of the bunch, Spotify Connect is the most useful. As long as the Brane is connected to a Wi-Fi network, anyone with a Spotify account who’s connected to the same network can cast music right to this speaker without needing to log in to their account in the speaker’s accompanying app.
While this speaker is quite impressive, I have some complaints. Unlike nearly every other speaker I’ve tested, this one has an annoyingly bulky charger. It comes in two parts, one of which has a large brick that’s heavy and inconspicuous. I’m also not a fan of the built-in handle. It works, but it’s made of a rubbery material that wraps around the edge of the speaker a bit too tightly, making it hard to pull off and grab the speaker. Finally, I wish the buttons on the top were illuminated, as is the case with other speakers that cost this much.
Although the Brane X isn’t as big as the JBL Boombox 3 or Authentics 300, it’s much more bass-y.Photo: Jordan McMahon
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Weight: 3.2 pounds | Dust and water resistance: IP67 | Battery: 12 hours | Smart assistant: No
No Bluetooth speaker has caught my eye as much as JBL’s Pulse 5, which looks like a modern take on a lava lamp and sounds as good as it looks. It’s bulkier than most of our other picks, standing at 8.5 inches tall, but that’s to its benefit: Its bright, cylindrical array of lights play a variety of animations, including spinning rings of different colors, lights that look like clouds moving through a blue sky, and pulsing dots. You can also change the tempo of the animations to better match the vibe of your room, though every tempo syncs to your current song automatically. Compared to the Sony ULT Field 5, this speaker’s lights are brighter, more colorful, and all-around more pleasant to look at; it doesn’t get nearly as loud, though.
It goes beyond just being a nice bit of decoration: It’s a solid speaker, too. In my testing, it performed well across a variety of genres, including classical, synthpop, hip-hop, and rock, with minor discrepancies on higher frequency notes but nothing too noticeable.
It’s not as portable as the Wonderboom, Clip, or Go, but it’s notably louder and its sound is richer, plus that extra size makes for a better light show, which is the main attraction. This speaker is also shockingly durable. My mom gifted one to my sister last year to entertain her toddler, and my niece loves dancing while the lights flash. She also likes to toss and roll the speaker around, all of which it has survived without any noticeable damage.
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Weight: 7.27 pounds | Dust and water resistance: IP67 | Battery: 25 hours| Smart assistant: No
Although the Pulse 5 is an excellent piece of eye candy, I prefer Sony’s ULT Field 5 for indoor parties. It has richer bass and gets louder than the Pulse 5, while being easier to move around thanks to an included shoulder strap.
While this speaker is louder and has heavier bass than the Pulse 5, its lighting setup isn’t as robust or eye-catching. Rather than having lights that cover the entire surface of the speaker, the Field 5 has two rings of lights on the sides of the speaker, as well as lights inside the ULT logo on the top. The speaker doesn’t get as bright as the Pulse, but it still syncs the lights to whatever you’re playing.
Compared to the JBL Boombox 3, the Field 5 isn’t as bassy or loud, but its highs sound more crisp at volumes over 50 percent. Because its detachable strap isn’t as convenient or nice to hold as the Boombox 3’s built-in handle, though, I’d recommend that one for outdoor use.
The ULT Field 5 has lights on both sides of the speaker, and they change color to match the mood and rhythm of the music you’re playing.Photo: Jordan McMahon
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Weight: 13 pounds | Dust and water resistance: IP67 | Battery: 24 hours | Smart assistant: Yes
For outdoor parties, I recommend the JBL Boombox 3, which boasts louder bass than the Field 5, and whose waterproof IP rating makes it safer to use near water (rainy days, pools, etc.) than the Authentics 300. Even if you’re not blasting music (I rarely do), its extra volume lets the sound carry quite far so nobody’s left out. At 13 pounds, it’s significantly heavier than any other speaker we recommend, but it has an easy-to-grip handle that balances the weight so it’s not unwieldy.
And all that extra heft pays off: That boost in volume doesn’t come at the expense of sound quality. At 40 percent volume, it’s louder than smaller speakers at maximum volume, and it’s hard to imagine many scenarios that would necessitate cranking it to 100 percent. The bass is heavy without overpowering other frequencies, and vocals sound crisp from up to a few hundred feet away.
If you have another JBL speaker, like the Pulse 5 or Authentics 300, you can even pair them together for a richer sound, though they have to stay pretty close to each other so you shouldn’t use this as a way to carry tunes between rooms — Sonos is better for that. Its battery can last up to 24 hours on a single charge (and still lasted a couple hours after being inactive for a month), and it has a USB-A port you can use to charge your devices if you take this speaker with you on the road (or a visitor needs a quick charge before heading home). It’s nice to have, but I do wish that it had a USB-C port to be more up to date.
