Ultimate Ears has been steadily expanding its Bluetooth speaker lineup over the past few years, but the fixtures that have kept the brand in business—the popular Boom and Megaboom speakers—have remained virtually unchanged.
Now in its fourth iteration, the Boom 4 finally gets a USB-C charging port along with a few other tweaks, including updated drivers. The speaker could still use a bit more bass, but Ultimate Ears will happily point to the larger (and pricier) Megaboom for anyone wanting some extra bump.
In most respects, this is the same Boom speaker UE fans know and love, and that’s mostly a good thing. Offering refined portable sound and easy usability in a near-indestructible package, the Boom 4 is one of the best Bluetooth speakers of its kind.
Big Ole Buttons
The Boom 4 wouldn’t be an Ultimate Ears speaker without gigantic volume buttons—that’s kind of the brand's thing. It’s an iconic look that makes controlling the speaker easy, not just for you but for anyone who might wander by your picnic table. Up top you’ll find the rest of the controls, including a centralized multifunction button for options like play/pause and song skipping, a Bluetooth pairing button, and the power key.
The Boom’s biggest asset may be its build quality. The 7-inch-tall frame is layered in an ultra-tough fabric that makes it quite possibly the most durable speaker of its kind. Like most competitors, the Boom 4 is sealed to resist dust and water; its IP67 weatherproof rating means it can easily shrug off a dunk in the pool or a roll in the sand. It’s drop tested at up to 1.5 meters, and I can tell you from experience that dropping it off a short ledge, down a small flight of stairs, or off your bike onto the pavement may scuff it but likely won’t stop the fun.
Neither will walking away from the speaker with your phones, a classic party foul in the Bluetooth era. With its up to 150 feet in line-of-sight range and plenty of distance even with obstructions like walls or windows, you’ll have to wander pretty far to cause annoying hiccups.
The UE app adds more options, including a multiband EQ, the ability to pair the speaker with up to 150 other Ultimate Ears speakers (if you’re running some sort of outdoor rave), and an Alarm that lets you wake up to the last song played. There's also a new megaphones feature that lets you speak through the speaker from your phones, which could come in handy for calling the kids in for dinner a la intercoms from the ’80s.
My favorite feature has to be the ability to wake the speaker from standby mode without the need to get up from your lawn chair as you sip a cool drink. It’s the kind of convenience usually reserved for Wi-Fi speakers of the Sonos variety, without the need for a nearby network. One caveat is that keeping this feature on drains the battery more quickly with the speaker at rest, so you’ll want to save it for times when you’re using the speaker regularly.