Hands-on review: Ultimate Ears MegaBoom

Tue, 7th Jul 2015

FYI, this story is more than a year old

The Ultimate Ears MegaBoom has excellent sound quality, heavy bass, and be paired with several devices - creating the ultimate Wi-Fi speaker experience.

Setup The UE MegaBoom was very easy to set up and pair with my iPhone. All I had to do was download the UE MegaBoom iOS app and follow the instructions to pair the speaker with my iPhone via Bluetooth. The speaker made short sounds to indicate it had turned on and off and was ready to pair via Bluetooth. If you have two of them you can wirelessly pair the two for Stereo sound, as long as they are both either a MegaBoom or Boom.

Usability and Quality From the app I could turn the speaker off and use the Equaliser (EQ) to adjust the individual frequencies. According to UE's website, the UE MegaBoom has a wireless range of 30 metres (100 feet), can be paired with up to 8 devices, and can have up to two devices connected to it at once. It is IPX7-rated waterproof (immersion for 30 minutes at a depth of 1 metre) also has a 20-hour battery life. It comes with a charger and the charge time is approximately 2.5 hours.

The sound quality of the UE MegaBoom is very good, and is obviously aimed at people who like their music with lots of bass. If you are more into the classics you might find the range of the MegaBoom limiting on the top notes. The equaliser in the iPhone app provides some level of control across the frequencies, bit as the UE site states this unit is "360-degree sound with deep, heart-pounding bass".

Look and Feel The cyclindrical shape and minimalistic styling gives it a modern, sleek and simple look. It comes in basic black, as well as electric blue, lava red and plum.

Verdict Retailing at $399.90, the UE MegaBoom is a high-quality, heavy-bass, 360-degree wireless speaker oriented towards people who play heavy-bass music and the music will sound shallow with the bass lowered to the minimum. If you are looking for a speaker with less boom and more portability, then you would likely prefer the much cheaper UE Roll that I discuss here.

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