We rank all battery powered Bluetooth speakers by size - pocket size, small/medium size, large size, boombox size and extreme size. Click on the column you want to sort ascending or descending.
The best all around speaker with the best sound quality with modern features is the medium size $60 Earfun Uboom L running firmware 0.4.3 (will need to be changed for the best sound quality and requires PC to update).
The best for deeper bass with excellent sound quality is the large size $100 Mifa Wildbox running firmware 2.11 (requires PC to update).
The best for deep bass with excellent sound quality, that can get loud for a party but can still be carried by hand is the boombox size $155 Tribit Stormbox Blast.
The best sounding speaker for the price that fits into home decor is the boombox size $140 Harman Kardon Onyx Studio 6 or Onyx Studio 7
The best sounding big party speaker with excellent sound quality and very deep bass is the extreme size $550 JBL Partybox 310 (check out best Bluetooth party speakers)
The absolute loudest speaker is the €950 Teufel Rockster (EU only) followed by the $1000 Soundboks gen 3
The best sounding speaker that fits in a pocket is the $60 Tribit Stormbox Micro 2
The best shower speaker is the pocket size Ultimate Ears WONDERBOOM 3, it has a long lasting battery life with IP67 rating and is able to float in water.
My perfect minimal speaker setup would be 2 Earfun Uboom L and 2 Stormbox Blast, enough to cover the small and big use cases in a wide stereo setup.
Information about the rankings
Note: If you are not an audiophile or aren’t interested in speakers that can reproduce recordings and musical instruments to a high level of natural accuracy, then you may not agree with the ranking order in this document. Natural sounding speakers will reproduce badly done recordings badly. Pop music will generally sound fine with a lot of speakers. If you want to determine which speakers are truly great, use Jazz or Classical music and listen to how natural the instruments sound. If you are only interested in bass boosted, treble boosted, or warm speakers, please search the descriptions of speakers for that trait or look for the ones with an EQ.
Feel free to post/send a link to this document for anyone or on any forum post you think could benefit from it!
All coupon codes have been found on the internet and I use no links for you to purchase products. Purchase them anywhere you find them the cheapest. I'm just here sharing my deep analysis of over 1000 hours of youtube videos directly comparing speakers against speakers.
This list is built from thousands of hours of video of the rankings of trusted YouTube reviewers all spliced together into rankings by speaker size. It is ordered with the best speakers on top of each category with the selection criteria being natural/neutral sounding with reasonable bass extension and features. 80% of the speakers in this ranking have been ranked this way. About 20% of the time when there are no direct comparisons, I’ve done my best to find the best sound samples, adjust for differences in microphone frequency responses and compare them myself using high end headphones (JDS 0L Dac, JDS 02 amp, Hifiman HE-560 or Earfun Free Pro 2 with Oluv’s Gadgets custom tuning) Although those 20% tend to be not very popular or high ranked and are generally insignificant.
If you can’t find the speaker comparison you’re looking for, search Youtube for it. Open rtings.com links in a new incognito window if you run out of free reviews. All max volume measurements are at 1m, all bass extension measurements are at a -10db falloff and taken from frequency response charts and data from YouTube reviews and rtings. If you see a ~ that’s me estimating bass extension off the music because there’s no frequency response chart anywhere. Higher max volume and lower bass extension are better.
A huge thanks to all the Youtube speaker reviewers who have made it possible to even create this ranked list in the first place.
Information applying to all speakers
None of these speakers will be as satisfying as high end home audio which when properly selected and set up can present a 3d sound image with depth, height and pinpoint location accuracy along with a neutral response and extended treble and bass. Enjoy these portable speakers for what they are, a way to enjoy music in any room or any place you bring them. For the closest to ultra high end audio, check out the Vifa Helsinki or a TWS pair of Earfun Uboom L in that order.
Almost all of the speakers can wirelessly stereo pair (referred to as TWS) with the same model speaker for 6db more output and wide stereo separation. Some can do non-stereo pairing with more than 2 speakers, JBL has Connect+ or Partyboost (not directly compatible) up to 100 speakers, Sony has WirelessParty Chain and Party Connect (not directly compatible) up to 100 speakers, Soundcore has Partycast and Partycast 2.0 (both compatible) up to 100 speakers, Mifa has PartyAdd up to 100 speakers, and Samsung has Giga Party with up to 10 speakers. All speakers below are labeled with the technology they support, not all speakers support them. Note: Some of these multi speaker technologies may not work if you have a Bluetooth 4.x or less device like many laptops.
If you want to stream Bluetooth to multiple brands or models of speakers you can use TCL Super Bluetooth or Samsung Dual Audio
Almost all these speakers start cutting out bass around 60-80% to get to their maximum volume without distortion. Bigger speakers generally have deeper bass, there’s no way around physics.
Battery life is generally rated at medium volume. Running at full volume, expect 25-33% (example: 10 hours drops to 2.5-3.3 hours) of rated battery life.
Iphones seem to be limited to 16 volume steps using the side buttons which is generally not enough. Click on the volume slider to access all 32 steps. Android has 24 volume steps which is better.
Some speakers from Soundcore, JBL, Ultimate Ears, and Minirig can disable their startup, pairing and shutdown sounds by changing a setting in their app.
