JBL Charge 3 Waterproof Portable Bluetooth Speaker (Black), 1

Had a friend say it had a better quality sound than her Bose speaker. Very happy. Got it because my son got one and I was so impressed by the sound I had to get one too.

Fantastic speaker. Ive had it for about a month now with no major complaints. I would love if I could hear a bit more of the mids. Its fairly bass-heavy, but then again, so is most of the music culture these days. Overall the sound is very good & it gets plenty loud. No distortion, even at maximum volume, which is great. It doesnt have the loudness to fill my whole condo, but certainly more than enough to fill the largest room. And much more than what I need to fill the garage. The point of the battery-powered speaker is that I can take it anywhere. If Im going into a different room, I can just pick it up and bring it with me. No need to fill the whole condo. I once borrowed a co-workers same model JBL Charge 3 & tested the stereo function & it worked great. The two speakers together make for a fantastic setup & very cool feature. I would love to have this at all times, but one of the points of having a battery-powered bluetooth speaker is so that I can take it places. And I dont have the space in my bag to lug around 2 of these things. Its already big-enough as it is. Big, but manageable. Possibly one of the greatest features about the Charge 3 is that the battery lasts FOREVER. Its awesome. I can watch movies on my tablet (which needs to be plugged in after 4 hours), but the speaker just keeps on going and going. More than anyone should ever need in one session. The other great thing about this guys battery is it has removed the need to carry an additional portable phone charger during long trips. I can use this bad-boy instead. Only issue is on planes it makes a loud startup & shutdown noise. Then again, that can be somewhat muffled & the plane is already somewhat loud itself, so its not the end of the world. Also, planes these days have plug-in chargers, so if youre really reluctant to use this to charge your phone on a plane, then youve got a work-around. And if youre thinking 20 hours of battery life seems excessive, then perhaps you havent considered the life-span of the speaker. My last bluetooth speaker was the Jabra SoleMate. It was a great little speaker with weather resistance & an 8 hour battery life. The thing was great for the first year. However, after a year, that 8 hour battery life was more like 6 hours. And after 2 years it was more like 4 hours. If extrapolation is true across all batteries (but it probably isnt), then I would expect the Charge 3 will only last about 10 hours in 2 years. And I will be okay with that. That is still a great amount of battery for a whole day using the thing. Anyways, thats kind of like worst-case planning. Before buying this I did a bunch of comparative research. The closest competitor I found was the UE Boom 2. Its smaller/slimmer and at least marketed as durable during drop. My co-worker had one that he let me borrow to test. I think at medium volume that the UE Boom 2 sounded better. Very warm mids, no muddiness, great overall clarity; however, there was a lot of distortion above ~75% volume. If I cant use the full loudness range of the speaker, then why does UE even allow it to go that loud? Especially such a great-sounding speaker at medium volume? Very disappointed that their audio team wasnt allowed or able to push harder to fix this. Another, more minor downfall of the UE Boom 2 is that it doesnt float. So although it is waterproof, if you bring this thing out on the lake and accidentally drops in the water (God forbid), then someone better catch it before it sinks to the bottom & busts from excessive water pressure. And the last benchmark where the Charge 3 had the Boom 2 beat was the battery life. 15hrs for the UE Boom 2. Quite admirable, but it didnt match up to the Charge 3. So thats how I ended up with this bad-boy. TL;DR: Great speaker, buy it.

