HEAD TO HEAD
Two water-resistant portable speakers try to make a splash
Ultimate Ears Wonderboom
£89.99 FROM ultimateears.com
Design
UE’s rugged speaker features a wraparound grille for 360° audio and volume controls emblazoned across the front. A soft rubber top and bottom protects it from drops up to five feet, and keeps it buoyant when submerged in water, while a rubber cap safely conceals the mini-USB port.
Features
Wonderboom’s 10-hour battery capacity doesn’t weigh it down, and the pebble-shaped speaker can be submerged in up to one metre of water for 30 minutes. You can pair it with up to eight Bluetooth devices and connect up to two of them at the same time. You can then even pair a second Wonderboom for a bigger sound.
Audio performance
Whether you’re in the shower or by the pool, this speaker hits all the right notes. It offers clarity in the midrange and just the right amount of treble to avoid sounding harsh in close quarters. Wonderboom has big bass output, but manages to disperse and manage it so well that it doesn’t come across as boomy.
Controls
The Wonderboom’s controls are as big as its sound – its one-touch pairing button never failed us, and the large tactile volume controls on the front of its grille are nice and responsive. Multiple presses of the UE button on the top also play, pause, and skip songs right from the speaker.
Tangent Pebble Splash
£49.99 FROM tangent-audio.com
Design
Thanks to its slim rectangular design and singular row of top-mounted controls, the Pebble Splash feels sleek and looks stylish. But despite the rounded corners and rubber handle, the shape of this unit lacks grip and makes the plastic rim vulnerable to drops.
Features
Concealed beneath the Pebble Splash’s water-resistant side cover is an auxiliary line-out connection and a mini-USB power port, the latter providing up to 10 hours of audio on a single charge. The Pebble Splash also features a built-in microphone for making hands-free calls or joining conference calls.
Audio performance
The Pebble Splash speaker claims to deliver its audio from ‘multiple’ speaker drivers, but most of the music we played only appeared to come from one side of the device. It also sounded a little tinny in a shower when compared to the Wonderboom, and lacked the latter’s punchy 360° delivery in outside environments.
Controls
The strip of buttons along the top of the speaker’s rim offer rubberised controls for power, playing and pausing audio, and skipping tracks forwards and backwards. They feel responsive to the touch, but we experienced some niggly dropouts when manually pairing Bluetooth devices.