JBL XTREME 3 wireless speaker
The Xtreme 3 may be a large wireless speaker, but its sound is very well proportioned.
The Xtreme 3 may be a large wireless speaker, but its sound is very well proportioned...
It’s a rare JBL speaker which doesn’t impress us — and that goes for wireless speakers as much as the company’s full-on hi-fi fare. The JBL Link range of Google speakers have proven solid at every price-point and in every guise (and lest it’s still there by the time you read this, we’ve recently seen the Link Music as low as $99 in Australia Post and $65 in Harvey Norman, making it a slapyer-face megabargain). JBL’s little portable speakers generally impress for their size, and many benefit from total waterproofing, in fresh water anyway.
But if you’ve never seen the Xtreme before, its size comes as quite the surprise. This is the Xtreme 3, following on from the Xtreme 2; it’s only a centimetre longer, still around 14cm diameter across the circular ends, but the quoted power (for what power ratings are worth) has more than doubled in the new model, while the weight is slightly less at under 2kg. It’s designed to operate from its rechargeable battery, promising 15 hours playback from a 2.5 hour charge. And it’s IP67 rated, the 6 meaning you can roll it in dust, if you must, and the
7 being the second from highest level of waterproofing — good in fresh water up to a metre deep for 30 minutes, but not for deeper, nor for longer. So if you do throw it in the pool, get it out of there reasonably quickly. And don’t throw it in the ocean — salt water may not be so kind, or indeed warrantied.
So while you can certainly use it indoors, including bathrooms, the Xtreme 3 is built to party outdoors. It’s solid, with rubberised protection in all the right places, including a big flattened set of ridges underneath on which it will sit without rolling around. Indeed partying is so much in the mind of JBL that the carrystrap has an integrated bottle-opener — there’s handy! And if all your friends turn up carrying JBL speakers, you can link them all together with JBL
PartyBoost to share tunes and then argue over who controls them.
A rubberised seal pulls off (but usefully doesn’t come off entirely) at the back to reveal a minijack auxiliary input and both USB-A and USB-C slots; you’ll use the supplied USB-C cable for charging, but either slot can be used to provide a Powerbank to charge other devices — a godsend if your Xtreme is charged but your phone is running low.
We imagine connection will be Bluetooth all the way for most users; the codecs aren’t specified but we gather there’s SBC and AAC available, so Apple devices will likely stream at slightly higher quality with the latter codec, rather than Android ones using the former, given no aptX support. We connected problem-free from an iPad Pro and streamed to it from files on the device, from Tidal, and from Qobuz.
Unlike many portable speakers the Xtreme 3 is true stereo, with twin 20mm dome tweeters and 70mm woofers all firing forward from the front, and in addition to these four active drivers there are the two passive bass drivers in the ends, which are so impressively sealed that JBL shows them in one video playing away even when they’re full of sand.
The sonic balance presented is wildly dependent on positioning
— near or far, the surface it’s sitting on, floor or bench level, nearby walls — so that it’s hard to define its sound definitively, but JBL has avoided the common fault of piling on DSP-assisted bass to assist first impressions. Rather it sufficiently underpins the midrange to deliver a solid sound, a bit of kick when required (turn up Bruno Mars’ Motown-drenched Leave The Door Open and feel the energy pumping from those side woofers), but not a bloat-dominated bottom, the mistake made by many single-unit wireless speakers. We settled on our favourite balance being with the Xtreme 3 in front of us on the coffee table, rolled up slightly off its base so that the drivers aimed straight at our face. Here we could push the volume to medium-high levels and enjoy all the tightness given to a mix like Little Simz’ Woman, the vocal pushed right forward from the funk groove behind, the bass covered fully down to its low F, the strings kept smooth, never edgy. Female vocals of all genres emerged as a strength; its projection with Dinah Washington’s Mad About The Boy was dramatic indeed, yet it could shift into sultry mode for kd lang’s languishing vocals and sleek harmonies on The Air That I Breathe.
We did find its limits when investigating its highest volume capabilities with some rather raucously recorded Oasis, as dense and compressed material enters quite significant distortion towards the top stops; indeed we may have discovered some inherent protection, as once the music just stopped, even though the iPad indicated it was still streaming. We couldn’t later duplicate the shutdown and a reboot fixed that anyway (it plays cool guitar chops as it closes and restarts), and we carried on streaming.
The roll-off of JBL’s preferred sound curve prevents any harshness even with edgy recordings — we couldn’t hear anything above 14kHz — while the careful bass implementation has just a slight push around 50Hz then a drop back to what is then a remarkably reasonable linearity all the way up to its limits; this presented even solo piano pieces well.
Let’s just put it in perspective — the stereo image is minimal unless you’re up close, and of course we’re not talking the quality of depth, clarity and soundstaging to be enjoyed from real hi-fi. Also the price puts it into the territory of wireless-capable multiroom speakers. But few of those are stereo, or can deliver the sound JBL has fashioned for this giant Bluetooth speaker, remarkably enjoyable even for those with audio sensitivity, indeed perhaps more so than for those looking for a bass-pounding street machine. Even our classical favourites sailed through nicely. Sonically indeed, the one word we wouldn’t use to describe the Xtreme 3 is ‘extreme’. Rather it’s well-proportioned in every way.