Portable Bluetooth Speakers
Portable Bluetooth speakers compared on the specs that survive contact with a beach bag: rated playtime, ingress protection, weight, whether they link to other speakers, and whether they can charge your phone.
 Anker Soundcore Boom 2 Plus | 8.5 Owners rate it above reviewers, which almost never happens; huge clean bass and a real 9-band EQ for roughly half what JBL charges for this volume. | 20 hours | IPX7 | 8.38 lb | 5.3 | ||
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 Anker Soundcore Motion 300 | 7.8 Beats its own battery rating, has the best app under $100, and images well once EQ'd, but treble is dull and it distorts when pushed. | 13 hours | IPX7 | 1.71 lb | 5.3 | ||
 Anker Soundcore Select 4 Go | 7.6 Absurd value at roughly twenty dollars with a 9-band EQ and real endurance, held back by sharp highs, no volume, and rubber feet that peel. | 20 hours | IP67 | 0.58 lb | 5.4 | ||
 Bang & Olufsen Beosound A1 (3rd Gen) | 7.5 TechRadar's Editor's Choice and a four-star What Hi-Fi verdict: composed, punchy sound in a repairable, battery-replaceable shell, held back only by what rivals give you for less. | 24 hours | IP67 | 1.27 lb | 5.1 | ||
 Beats Pill (2024) | 6.8 Fine at a discount, but the mids are buried, there is no EQ at all, and owners report overheating and playback dropping out. | 24 hours | IP67 | 1.5 lb | 5.3 Beats’ own page says only “Class 1 Bluetooth” with no version. 5.3 comes from Apple’s spec sheet as reported by 9to5Mac. | ||
 Bose SoundLink Flex (2nd Gen) | 8.8 The cleanest, most balanced sound per inch here, with lab-verified drop and float survival, though you must EQ it and it will not fill a yard. | 12 hours | IP67 | 1.29 lb | 5.3 | ||
 Bose SoundLink Max | 8.3 The only speaker here that gets properly loud without turning ugly, but you pay a lot and the finish swallows dust and sand permanently. | 20 hours | IP67 | 4.9 lb | 5.4 | ||
 Bose SoundLink Micro (2nd Gen) | 6.9 SoundGuys calls it the benchmark for palm sized sound, but it manages under five hours at real volume and Bose dropped the microphone entirely. | 12 hours | IP67 | 0.73 lb | 5.4 | ||
 JBL Boombox 4 | 8.2 Nothing else here comes close on volume or runtime, but it pumps and compresses when pushed, and drop tests made it shut itself off. | 28 hours | IP68 | 13 lb | 5.4 | ||
 JBL Charge 6 | 9.2 The default answer in this field: genuinely loud, tough enough to abuse, best app of the bunch, and street pricing that undercuts everything comparable. | 24 hours | IP68 | 2.11 lb | 5.4 | ||
 JBL Clip 5 | 8.0 Punches far past its size and price, takes real abuse on a bag strap, and gets a proper EQ; it just turns shrill wide open. | 12 hours | IP67 | 0.63 lb | 5.3 | ||
 JBL Flip 7 | 8.6 Distortion is dramatically better controlled than the Flip 6 and it survives more abuse, so the halved real-world battery is a fair trade at street price. | 14 hours | IP68 | 1.23 lb | 5.4 | ||
 JBL Go 4 | 6.0 Comfortably outlasts its own battery rating and gets a real EQ, but it compresses and hisses when pushed, and the Clip 5 is worth the stretch. | 7 hours | IP67 | 0.42 lb | 5.3 | ||
 JBL Xtreme 4 | 6.6 Weakest-sounding big JBL: nearly mono imaging, bass distorting from about seventy percent, and it has already been superseded at a similar price. | 24 hours | IP67 | 4.63 lb | 5.3 | ||
 Marshall Emberton III | 8.0 Trusted Reviews and TechRadar both praise the balance and honest battery, but it turns harsh wide open and Marshall gives you presets instead of a real EQ. | 32 hours | IP67 | 1.48 lb | 5.3 | ||
 Marshall Middleton | 6.3 Discontinued and heavily discounted, which is the only reason to consider it: SBC-only Bluetooth, soft midrange, four pounds, and a master of nothing. | 20 hours | IP67 | 3.97 lb | 5.1 | ||
 Marshall Willen II | 6.4 Holds its tone almost to maximum and shrugs off anything, though Consumer Reports found the midrange grainy and congested; the recent price drop is what saves it. | 17 hours | IP67 | 0.79 lb | 5.3 | ||
