Personally, I’ve played with many portable speakers. They come in all kinds of shapes and sizes, and their design affect its performance, and ultimately tells if the speaker is good or not. While design does affect the performance, the physical appearance also plays a major role here. The UE Boom however – this baby, is one heck of a story to tell.

Packaging

The box is cylindrical in shape – just a long tube, with a UE Boom printed at the front. Keep in mind that this UE Boom printing is actually the real height of the speaker itself.

This cylinder is rather fancy – opening the artsy layer reveals a black plastic cylinder with a little cut somewhere at the center. Press at the cut part and voilà, the cylinder opens and reveals everything that is included inside.

The design of this packaging is somewhat interesting – there are two trays, one above and another below the UE Boom speaker itself.

After digging everything inside, we can see that there are some manuals and documentation, a micro USB cable, the wall charger together with plug converters, the UE Boom itself, and a Coca-Cola can opening – oh wait, that’s for the weatherproofing, specifically splash proof.

There is one small complain – the charger and USB cable colours are not exactly my cup of tea. Seriously though – pink/maroon colour to go alongside with this greenish yellow cable… it’s just that I wish Logitech would give something more matching.

Design

The speaker itself has a lot of features to talk about. The first thing to notice is the humongous volume buttons depicted as a plus and minus sign. There’s also an NFC transmitter right below the minus sign too.

The top is where the power button and a Bluetooth pairing button can be found. An LED indicator is also buried within the power button.

Lastly, at the bottom is where all cables go. There’s a micro USB port for charging, a 3.5mm audio jack if some for reason Bluetooth isn’t your thing, and a metal loop. This metal look can snap onto a carabiner and hold the weatherproof piece of cola can tab.

Now the speaker grill itself. It’s made out of a cloth mesh with hydrophobic coating – I’m really impressed by the waterproof ability. The entire speaker is rated at IPX54 and I decided to bring it to the test – and will be discussed later.

Sound quality

The UE Boom great. I turned the UE Boom on with the power button, tapped the NFC and paired it. Then, music started playing. I downloaded the UE Boom app from the Google Play Store, and I forgot about the UE Boom’s power and Bluetooth button entirely.

I played the usual types of songs that I tried across other audio products – first off with Adventure Time by Rogue. Instantly the 360° of sound can be enjoyed in the entire room. The sound produced is lacking in the highs – but the mids are great, and the lows are amazing. The bass though I’d love it to be a little stronger, but the bass is amazing – and the thumping power of the bass can actually make the table shake even when the UE Boom is resting on its rubber feet.

Then I tried something a little different – Addicted To You by GEMINI Feat. Lions Ambition was actually pretty great. The instruments were pretty overwhelming – but the vocals however were still great, and the beat thumps pleasantly.

Akdong’s 200% sounds great, vocals are great, the beat is great, but then again the vocals are a little muffled and too soft compared to the instruments.

I left the UE Boom on the table one day and I realized one obvious thing – the UE Boom is a wireless speaker, why am I listening to music with the speaker right beside my face? I walked further and further away from the UE Boom, hit play, and cranked up the volume a little. To my surprise, it sounds a lot better at a certain distance – about half a meter away.

Additional features

As said earlier, the UE Boom has IPX54 certification. I placed the UE Boom beside the basin and washed some stuff. This time however I washed with a different style – splash water a little more. Going through that, the UE Boom didn’t seem to have any effect and I moved on to the next test – turn on the tap and splash water directly on the cloth mesh itself.

To my surprise, the audio quality did not distort, and the water was coming out like a waterfall. I’m very impressed that most of the water that went in was immediately repelled and was literally dripping out of the cloth mesh. Again, the audio quality did not suffer any form of distortion due to water.

And hey, even the cloth mesh did not get wet at all. Guess Logitech really did waterproof everything.

Remember when I said that the UE Boom is meant to be a wireless speaker? Logitech has updated the speaker numerous times and now, they included some of the coolest feature of all.

The UE Boom app is more like a suite – it can manage alarms, have firmware updates, a built-in equalizer, and a Double Up feature where you can link two UE Booms together. Though who wants that, when the UE Boom app itself can turn the UE Boom on or off remotely – that’s right, without ever touching the power button.

Look ma, no hands!

By far my favourite feature on the UE Boom.

Battery

All story I told earlier was great – but how does the battery fare against other wireless speakers? My answer to that is that the UE Boom’s battery is unlike any other wireless speaker. I’ve been using it on and off for the past week. Yes, for the past week, and the battery just couldn’t get down. I used for hours while waiting for class, turning it on while I walked around the campus, served as my night radio, and I literally tried to drain out the battery, which I failed. After a week, it still has 20% left and I can estimate that I’ve used the UE Boom for at least 12 hours cumulatively at a comfortable volume level.

The UE Boom also comes with a 5V 2A charger – you can plug your own USB cable in and charge whatever you wish too. Though again, the colour…

Wrap up

I absolutely love the UE Boom. Sure, it’s a high-end portable wireless speaker with a high-end price too, but the features and weatherproofing ability it has is just way too amazing. I do have some pet peeves like the colouring scheme of the speaker and the accessories. One nice addition that I’d like to see is to normalize all of the volumes from the UE Boom app itself so that I wouldn’t have to change volumes every time I listen to a different song. But I digress – that depends on your own music player app.

The UE Boom. Should you get it? Definitely.

Where though? There is Lazada, or a promotion now that the UE Boom will be in promotion from now until 31st December 2015!

Instead of the usual RM799, grab the first one for RM599 and even get the second for only RM399 – all inclusive of GST!

Get this deal right now from the participating stores nationwide!

• Machines
• Mac City
• iStore
• Mac Studio
• Connect
• Radio Shack
• Flash Gadget
• iTec@Mid Valley
• Charlie Cellular
• Switch
• Ascentouch

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