Ultimate Ears Wonderboom
Little wonder
There are more Bluetooth speakers priced around £100 than there are unnecessary email filters (see Final Straw, page 74), which makes it that much harder to find a really good one. But Ultimate Ears (UE) has a great track record, having made some of our favourite audio products in recent years.
At just 10cm high – or four inches in real money – the Wonderboom looks like a fattened drinks can. It can connect to one or two devices at a time, and remember up to eight. You can also pair two Wonderbooms. It doesn’t support the higher-quality audio technology aptx, but nor do any of
SPECIFICATIONS
2x 40mm drivers • 2x passive radiators • Bluetooth (requires phone or tablet supporting Bluetooth A2DP) • USB charging port • 102x94x94mm (HXWXD) • 425g • Two-year warranty www.snipca.com/24723 Apple’s products, for example, so that’s hardly a must-have. Rated IP67, it’s waterproof enough to drop in a swimming pool, where it’ll float quite happily minding its own business.
At 425g it’s not super-light, but very sturdy, and delivers surprisingly chunky sound from all angles. Bass has a nice thump, too. Battery life is quoted at up to 10 hours, though from experience we’d expect a little less.
The UE Boom 2 (£99 from www.snipca. com/24720) is a more powerful speaker, has a longer battery life and is waterproof, though noticably heavier. The UE Roll 2 (£60 from www.snipca.com/24721) is cheaper, easy to carry around, and has the benefit of a wired 3.5mm jack input, so that’s the obvious one to go for. But the Wonderboom lives up to its name in an endearingly chubby format.