Because of its size and my small home, I had a difficult time finding a place to put it, which isn’t a problem with smaller speakers. If you’re limited on space but want a loud speaker, the Field 5 and JBL Authentics 300 are better options.
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Weight: 9.25 pounds | Dust and water resistance: Not listed | Battery: N/A | Smart assistant: No
If you want a speaker that can pair with your phone over Bluetooth or connect to all the other audio gear in your home without going all in on Sonos, get Audio Pro’s C10 MKII, which works with gear from the home audio brand WiiM. While Sonos is the most popular brand in multiroom audio, WiiM is a platform-agnostic, audiophile-friendly alternative that works with traditional audio equipment like bookshelf speakers and amps. Just like Sonos, it has integration with Spotify, Tidal, and some more obscure services like Roon and Qobuz. Typically, you need one of WiiM’s devices — which don’t have speakers of their own — to get started, but the C10 MKII has WiiM’s software built in, and you can tie it to all your other WiiM gear.
The C10 MKII is slightly narrower than the Authentics 300, but its sound is even clearer and more balanced at loud volumes, and it has less prominent bass than the Brane X. In addition to controls for volume and playback, there are six preset buttons that you can use to create shortcuts for your favorite music on Spotify and buttons for casting audio to different devices. Because this speaker is meant to tie into other home-audio gear, it also has inputs for connecting to a record player, as well as an output for hooking it up to a subwoofer.
Unlike every other Bluetooth speaker on this list, the C10 MKII doesn’t have a battery, so it works only when plugged into an outlet. That makes it less portable, but because it’s the only speaker that officially works with WiiM’s platform, and because it can work with so many other pieces of stereo equipment, it’s the most customizable speaker we recommend. If you want something that sounds almost as good but has more portability, get the JBL Authentics 300.
The C10 MKII looks like a traditional speaker, but it has all the smarts of a modern speaker.Photo: Jordan McMahon
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Weight: 3.74 pounds | Dust and water resistance: Not listed | Battery: 72 hours | Smart assistant: No
In addition to its top-notch sound, no speaker I’ve tested looks nearly as good as the OB-4 — which has an old-fashioned minimalist boom-box styling — from Swedish electronics company Teenage Engineering. While playing film soundtracks, hip-hop, and classic rock, the sound quality remained consistently vibrant.
For anyone who likes to be more hands-on with their listening, the OB-4 also has more playback and recording functions than any other speaker that I’ve tried. You can pair it to your phone over Bluetooth, or use it as an FM radio. You can also use its line-in input for analogue playback with devices like an old iPod or an instrument, and it has a looping function that lets you remix tracks right on the device using a rotating disc. That disc can also be used to manually rewind and fast-forward tracks, which I found myself fiddling with constantly. When you’re spinning it, the speaker plays a delightful sound that makes it feel like you’re rewinding a tape. Its other on-device controls for volume and pairing are reminiscent of old-school audio gear, and it’s fun to play around with both.
The handle, though thin, is strong and secure, so you don’t have to worry about dropping the speaker as you lug it around. You can fold the handle toward the back of the speaker to turn it into a stand, though I haven’t found that to be particularly useful.
It’s as much a decorative statement as it is a music device, and it’s quite gorgeous. When I had it sitting on my shelf, I received multiple compliments on it. It loses some of its wow factor once you look at its price tag, but if you’re a design-loving music nerd, this speaker checks every box.
The OB-4 has a simple yet striking design, making it a great statement piece.Photo: Jordan McMahon
JBL Go 4: The Go 4 is smaller than the Clip 5, but it doesn’t have a way to latch onto anything substantial on its own. It has a fabric loop, but you’ll still need a carabiner or other clip to attach it to a bag. It’s a fine speaker, but Sony’s XB100 is cheaper, and the Clip 5 sounds better and has more portability for just a bit more money.
Anker Soundcore Select 4 Go: This speaker is often cheaper than Sony’s XB100, but its sound isn’t as loud or vibrant, and its design is more bland. If you can get it on sale, it’s still good enough, especially for under $30.
Tribit StormBox Micro 2: This speaker’s sound is a bit clearer and louder than the Clip 5’s, but its rubber strap isn’t as handy as the Clip’s carabiner, so if you want a portable speaker, the Clip 5 is a better option, and the Wonderboom 4 sounds better.
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The 11 Very Best Bluetooth Speakers Your product is saved! You’ll receive emails when your saved products go on sale. Manage preferences.