Please read to the end, you wont regret!!! So I received my speaker on a Wednesday, tried to connect it to my Mac and for some reason it wouldnt connect. I didnt have my phone at that time so I tried to connect it to my Windows computer and the speaker was just flawless. Firstly, I was very impressed with the sound quality of the speaker. The mids and highs are great, super crisp, and the lows are awesome. The speaker has a very rich and deep bass thanks to the radiators on either side of the speaker. The speaker is covered with a mesh fabric material giving it a premium feel. Overall I love how the speaker looks and feels. Just by holding the speaker, it is by no means a cheap product. This speaker is built to last. Now, this is the best part. Since I had slight issues with connections which I later learned could have been simply solved with the latest JBL update (oh me, yea I know), I wasnt comfortable keeping the speaker. So I immediately contact the seller, AcousticSoundDesign Factory Authorized Dealer on Thursday night at 10 pm, and noted the issue. At first, it didnt seem like they were serious because I immediately got an automated reply the following morning Friday at 6 am MNT stating that a replacement will ship on that same day and delivered on Thursday the following week. So, this was obviously too long for me to wait, so I told them to provide a tracking number just to make sure. Again what seemed to be an automated reply, stated that the replacement was on its way. Due to the poor dialogue, I contacted Amazon and the representative said she didnt see any replacement being sent to me. So she proceeded to ship one due to deliver on Tuesday the following week. Again just a reminder all this happened on a Friday. So you guessed it if the seller really sent the replacement, it meant Ill have two speakers being sent to me. And that is exactly what happened. This seller is just spectacular, remember when they told me the speaker will deliver the following Thursday, well I got it on Sunday, literally one and a half day later. This seller literally overnighted me a replacement unit beating Amazons replacement due on Tuesday. I was really impressed with the quick replacement. And mind you the seller did not even mention in the email that I had to return my current bad unit to get a replacement unit. Now, this is a 10 start consumer service. The customer service is as good as the speaker. Believe me you will not regret your purchase. I usually dont write product reviews, but I always find myself reading through them before I buy a product. I took my time writing this one because it was worth every minute I spent typing this. Go out there and get you JBL chargeX. Cheers.

Very good sound quality. My husband is very satisfied with them!

Envío rápido y excelente calidad ☺️

I had been using an old Rigid job site type boom box with an AUX cord in the garage and yard, but my latest Android phone upgrade finally did away with the headphone jack, so it was time for something new. I chose the JBL Charge 3 as it was compact, rugged, and users said it had great sound, and I have to agree. The fact that its waterproof and can charge my phone as an external battery is an added bonus. You would think I had a big setup playing, but its just this one little speaker with dynamic highs, solid mids, and rich bass. I liked it so much that instead of just relegating it to my outside activities, Ive started using it in my home office, as it sounds so much better than my desktop system with separate speakers and a dedicated subwoofer. My wife likes it as I can set it right in front of me on the desk and play it at louder volume levels without being able to hear it all over the house, a problem with my desktop speaker system. All told, this one is definitely recommended, and will not dissapoint.

This is my 4th JBL product in 18 months, so I guess you can say Ive drunk the Kool aide. I bought a set of wired JBL in ear headphones from a discount store on a whim, and was highly impressed. Then I bought the JBL Tune500BT Bluetooth on ear headphones (awesome). Then I bought the JBL Clip 3, I liked it but my son liked it better so I gave it to him which gave me an opportunity to upgrade to the Charge 3. FIRST OFF, this speaker came in the mail today. I was impressed with the box it came in. It felt like I was opening up some kind of treasure box...lol Seriously speaking though, THIS little one and a half pound box of sound is IMpressive. I dont have crazy little gadgets to measure this, that, and the other thing, but I have my ears and my ear knows when Ive got something going. I am a little hard of hearing (due to a LOT loud music) so for those of you who are concerned with the amount of loud: you have NOTHING to worry about. This little thing is LOUD because I had to turn it down to finish my testing. I have a few song I like to listen to to judge the sound of my speakers so I listened to them via my cell phone and Youtube (it was the quickest route to music). I was impressed but not completely blown away. I want speakers that can recreate stereo but I was thinking that the Charge3 sounded like it was not doing a good job of this, so I played I Feel Love by Donna Summer because I can judge the amount of stereo reproduction because you can hear the separation of the left and right channels in this song. So I switched from my cell to the computer, where all of my music is and This was where everything came to life. I listened to everything from Pop to Country to Gospel to Rap/Hip Hop, to classical, to Drum n Bass, to Opera and then some, and I gotta say, with few song exceptions, ALL music was reproduces fantastically. Earlier I said I had to turn the Charge3 down because it was too loud. Yeah, too loud... CHILDREN, If you buy this speaker you will NOT go wrong. I want a second one after having heard this one only 3 short hours ago, and I am having a hard time stopping myself from clicking BUY NOW for #2. I hope my review was helpful. Sign me a VERY Happy camper, and then some.....

