Silentnet
Super Member
I've recently decided I'd like to get a high quality bluetooth speaker for when I'm away from my system -- after all, 300+lb of amps and speakers 6+ft tall are far from portable.
This thing's duties would be two-fold.
First, it'd act as a 'secondary system' for when I'm laying in bed messing around on the laptop, don't want to use headphones, and can't be bothered to switch rooms and listen to the real system. This happens more often than I care to admit.
Second, it'd go with me to parties and group functions on rare occasions and might well end up being the primary speaker there.
I bought a UE MEGABLAST (yes the capslock is official) on sale for $125 (standard MSRP $250, though I don't know when it last sold for that, if ever) in a drunken stupor recently and I've had it for a few hours now. Over all, I'm impressed given the size of the thing. Obviously mid-bass is massively overblown to give the impression of heavy real bass, and it works well at first listen even to my reasonably experienced ear. Too well, really. Sounds muddy. Still, I find it annoying and, after setting a custom EQ curve to tone all that silliness down, it's just as thin and 'blah' in its sound as one would expect a ~5 lb cylindrical battery powered speaker to be.
I'm also diappointed to find that software-wise it's less full-featured than the MEGABOOM. The biggest let down? If I was ever crazy enough to buy another one of these things, I cannot link them together to form a stereo pair, which is something you could do with its predecessor / sister-series. I get Alexa and supposedly better, louder sound... I lose major functionality. Stupid. I also cannot stand that they decided for some stupid reason to only have 10 volume settings. Using it in my room, the difference between 2 and 3 is ridiculous. 2 is so quiet as to be useless, and 3 is significantly louder than I'd prefer. I want like a 2.75 option... and UE has an Android phone amp for the thing, so there's zero reason they couldn't allow fine grain control like that. But again, no. Not included, pure laziness on a supposedly $250 product. Leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Honestly, as of right now I'm leaning toward returning this thing and getting something from Sonos, since the battery powered aspect isn't that important to me. Really I just need something small enough to be lugged from place to place and plugged in, generally, but I'm wondering if I can do better. I have a very long return window on this thing, as I guess Amazon's started their holiday exception date range already, but I'd like to hear about alternatives before I make any hasty decisions.
Should I be looking at Pioneer? Sony? Onkyo? Samsung? Others?
This thing's duties would be two-fold.
First, it'd act as a 'secondary system' for when I'm laying in bed messing around on the laptop, don't want to use headphones, and can't be bothered to switch rooms and listen to the real system. This happens more often than I care to admit.
Second, it'd go with me to parties and group functions on rare occasions and might well end up being the primary speaker there.
I bought a UE MEGABLAST (yes the capslock is official) on sale for $125 (standard MSRP $250, though I don't know when it last sold for that, if ever) in a drunken stupor recently and I've had it for a few hours now. Over all, I'm impressed given the size of the thing. Obviously mid-bass is massively overblown to give the impression of heavy real bass, and it works well at first listen even to my reasonably experienced ear. Too well, really. Sounds muddy. Still, I find it annoying and, after setting a custom EQ curve to tone all that silliness down, it's just as thin and 'blah' in its sound as one would expect a ~5 lb cylindrical battery powered speaker to be.
I'm also diappointed to find that software-wise it's less full-featured than the MEGABOOM. The biggest let down? If I was ever crazy enough to buy another one of these things, I cannot link them together to form a stereo pair, which is something you could do with its predecessor / sister-series. I get Alexa and supposedly better, louder sound... I lose major functionality. Stupid. I also cannot stand that they decided for some stupid reason to only have 10 volume settings. Using it in my room, the difference between 2 and 3 is ridiculous. 2 is so quiet as to be useless, and 3 is significantly louder than I'd prefer. I want like a 2.75 option... and UE has an Android phone amp for the thing, so there's zero reason they couldn't allow fine grain control like that. But again, no. Not included, pure laziness on a supposedly $250 product. Leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Honestly, as of right now I'm leaning toward returning this thing and getting something from Sonos, since the battery powered aspect isn't that important to me. Really I just need something small enough to be lugged from place to place and plugged in, generally, but I'm wondering if I can do better. I have a very long return window on this thing, as I guess Amazon's started their holiday exception date range already, but I'd like to hear about alternatives before I make any hasty decisions.
Should I be looking at Pioneer? Sony? Onkyo? Samsung? Others?
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