 Sonos Move 2 | 6.1 The battery genuinely lasts and it doubles as a proper home speaker, but it is too heavy to carry, cannot get wet, and rivals sound better for less. | 24 hours | IP56 | 6.61 lb | 5.0 | ||
 Sonos Roam 2 | 6.2 Sounds bigger than it looks and reviewers rate the audio well, but Sonos app setup is a genuine ordeal and cheaper speakers beat it sonically. | 10 hours | IP67 | 0.95 lb | 5.2 | ||
 Sony SRS-XB100 | 7.4 Does one job, personal listening, better than anything at fifty dollars, but treble is muddy and it audibly compresses at the top of the dial. | 16 hours | IP67 | 0.6 lb | 5.3 | ||
 Sony ULT Field 1 | 6.4 Thin without the bass button and bloated with it, and Sony will not let you EQ the good preset, though the battery beats its rating. | 12 hours | IP67 | 1.43 lb | 5.3 | ||
 Sony ULT Field 3 | 5.5 Real endurance and a fun bass preset, but What Hi-Fi found it forgettable, TechRadar was let down by the audio, and the EQ cannot match the ULT mode. | 24 hours | IP67 | 2.65 lb | 5.2 Sony’s regional spec pages state 5.2 and SoundGuys states 5.3. We record the manufacturer’s figure. | ||
 Sony ULT Field 5 | 5.9 Trusted Reviews gave it four stars for loud, punchy party sound, but it is heavy, the ULT presets cannot be edited, and rivals do it for less. | 25 hours | IP67 | 7.28 lb | 5.3 | ||
 Tribit StormBox Blast 2 | 7.7 TechRadar gave it four and a half stars for controlled, huge bass while undercutting JBL's boombox, though mids blur and it is brutally heavy. | 30 hours | IP67 | 15.76 lb | 5.4 | ||
 Ultimate Ears BOOM 4 | 7.0 Loud with little compression and famously indestructible, but the treble is veiled, there is no multipoint, and USB-C is the only real upgrade. | 15 hours | IP67 | 1.37 lb | n/a Ultimate Ears does not publish a Bluetooth version for the BOOM 4, and no lab-grade review states one. A single low-authority site claims 5.1, which was not enough to record it as fact. | ||
 Ultimate Ears EPICBOOM | 6.2 Four stars from both TechRadar and Tom's Guide for balanced, room-filling sound, but the adaptive EQ does nothing, it lacks energy, and Sonos does more for the money. | 17 hours | IP67 | 4.36 lb | 5.3 | ||
 Ultimate Ears MEGABOOM 4 | 6.9 TechRadar scored it four stars: real volume and unchanged pricing, though it muddles busy rock and only comes alive once you turn it up. | 20 hours | IP67 | 2.06 lb | 5.2 Ultimate Ears omits the Bluetooth version from its own spec sheet. 5.2 comes from TechRadar’s review spec table, not from the manufacturer. | ||
 Ultimate Ears WONDERBOOM 4 | 6.5 Tough, floats, and easy to live with, but DSP strangles the bass past sixty percent and there is no app whatsoever. | 14 hours | IP67 | 0.93 lb | 5.2 |
How the AI score works, and who wrote it
A language model rated these, not a test lab. Every score from 1 to 10 is an AI assessment of how good the product is against the other 28 in this comparison, formed from the specifications we verified plus the published lab reviews and owner reception found while researching each one. Nobody at Slopsheets listened to, wore or plugged in any of it.
It weighs the things a spec table cannot show: how a product is actually reviewed, how well the software works, build quality, and what you get for the money. That is deliberate. An earlier version of this column was pure arithmetic on the table and it ranked a bundle of cheap boxes above a class-leading single unit, because counting hardware is not the same as judging it.
Treat it as an informed starting point and read the sourced comparison, not as a verdict. The score is relative to this comparison only, so it means nothing across categories, and it carries no price, star rating or review count. Every specification behind it is sourced and checked; the score on top of them is opinion.