Ultimate Ears UE Megablast Review - Review 2022

Ultimate Ears has established itself as a leader in the portable Bluetooth speaker market place with its Boom line, which includes the excellent Boom 2 and Megaboom. Now it'south hitting the smart speaker space, adding Wi-Fi connectivity and phonation control to the mix with its new Blast family unit. UE's Boom speakers look, experience, and perform a lot like their Boom equivalents, but with Amazon Alexa vocalization control. The $299.99 UE Megablast is the biggest of the bunch, besides every bit the most powerful speaker for taking Alexa on the become.

Design

The Megablast is similar to the Megaboom in size, but with starker, sharper contours for its cylindrical body. It measures 9.4 past 3.six inches (HW), with a cloth grille interrupted past a broad rubber strip featuring the large plus and minus buttons that are now signatures of UE's speaker design.

The top of the Megablast features a big power button in the heart with an LED indicator, and a smaller Bluetooth pairing push button with a smaller LED. The lesser of the speaker features a metal D-ring for hanging it, and a safety door that covers the micro USB charging port. Different the Megaboom, there are no wired audio connections.

UE Megablast

The speaker is rugged and resistant to water—unlike any other Alexa speaker. It features an IP67 rating, which means it can survive beingness submerged in 3.3 feet of h2o for upwards to thirty minutes, and can withstand grit, sand, and other small particles.

Typically yous'll use the Megablast standing vertically, with the micro USB port covered. When you desire to accuse it, you demand to turn it on its side or upside downwardly to plug it in using the included cable and wall adapter. You can also get the Power Up charging cradle, a apartment disc with a micro USB port on the side and three charging points on top. The Power Upward comes with a replacement D-ring for the Megablast, with a recessed section and charging contacts to enable the menstruum of juice by placing the speaker on the cradle.

According to Ultimat Ears, the Megablast tin terminal up to 16 hours on a charge. This will depend on network connectivity and book levels.

Amazon Alexa

To get the Megablast to work with Alexa, you demand to download the Amazon Alexa and Ultimate Ears apps (both are available for Android and iOS). Open up the Ultimate Ears app and follow the instructions to connect the Megablast to your Wi-Fi network and update the firmware. When that's washed, information technology will prompt yous to set upward Alexa. After that, the Alexa app lets yous control the Megablast's vocalism settings.

You activate the banana by proverb, "Alexa," followed by a control. The Megablast can perform near of the same functions as an Amazon Echo. You can play music from Amazon, become a weather condition forecast, check your calendar, convert different measuring units, heed to news reports, and admission the thousands of third-party skills. You tin can also command various smart home and entertainment devices, including your entire abode theater if yous have a Logitech Harmony Hub.

UE Megablast

The Megablast can't do everything Amazon's first-party Alexa devices can, though. You can't cull an alternate wake-up word from "Alexa," and the speaker doesn't support Amazon's Drop In voice call feature. Music playback through voice control is currently limited to Amazon's music services, iHeartRadio, and TuneIn, which means no hands-free Spotify (though y'all can still play anything y'all want from your telephone or tablet through Bluetooth). Oddly, information technology also doesn't office every bit a Bluetooth speakerphone, despite its microphones.

Audio Performance

The Megablast gets impressively loud and offers plenty of bass power, fifty-fifty without producing subwoofer-like rumble. The low bass thump in Run The Jewels' "Legend Has Information technology" has lots of punch, while the rhymes stay prominent in the mix. And the depression strumming in David Bowie'southward "I'one thousand Afraid of Americans" makes for a sinister effect.

The opening acoustic guitar notes in Yes' "Roundabout" get plenty of low-mid response for the resonance of each pluck, with enough in the high-mids and highs to bring out the string'south texture. When the electrical bass kicks in, the pop of each note comes through, with the depression frequency vibrations of the bass getting a fiddling less presence. Information technology'southward a sculpted but balanced sound that juggles the different parts of the mix well.

The speaker stumbles only when it comes to very deep sub-bass. At maximum volume, the boot pulsate hits in The Knife'south "Silent Shout" misconstrue, despite the presence of some digital point processing (DSP) at higher volumes. Information technology should be noted that the speaker sounds satisfyingly loud and doesn't distort at one-half volume, and at maximum it tin can easily fill a crowded room with audio.

UE Megablast

Comparisons and Conclusions

The UE Megablast is a powerful portable speaker that takes the solid performance and rugged design of the Megaboom and adds Alexa vocalization control to the mix. It hands overpowers the smaller and less expensive Amazon Tap, as well as the Echo itself.

Curiously, the UE Megaboom is the aforementioned price as the Megablast. While the Megaboom offers a few small advantages like a iii.5mm input, speakerphone functionality, and slightly longer 20-hour bombardment life, the lack of hands-free Alexa voice command makes the Megablast the better option for near.

If portability and ruggedness aren't particularly important to y'all, the Sonos One remains one of the best-sounding voice banana speakers out there. It isn't quite equally booming every bit the Megablast or the Google Assistant-equipped Google Home Max, only it handles sound with more rest and finesse, so it remains our Editors' Choice. But if you desire a big, powerful Alexa speaker yous can take anywhere, the Megablast is a slap-up bet.