Jawbone Jambox Wireless Portable Speaker Review
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Jawbone, the makers of the most stylish and popular Bluetooth headsets around have finally come out with a wireless Bluetooth portable speaker for listening to music and what would this thing be without being a speakerphone too. All of this jammed into a small, perfectly portable speaker. There are quite a few amazing things about the Jambox that I'll get into in the full review right after the cut.
Knowing Jawbone and how modern their headsets are, the Jambox is no different in that aspect. The design is pretty impressive and unlike anything I've seen before. Every Jambox has its own uniquely designed speaker grille and they're color coded as well, just like Jawbone's headsets. The Jambox is a pretty hefty little speaker but weight is important for good sound. The materials used to create the Jambox make sense and are metal and rubber. It feels like a solid brick. Enough about that, what is really important is how well the Jambox performs.
The most impressive feature in the Jambox is the bass. Man oh man did I not expect such thumping bass on this little solid brick. To say the bass vibrates the entire surface the Jambox is on is literally true. When the Jambox eats up bass heavy music, it vibrates so much from how deep it produces bass that it starts to move on its own. You can listen to your music while the Jambox moves on its own. I'm pretty sure you're not going to want anything moving around especially when the sound starts to direct at a different location than where you are. The Jambox vibrates to much that it will turn a full 360 degrees while thumping out juicy bass. Even the grippy rubber surface cannot hold this thing in place, it's pretty crazy.
The Jambox sounds pretty impressive for its size and its volume can easily fill a big room. There is one big downside to the thumping, vibrating bass though. It overpowers the rest of the sound on bass heavy songs and even worse it will start to muffle up at higher than normal sound levels. It's too bad that Jawbone tried to overly impress with huge amounts of powerful bass on this little thing because when you're listening to music with less bass, vocals sound really clear and crisp.
The Jambox sounds overly warm because of the deep bass it packs but when you're at a normal sound volume, songs sound very good. You cannot compare your laptop's or iPad speakers to this at all. The Jambox is a great portable wireless speaker with an impressive battery life of about 8 hours. All of this doesn't come cheap though, the Jambox will set you back $200 When you look at it, it is overpriced. I think that at $100 this would be the ideal choice for a wireless portable speaker. The Bluetooth compatibility is second to none and Jawbone infused all their technology into the Jambox you may love and know from their Bluetooth headsets.
Using the speakerphone feature on the Jambox is nothing too special and not something I would consider using myself. Sound quality is average with Jawbone's headset offerings. On the unit itself you will find huge volume up and down buttons and a control button to answer calls, bring up your phone's voice commands and to know how much battery you've got left. All of this is also customizable with Jawbone's MyTALK online platform. Using the Jambox for a few days, the battery life held up very well. I'm very impressed by the battery performance on this. It goes very well with the iPad's long battery life.
It's a good thing the Jawbone Jambox comes with all the accessories you will ever need for your $200. Included are: carrying case, 60" micro-USB charging cable, 12.5" micro-USB charging cable, 36" 3.5mm audio cable and an A/C wall adapter. All of these accessories are very useful with the Jambox. You've got a few options to charge and hook up to your audio source which is fantastic. It really depends on how you're going to use the Jambox. High volumes are the Jambox's weak spot when paired with heavy bass. The Jambox is available in four colors for $199.99.
