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JBL Clip review




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JBL has established itself in the speaker segment. They have a product for almost every use, be it for indoors or outdoors. Their Bluetooth speakers not only have nice designs, but also unique features. A few examples of this are the JBL Pulse and the Charge. Joining the list now is the JBL Clip. It’s one of their most portable speakers and around Rs. 3,000*, and also one of the lightest. The speaker comes equipped with a clip that allows you to carry it with ease.  It looks like a very nice product to tag along on hiking trips. Should it be your ideal option though, let’s give it a swirl and find out.

Design and Build

First things first, when you buy the JBL Clip, you’ll notice a Red Dot logo on the top. The Clip was awarded the best design for the year 2014 and we can see why. The JBL Clip is one of the best portable speakers we’ve seen. Not only is it small enough to fit in one hand, but its unique design also comes with its own functionality. The speaker looks like the old JBL Micro, but this time they have added a new carabiner styled clip at the top, which allows you to hook the speaker to different things. It makes the clip easy to carry. Although a good feature, we doubt how many places you can hook the clip to. The clip's mechanism is sturdy and the also a bit chunky, so clipping it to broader objects becomes a problem. At most, you can clip it very easily to strings on a bag or an ID card strap. Some people might also be able to hook it to their cycle handlebars.

The JBL Clip in every way looks like it’s meant to be carried outdoors. It only weighs 150g, but has a sturdy build. The circular design has a metal grill at the front that protects the single driver. Around the speaker, you see a rubber coating, which looks strong enough to survive nasty falls. There is a 3.5mm pin housed at the back, which has its cable very neatly wrapped around the circular design. We really like this aspect of the design. The only problem is that the cable is too short and looks flimsy.

The buttons are built-in to the rubber coating. They’re quite easy to press. On one side, you have a volume controls and on the other you have the power, Bluetooth and the call button. A micro-USB port has been placed right at the bottom. The speaker we had was complete black in colour, which looked good. The JBL Clip is also available in a range of funky colours that will help make more of a style statement.


Features

Underneath the metal grill, lies a 1.5-inch driver. It has power output of 3.2W. It sounds loud enough for outdoors. JBL also mentions a frequency response of 160Hz – 20KHz, which looks good on paper for a speaker of this kind. However, we’ll find out how well it does, when we start testing it with music. Apart from the auxiliary port, you also have Bluetooth connectivity. On the official website, JBL only claims compatibility with Android and iOS devices. The speaker also comes with a built-in microphone that lets you answer phone calls when connected to the speaker. There is a dedicated button on it that lets you pick-up incoming calls.  

  The auxiliary cable included might be short, but JBL has also included another 3.5mm jack, so you can connect another cable to it. In-the-box, you also get a micro-USB cable to charge the speaker. However, the fact that it’s micro USB means that you can use any smartphone cable to charge it. The battery takes about two hours to charge and according to JBL, will last for five hours at a stretch, which is good considering its size.


Performance

It’s surprising how loud the JBL Clip is for its size. You won’t have much problem having the Clip around when you’re on the move. It’s like a small boom-box by itself. But like any portable speaker, the JBL Clip doesn’t handle high volumes too well; some distortion can be heard when you crank up the volume. While playing heavy metal bands like Iron Maiden, Tesseract and Tool we could only hear distortion. It was mostly the guitar riffs and drums that sounded unclear. Mids and vocals though sounded very good.  

  The JBL Clip also lacks a little when it comes to bass. Thumps in bassy songs just sounded flat. However, it doesn’t take away the feel out of the song. What the Clip loses in depth, it makes up in sharpness. Overall every song we played on the speaker sounded crisp, especially the acoustic songs. Details in songs can easily be heard. We found the speaker performing really well while playing slow melodic songs like ‘Dream On’ from Aerosmith. Everything sounded balanced, starting from the guitar riffs to the amazing vocals. Connecting the speaker using Bluetooth is simple. We were able to play music from a distance of 25-feet without any glitches. We also had a few phone conversations with the built-in microphone. It’s possible to have a good conversation even when sitting at a distance of 5-feet but we recommend sitting closer if you don’t want the other person to hear any of the background noise that might be present.


Verdict

We really liked the JBL Clip. When it comes to portability combined with good audio, it’s one of few options that won’t cut a huge hole in your pocket. It’s also stylish and the carabiner clip, although not a great feature, can come very handy in certain situations. The wide range of funky colours also makes it quite attractive option for outdoorsy youngsters.