Ultimate Ears UE Mini Boom Portable Speaker Unboxing & Review
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
1,164 words · ~5 min read
0:05
Hotspot Shield service makes your internet browsing safer more secure and
0:09
fully private click now to learn more huge
0:14
sound which is one of those things that manufacturers claim that often makes me
0:18
kind of I can't really do it but whatever raise an eyebrow because huge
0:23
sound is not the same thing as good
0:26
sound however Ultimate Ears has enough of a reput
0:30
for sound that isn't horrible that I was like okay normally when manufacturers
0:36
contact me they're like wow yeah we've got this Bluetooth battery powered
0:40
speaker you guys should totally unbox it and check it out I'm kind of
0:44
like because who cares there's so many
0:47
of them so I tend to focus on the ones that offer something interesting like
0:51
the Ruckus which is solar powered uh the rugged Ruckus which is solar powered and
0:57
is like Splash resistant and drop proof and all that kind of cool stuff so with
1:01
Ultimate Ears I was like okay I'm interested in you because you've got a
1:04
brand name to protect here so it better not sound bad the jam box from Jawbone
1:09
sounds bad it was one of the first ones though so I guess it can get a bit of a
1:13
pass but let's cover the features of the Mini Boom it has a 10hour battery it's
1:17
Bluetooth it supports for iPod iPhone iPad and pretty much anything else
1:21
that's Bluetooth but oh branding um it's got a 50t range it obviously has a
1:26
built-in speaker phone just like all of them do it's available in variety of
1:30
colors I think like four or five different colors but you can see them all on the website and uh it has kind of
1:36
a unique shape to it it's pretty rugged looking I guess it's not actually meant
1:39
to sit like that there you go it it knows it knows what's up get it what's
1:43
up cuz the buttons go up so speaking of the buttons you've got volume up volume
1:47
down these are nice little tactile buttons as well as your Bluetooth
1:51
pairing button on the side over here you've got some ultimate ear branding on
1:55
the bottom you've got some information that's hard to read some more ultimate
1:58
ear branding speaker Grill power switch as well as 3 1/2 mm and micro USB for
2:05
charging there's a port there for base presumably and then the front is yet
2:09
another speaker Grill so we got a couple colors because they have another feature
2:12
that we've seen before but again I'm have high expectations for something
2:15
Ultimate Ears wants you to pay $100 for and that is that you can set them up
2:20
using the free downloadable app how many times have we heard that before a free
2:24
downloadable app you have got to be kidding me so you can use the free downloadable app to set them up in
2:28
Stereo mode that they're claiming actually sounds pretty darn good so
2:32
we're going to set that up and we'll be back in just a moment oh yeah hidden away in the little compartment here is a
2:37
micro USB cable that you can use to charge it but they do not include an AC
2:41
adapter so you're going to have to already have one or a computer or something in order to charge it so why
2:44
don't I just give you guys some idea of what to expect in terms of volume with
2:48
one of my favorite alltime songs so this is at about
2:52
70% this is where my mic is so that should give you some idea when I'm
2:56
talking like pretty loud it's about like someone kind of yelling at you now let's
3:01
Crank It Up so now you probably pretty much can't
3:06
hear me over it which should give you some idea how much volume we're talking
3:10
here they are extremely loud we definitely give the edge to them in
3:13
terms of that and there is a fair amount of Base the only issue that I have with
3:17
them in terms of the bass is that it can tend to overpower the mids a little bit
3:21
and it does make the vocal sound a little bit muddy but with that said if
3:25
the intention is to grab one of these or a couple of them and take them with the
3:29
at to the beach with you and create as much sound as possible with as little
3:33
actual space taken up as possible these might be pretty much the way to go so
3:38
let's go back to the app for a minute here here we go uh MINI BOOM and let's
3:43
go to ah yes the the settings so I was going to show this to you guys before
3:47
shows you the battery life you can set up the speaker name EQ settings out loud
3:51
is the loudest vocals um personally I didn't like that much but intimate
3:55
actually is probably the best balanced one in terms of how it sounds to me can
3:59
set up alert sounds don't forget yes you can use it as a speaker phone and all that good stuff but ah yes this is where
4:05
things start to get interesting double up mode so you press the Bluetooth
4:08
button twice on another one after you click Start here we go and you can
4:13
either run them in Stereo or just run the same sounds off both of them there
4:19
we go in order to just get more sound and it gets pretty darn loud so
4:25
Distortion wise there's actually not much even at maximum volume which is
4:31
quite impressive if we had Awards around here
4:35
we'd go ahead and probably give these an editor choice of some sort because they
4:39
sound pretty good they get Extremely Loud as advertised and the app actually
4:44
just works it it it was it was Flawless even while music is still playing we can
4:49
switch between double up mode single mode stereo mode without any difficulty
4:53
I don't know if stereo mode is what I would really use it for I think it's
4:56
more like stack them up double them up get more sound out of it and get an
5:00
extremely pleasing and crowd-pleasing
5:04
experience out of a very small form factor before we were so rudely
5:07
interrupted I was going to tell you to like the video if you liked it dislike
5:10
it if you disliked it leave a comment if your feelings were much more complicated
5:14
than what can be expressed with a simple thumbs up and thumbs down and don't
5:18
forget to check out the linch tips.com forum for lots of great discussion about
5:22
technology related
5:28
stuff
5:33
he