EarFun UBOOM Review – Fully Waterproof Bluetooth 5.0 Speaker

EarFun UBOOM Bluetooth Speaker

With so many brands of portable Bluetooth speakers on the market, choosing one to spend your hard-earned money on can be a tricky task. It’s very easy to just opt for big brands like JBL or Bose and pay way more than you actually need to.

In this review, I’m going to show you the best way to find out if a $60 speaker like the EarFun UBOOM can compete or even improve on a $200 speaker like the Bose Soundlink Revolve. – *Spoiler alert, it can, and it does!

Price and Availability

Full Review

The UBOOM portable speaker comes in a well presented retail box along with a user guide and Type-C USB charging cable. It has a tapered cylindrical shape with a black woven fabric surround and a yellow karabiner loop at the top.

Designed for the Outdoors

I’m always pleased to see an attachment point on a portable speaker, especially when they’re designed for the outdoors. The UBOOM certainly fits the bill, with an IPX7 rating, it will survive at least 30 minutes fully submerged in a metre of water.

The wider base adds stability and its size is ideal for placing it in a vehicle’s cup holder or a cycles drinks holder.

Tactile Controls

The top of the speaker has a fingerprint-friendly matte black concaved surface. The backlit buttons are all neatly concealed underneath. They feel tactile to the touch and require just the right amount of pressure to press.

The UBOOM has a centrally located power button, Bluetooth pairing and sound-mode buttons above, volume controls on either side and a multi-function button underneath. This will play and pause tracks, skip forward with a double-tap and skip back with a triple-tap. Additionally, holding the button for one second will activate Google, Siri or Alexa.

There is a textured rubber base on the underside that dampens the vibrations from the bass at high volume and provides good contact on surfaces.

Well Protected Ports.

When a Bluetooth speaker has a high level of water resistance there tends to be a port cover that requires claw-like nails to prise open. The UBOOM has one of the best covers I’ve seen. It feels secure when shut, but opens with ease. Underneath, there is a 3.5mm AUX input for wired connections and a Type-C USB charging port.

Type-C USB Charging and Bluetooth 5.0

EarFun clearly understands the importance of using up-to-date technology. So many Portable devices are still being made with micro USB ports and Bluetooth 4.0. Type-C USB and Bluetooth 5.0 are far superior over their predecessors. The Type-C USB ensures optimum charging speeds and Bluetooth 5.0 vastly improves streaming speed and stability. The UBOOM fully charges in under 4 hours for an impressive 16 hours playtime and the Bluetooth is rock solid without any audio delay when watching videos.

True Stereo Linking

The UBOOM portable speaker can be linked with a second unit to provide true-stereo sound. This is obviously optional and unnecessary for those on a budget, however, after hearing the audio from a single unit, you might be tempted to grab another UBOOM at a later date.

Specifications

EarFun UBOOM Audio Performance

Now, as promised at the start of this review, I’m going to explain how you can be confident of the audio quality of this speaker and how it compares to others. It would be very easy for myself or other reviewers to write about the low, mids, and highs and you could choose to take our word for it. However, there is no better way than to hear it for yourself alongside other speakers.

That’s where Olav comes in… This guy does the best A-B audio comparisons of Portable speakers.  If you’re into Bluetooth speakers, I highly recommend you subscribe to his YouTube channel or visit his Bluetooth Speaker database.

Here is the EarFun UBOOM compared with the $200 Bose Soundlink Revolve.

And here is the UBOOM speaker linked with a second unit compared to the JBL Charge 4.

I have A/B tested it myself against similar priced Bluetooth speakers and the sound quality of the UBOOM is vastly better. For the price tag, the EarFun UBOOM stands shoulders above the rest.

As demonstrated in Olav’s video, the EarFun Uboom does a fantastic job of producing 360 degrees of sound. Most cylinder-shaped speakers that advertise this as a feature, very rarely achieve it.

Verdict

With its impressive audio quality, Bluetooth 5.0, Type-C USB, solid battery life, and IPX7 rating, it would be hard to find a better Bluetooth speaker for under $100. The EarFun UBOOM is fantastic for the price and I highly recommend it.

Price and Availability

You can visit EarFun’s official website to see their full range of audio products