Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

The JBL charge 4 is a great product. I found it to be initially disappointing due to the warm sound signature. I have found that the highs aren’t totally accurate but they’re close enough to not distract you from the music. The highs are present but definitely aren’t strong which adds to the warm signature. The mids are very good and exceptionally clear for the size of this device. Because of this, the vocals are great in most songs. They are well represented unless they sneak up on the high notes which is when you can hear a slight distortion from accuracy. However, the vocals which dip into lower range sound really good as the speaker does a great job not to put too much emphasis on the radiators making it sound bassy and unrealistic. If you listen to high quality hifi tracks you’ll be able to imagine the singer right in front of you because of the presence and sound stage. As for the mono speaker, don’t listen to the critics of this new implementation because most of them either don’t know what they’re talking about or they are just picking at it because they don’t like the thought of it. You’re not going to get stereo by using 2 speakers 3 inches apart like on the last model and as for separation, this mono speaker separates just fine if not better than the last model especially in mid to lows. The speaker gets plenty loud for the average person and it manages to maintain its dynamics all the way to just under full volume. I’ve compared this speaker to many others such as charge 3, xb30, xb31, xb20, extreme, onyx... and what I’ve found is that while the highs are a bit lacking in certain songs it certainly makes up for it in other departments. The bass is very good in the charge 4. The bass notes are represented accurately and it’s able to hit lower frequencies most portable speakers of this size can’t (20). However, it’s worth mentioning it’s still no sub. This speaker has trouble representing very low frequencies. The radiators start shaking instead of making music which for those of you who don’t know (this doesn’t sound very good). The battery life of this speaker wasn’t as advertised and I found I could only get 9 hours on 60 percent volume which isn’t bad but is a huge deviation from the claimed 20 hours. After using this speaker for awhile and comparing it to other speakers, I’ve actually grown fond of this unit and it’s become my beach toy. Don’t take any critics in this review too seriously as I doubt most people are 50% as critical as me when it comes to audio but this one gets my thumbs up. Future improvements would definitely require a tweeter and possibly a bigger battery.