UE Megablast

ALEXA ON THE MOVE.

COMBINING THE VERSATILITY of a Bluetooth speaker with the brains of a smart home speaker is a very sensible move. UE, the team behind the marvelous Megaboom and Boom 2, has made something quite magical.

With the Ultimate Ears Megablast, you get the portability, durability and 360° sound of these excellent speakers, as well as their playful aesthetic and wide array of colours. The audio is clear and punchy across the spectrum, and the Megablast can get 40% louder than its Megaboom predecessor. This is really quite loud. The overly large buttons make for simple operation, and the voice control is as good, if not better, than the Amazon Echo itself. While a 16-hour battery life is a slight step down from the Megaboom, it’s still an impressive feat considering the unit is running its own operating system for the Wi-Fi and Alexa functionality. At the time of writing, you can play any music streaming service via Megablast’s Bluetooth, but you can’t yet control Apple Music or Spotify via Alexa’s voice control. The official word is that the latter is “coming soon”. One of the real boons of the Megablast, unfortunately, comes from a sold-separately charging dock dubbed the Power Up ($49). With this set up in your home, you can instantly transform this portable powerhouse into a smart home hub, all while juicing it up for its next outing.

If the Power Up was bundled with the device, the UE Megablast would corner both markets comfortably, but even sans-dock, it presents a powerful amalgamation of two burgeoning fields.