With the help of UE, Logitech has managed to offer quite a good range of products in the wireless speaker segment. One of the best ones we reviewed was the UE Boombox, which we thought was quite good for indoor use. Today, we’re taking a look at the Mobile Boombox, one of Logitech’s portable Bluetooth speakers. Although it doesn’t look anything like its larger counterparts, we are still expecting a similar performance. The speaker is price around a mere Rs. 4,000 which also sounds quite reasonable considering what it has to offer.
Design and Build
The UE Mobile Boombox looks like it’s meant for outdoor use, but it doesn’t feel very sturdy when you hold it in your hand. The speaker is mostly made of plastic which makes it light but also a bit flimsy. There is a rubber coating around it though, which makes it look reasonably rugged. The coating is thick enough to sustain minor bumps and knocks. The sturdiest part of the design is the metal grill at the front and back.
That said, the Mobile Boombox looks very stylish. Part of its fancy look comes from the colour of the grill. The model we reviewed came with an enticing fluorescent green grill, which does a very good job of accentuating the black rubber coating around it. The speaker is also available in combinations of other colours including white, blue and red. At 286g, the speaker is light and compact enough to fit easily in a small backpack.
There are three buttons at the top that include the volume keys and the Bluetooth button. All the buttons are integrated underneath the rubber padding. They are large and need a lot of pressure to press.
Features
The Logitech UE Mobile Boombox is pretty compact. Underneath the metal grill, are two 1.2-inch speakers that are powered at 2.5 watts (RMS) each. With that size and power output, the speaker should be good enough to play music in a small room.
The Logitech UE Mobile Boombox also has a built-in microphone, which allows you to attend calls you get on your smartphone or tablet. Unfortunately, the speaker doesn't have a separate button to pick-up incoming calls. You need to do that from your phone. The inbuilt lithium-ion battery can be charged with the micro USB port placed at the back.
Logitech claims the speaker has a battery life of 10 hours, which sounds good, but they also claim it to take 4 hours to charge completely, which is a lot for a speaker this size. Connecting the speaker to your smartphone is quite easy. All you need to do is press and hold down the Bluetooth button on the speaker and connect your device to it, by searching for ‘UE Mobile Boombox’ from the list of Bluetooth speakers that show up. Apart from Bluetooth, the speaker also has a 3.5mm auxiliary jack for MP3 players and other audio players that aren’t Bluetooth enabled.
Performance
We connected the Logitech UE Mobile Boombox to a smartphone and tried playing music from a range of genres. We were quite satisfied with its performance. First things first, it’s loud. The sound might not be the best in its class but this portable speaker certainly does justice to its size. The speaker struggles to hide distortion at high volumes, especially in bass heavy genres of music.
Rock and heavy metal genres didn’t sound very good either. The bass is missing depth and the clashing sound of cymbals seemed overpowered. Bass reproduction had the same outcome while listening to dubstep and electronica genres of music, but we did noticed that we could hear the details clearly. The best part of the speakers we felt were the mids. Tracks sounded way better when we toned down the volume and played pop and soft rock genres.
Vocals were loud, clear and sounded quite soothing. There was very less distortion, but the volume was loud enough from a distance of 3-4 feet. The sound was quite clear when we were using it as a speakerphone as well, but we noticed a split second delay. You also have to keep the speaker pretty close to you while speaking into it. Overall, it was decent. Logitech claims that the UE Mobile Boombox has a Bluetooth range of 50 feet. We weren’t able to test it with that distance, but we were happy to see the speaker play seamlessly from a distance of 30 feet.