I compared three bluetooth speakers: (1) TaoTronics Stereo 20W, (2) Bose Soundlink Mini Bluetooth Speaker II, and (3) JBL Charge 3. The first is very inexpensive, the second the most expensive, and the third in between. Background on my tastes: Every time that I get in a car, I turn up the treble. When I get a speaker system, I turn down the bass knob. I generally like my EarPods that come with the iPhone, especially given their price point. I have a pair of Bower & Wilkins P5 headphones (expensive), and I love love love the sound of those (once I put them in Bass Reducer mode on my iPhone equalizer). I had a $30 set of computer speakers for like 15 years that were the bomb - for whatever reason, they sounded incredible to me, just the right amount of everything. (They died a couple years ago, and Ive been trying to find something similar since.) So, Im not a snob, but I have particular tastes. Im willing to pay several hundred for the right sound. I dont know enough about sound to know how to describe what I like. I just have to hear it. The TaoTronics sounded very cheap to me, and I quickly eliminated them. It was a much tougher battle been the JBL and Bose. I spent about 2 hours comparing the two, playing different songs from different genres (pop, rock, alt, jazz, R&B, folk, hip hop, electronica) with different equalizers (in iTunes) to fine-tune the sound. In the end, I went with the JBL, and returned the TaoTronics and Bose. For most genres, the Bose have a clearer sound, compared to the JBL which are a little more muddy/less crisp. I love crisp clear speakers, so initially I assumed that I would go with the Bose. However, the Bose dramatically underperformed with certain types of music, particularly R&B and other bass-heavy music. The Bose fell short in two ways. First, the Bose just dont have enough bass. While treble is great on the Bose, there just isnt enough bass to handle R&B. R&B does not sound good on the Bose. The second problem with the Bose is that they put out dramatically less volume than the JBL. I intend to use the speaker in a single room of an apartment, so I dont need a huge amount of volume. For pop music, the Bose definitely put out enough volume. But with R&B, you need to put on some kind of Bass Booster mode for the Bose (and it still doesnt sound great), but this pushes the volume down even more. So, with the Bose, if youre listening to bass-heavy music, there wasnt enough volume even for my personal listening purposes. The JBL, on the other hand, get super loud, louder than Ill ever need. In the end, after some distress, I went with the JBL. While they dont sound as good as the Bose for many types of music, they still sound good. And they dramatically out-perform the Bose on bass-heavy music genres. The R&B performance of the Bose was just too bad to keep them. The downside with the JBL is that for most types of music, I will need to use an equalizer to adjust the bass/treble to get the right sound, whereas the Bose (for most music types) sound great without any adjustment. My decision to keep the JBL was based solely on sound quality, and nothing else. But there are other considerations. The JBL is waterproof, while the Bose isnt. The JBL is less expensive. The JBL is larger and uglier, but all in one unit, whereas the Bose has a separate charger unit (which might be a good or bad thing, not sure). I had some horrible pairing problems with the Bose at one point - though, I havent had either long enough to make any final judgment on bluetooth pairings. I had the JBL Charge 1 for three years before it died, which is decent but not great. I never had pairing problems with the JBL Charge 1, and I havent had any bluetooth pairing problems yet with the JBL Charge 3.

I typically love my JBL products, but I’m very underwhelmed by this speaker. I had a FLIP prior to this and absolutely loved it. Unfortunately, it ended up on the bottom of the Ozark lake last summer. I thought I would “upgrade” by getting the bigger version, but I don’t think its worth the extra money. It has a very muddy sound. The MIDs are set way too high. I’ve been using an equalizer through Spotify that helps some, but I still don’t love the sound. The highs get completely drowned out. Pros are that it feels very durable, it’s loud, and the battery seems to last quite awhile.

A couple years in to owning it, the speakers start to give up. The aftermarket non-JBL options are junk and take modification to fit. JBL needs to offer replacement drivers.