Ultimate Ears Everboom review: Great sound, smart options

If you stick with the big brands you’re not going to get a bad sound from any of the best bluetooth speakers on the market today, which is probably why it’s critical to have great additional features in these units to get your attention and sway you from one brand to another.

For Ultimate Ears, or UE, there’s a few nifty features worth looking at if you’re in the market.

Design wise the Everboom follows the style of recent UE speakers, it’s not the circle shaped cylinder of the o-g UE products, now more of an oval, and while you’ll think the plastic on top is dusty at first that’s specs within the plastic because there’s 59% post consumer recycled plastic used in the body of this unit.

The iconic + and – symbols adorn the front of the speaker and are active volume control buttons when you’re cranking out tunes.

Bluetooth pairing is a breeze and the sound is great. Very rich out of the box, but within the UE Boom app there’s customised and pre-set EQ settings to choose from also.

Another feature available through the app is the PartyUp speaker grouping.

And it’s done in the app in a nifty way. Once you’re paired to one speaker, just turn the other one or one hundred speakers on, and they will appear down the bottom of the app. Tap the speaker and drag it up into the group.

Really nicely done, and you can then enjoy a really powerful sound from a larger group of speakers.

I paired with the EpicBoom and while it has a much bigger sound, on the other side of the room they both sounded like they were a fuller louder sound for the room – loved it.

Last but not least, there’s the One Touch playlist.

Again, within the UE Boom app, you pair with Amazon Music or Apple Music and choose one of your playlists. Spotify not available, and I really can’t explain that one sorry!

But, pair a playlist and then just any time you want to hear that you’re one press away. Push and hold the pause/play button and the playlist is fired up directly.

This is a solid performer in a crowded space. At this $300-$400 price point I think I’d only be looking at the JBL or UE options and both are strong audio performers – perhaps it comes down to things like what other speakers you already have or if a feature like that one-touch playlist is enough to get you over the line.

Bottom line there’s nothing not to love about this, the 20+ hour battery life is excellent and the Bluetooth range seems quite outstanding also.

Web: JB HiFi & Ultimate Ears