To celebrate the launch of their new Megaboom speaker, or as they call it, a “portable wireless speaker on steroids”, Ultimate Ears invited me along to a snowboarding experience with Olympian Aimee Fuller today. It was really cool experience to see Aimee pull off her tricks, and given that I’ve never been skiing or snowboarding before, I inevitably spent more time on my ass than anything else.
But of course the main reason we were there was to check out the Megaboom, the bigger brother of the original Boom speaker. If you hadn’t heard of it already, this is a speaker that the Verge went as far as naming the “best portable speaker you can buy“, so I’ve been eager to get my hands on its larger and louder sibling.
Leaving aside its cool cylindrical form factor that pumps out 360-degree sound, the UE Megaboom stands out because it’s just so well built. We were literally throwing it down the ski slopes, onto the hard wooden floor near the bar and even into water — and the speaker continued to work perfectly. It’s built like a tank, yet UE have quite impressively been able to maintain a reasonably light and portable weight for something as large as this.
UE’s Megaboom speaker can comfortably be left in water for upto 30 minutes.
Here’s what stood out to me from my time with the speaker tonight.
While most speakers have a typical box shape with speaker drives facing one direction, the Megaboom’s cylindrical shape means that it pumps out room-filling, 360-degree sound.
Then there’s the fact that you can pair it with another UE Boom or Megaboom speaker. Our entire bar area was filled with music being played from two of these speakers, so I witnessed first hand just how powerful they are when used together.
Throw in a companion app with equaliser settings and alarm functionality,100ft wireless range, 20 hours of battery life, plus an IPX7-rated waterproof design that can handle serious knocks and drops, and the Megaboom is lined up to be one of the best bluetooth speakers on the market.
I’ll be getting one of these bad boys in and testing over the next few weeks, so make sure you’re following us Twitter so that you don’t miss our full review.
