Hand On With the Earfun Uboom Portable Bluetooth Speaker

After my initial review of the Earfun Go Portable Bluetooth Speaker, Earfun was kind enough to send me the Go’s bigger brother, the Earfun Uboom.

If the Earfun Go is the type of speaker that is nice for a nice quiet day by the pool, then the Earfun Uboom is the speaker for when you don’t want the day at the pool to be so quiet. :D

With a pair of 12-watt, 45mm drivers and “dual-passive radiators”, the Uboom is no slouch when it comes to sound quality. Lows are low, highs are high, and mids are…in the middle?

I put it through a wide cross-section of music over the course of several days in several different environments, and it was great in all of them.

Used in an up-close and personal scenario (sitting on my laptop with the speaker on the table next to me), I didn’t find much of a need to turn it up past 20-30%. It’s loud, it’s clear, the bass is present without being overpowering.

Used for some ambient background music while doing some work around my basement, The DSP that drives the 360-degree sound did a great job of presenting songs that rely heavily on left/right panning, like the screaming guitar solos in Pink Floyd’s “Dogs”. Here I had the volume somewhere between 40-60%, and again, the guitars were crystal-clear, and the thump of the kick drum was solid and forceful, without the distortion that can be found on smaller units when trying to drive the low-end too hard. At 60%, I found myself nudging the volume down a little while inside.

Regardless of how psychedelic your music is, it does a great job of filling a small-medium sized room without sacrificing any nuance or quality.

Now, what fun is a portable, waterproof speaker if you’re just going to use it inside? Not much fun at all. Fortunately, we had a family get-together, and so out came the Uboom.

One of the thoughtful features Earfun cooked up here was an indoor/outdoor mode, which is just a simple button press on the top of the speaker. When enabled, it seems to change the sound balance of the speaker so that there’s a bit less emphasis on the lows, but not so much that it’s even perceptible unless you’re specifically looking for it. The sound is still balanced and full…just…not as full as when it’s in indoor mode.

The overall effect is that when you’re inside, you get rich, immersive sound that you can feel in your chest; and when you’re outside, you get sound that will be audible and clear, but not overpowering to conversations or next-door-neighbors. At least, that’s my impression of it.

In the list of other goodies, we have a modern USB-C connector, Bluetooth-5 connectivity, an assistant button that should work with your smartphone’s AI assistant. With the google assistant, you simply press the button on the top for a second, and then interact with it as usual. Oh, and remember that old-school headphone-style plug we used to use to transfer music? It’s got input for one of those too.

Also, like it’s little brother, the Uboom sports an IPX7 waterproof rating. Provided you’re not using the aux input, you can literally toss it into the water next to you and not think about it again until you want to change the song.

Overall, I think it’s safe to say that I was sufficiently impressed by this speaker. The battery life was somewhere around 12-13 hours, which, given that I was often using it at 70-80% volume, is great. The sub 4-hour charge time is even better. You really shouldn’t need to turn this up past 60% for most scenarios where you’d be using a speaker like this in the first place.

The sound quality is awesome. If I had to say something bad about it, it would be that at around 75% volume, the bass just kind of *stops* going up. The more you increase the volume past this point, the more noticeable the gap becomes. The sound is still clear and crisp…there’s just a little too much treble to call it balanced. Go below that magical threshold, and everything is even and full.

The entire design and build quality of the Uboom, much like the Earfun Go, is rock-solid. While I didn’t lob this one across my lawn, I’m confident that it can sustain a lot of rough treatment before showing any sign of it. All of the edges are coated in a soft-but-durable feeling rubber, and the speaker grilles provide a nice firm grip, without feeling like you’re going to damage the underlying components.

Also, like the Earfun Go, the Uboom features a “stereo mode” that I was unable to try, simply for lack of a second Uboom to try it with. According to the guide, you simply press the triforce button on your speaker, and it will connect with a second Uboom and work like a regular pair of stereo speakers. If one of these speakers sounds great, then I can only imagine that a pair of them in stereo would sound amazing.

All in all, I think this speaker is awesome, and would definitely recommend it to anybody who wants a little more oomph wherever they want to listen to music. While there are probably other portable speakers on the market that can claim better sound quality at the same size, I would be surprised to see one that could do so well at the low low price of just $50 USD, and include all of the features and quality of the Earfun Uboom.

You can find the Uboom on Amazon, and more information on their official website.

Get an extra 20% off by using the code EARFUNBTS1.

TECH SPECS

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