Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I have the Megaboom, Infinity One, and Bose Mini. I also had and returned the JBL Charge 2 and the Pill XL. The Megaboom is a very durable speaker with incredible battery life. Mine plays for over 55 continuous hours at 33% volume! I recently was playing it outdoors at 75% volume and it still had an 80% charge left after 5 hours. The Megaboom is louder than everything except the Pill XL and it has less dynamic compression at high volumes than the Infinity and Bose. With respect to sound quality the Megaboom sounds clean and remains fairly distortion free even at high volumes. The Infinity, Bose, and JBL Charge 2 all produce more low frequency bass than the Megaboom. The Megaboom produces fairly punchy upper bass, but the bass does not go very "deep". My Infinity One is very sensitive to speaker placement. Put the Infinity in a corner and it's bass response goes way up. The Megaboom is not nearly as sensitive to placement. When both speakers are in a corner the Infinity's bass response is much deeper and stronger than the Megaboom's bass response. On the other hand, the Megaboom seems to be good at producing crisp treble. The Infinity One and Bose Mini both sound a bit muffled when compared to the Megaboom, which sounds very bright. The Pill XL has a nasal sound to it and sounds poor at low to mid volumes. I played test tones at the following link and the Megaboom was clearer and louder than the Infinity and Bose from 8k and up -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nklzAUrXSuM The Megaboom allows you to run an app with some cool features and some limitations. You can update the speaker's firmware from the app, which is a great feature. The speaker also has a Smart Bluetooth feature that allows you to turn it on and off from the app and you can schedule an alarm to turn it on and off as well. The Smart Bluetooth feature consumes some battery power and it can be turned off if you don't need the remote on/off features. Be aware that a recharge cycle will _not_ complete successfully if Smart Bluetooth is off. If you attempt to recharge the speaker with Smart Bluetooth off the speaker will lock up and stop recharging after about 20 minutes. When that happens the LED recharge light will go out and the speaker will not turn on, you will have to unplug the speaker before you can turn it on or continue to recharge it. I strongly suggest always recharging with Smart Bluetooth on. **Edit** – The charging issue was resolved with a firmware update available June 2015. The UE app has an EQ, but it does not work like a typical EQ does. If you attempt to boost something it just cuts other frequencies to create the "boost". For example, if you boost the lowest frequency for bass it doesn't actually boost the bass. It just cuts the other frequencies and the speaker loses volume. The end result is you turn the volume up higher with every frequency except bass cut so the bass seems "boosted". Consider the EQ as a set of filters that will only cut frequencies, it will not boost anything. I only have 1 speaker so I did not try the double-up options. UE advertises the speaker as being able to produce 360 degree sound. The speaker has a much wider sound stage than the Infinity One, the Bose Mini, and the JBL Charge 2, but I would not call it 360 degrees. It is closer to 270 degrees because there is definitely a dead spot when the volume buttons are facing you. Frequency response is fairly uniform in all other positions, but it does sound best if one driver is facing you. With that being said, the Megaboom is certainly much less directional than the other speakers I have used. The Megaboom is a nice speaker, but I deducted one point for the recharging issue with Smart Bluetooth off (to save battery power) and the poor EQ implementation. If you only plan to use the speaker indoors, you prefer bass over treble, and you don't need very high volumes then you will be happier with the Infinity One or the Bose Mini. If you want a speaker that you can take outdoors, you prefer treble response over bass response, you want high volumes, and you want a very long battery run time then the Megaboom might be perfect for you. ** Update 6/11/2015 ** I noticed that there was a new firmware version available in the UE app. I applied the update and the speaker now charges properly with Bluetooth Smart off. Battery life continues to impress me. 50% volume plays for over 48 hours and 1 or 2 steps down from 100% plays for over 7 hours. The Bluetooth range is more impressive than the range of my Infinity One. I can leave my iPad on the second floor of my house and walk all around the first floor of my house and in my garage without any drop outs. I was very happy to see the charging issue resolved with the firmware update so I decided to change my overall rating to 5 stars. Most manufacturers don’t even offer the ability to update a speaker’s firmware.