Photo: Marcus McDonald
Bluetooth speakers have been a major fixture in my life ever since I picked up the original Ultimate Ears Boom in college. I use them to listen to podcasts or my favorite playlists while I’m cooking and cleaning my house, and if I’m going on a trip, I’ll take a travel-size speaker to make sure I’ve got my shower tunes.
To find the best Bluetooth speakers for listening at home, traveling, or multi-room audio, I tested 21 speakers from the biggest names in the space, including Ultimate Ears, JBL, Sonos, and Bose, and combed through our archives to find recommendations from stylish people as well as fellow Strategist writers and editors.
Update on April 12, 2025: Updated prices and checked stock for all products.
The speaker’s weight will help determine how easy it is to carry around and varies widely: Many models come in under one pound, but some can weigh over ten pounds. Rugged speakers tend to weigh more, and smaller home-office speakers weigh less, though the smaller size may also result in a slight drop in sound quality. I’ve found that the ideal weight is about one pound: That’s big enough to project a good sound in a variety of spaces but small enough to throw into a bag for a trip. If you’re not planning on moving the speaker around, or don’t mind hauling around the extra weight, bigger speakers may be worth the trade-off for better sound. For larger speakers, I focused on those with some sort of handle to ensure they’re not cumbersome to move.
Most Bluetooth speakers have an IP rating, which tells you how protected the device is against water and dust. The first number indicates dust resistance and the second tells you how waterproof the speaker is — in both cases, the higher the number, the better the protection. But if you’re going to use your speaker near any water — like in the shower or near a pool — you should get one with a waterproof rating of at least 7 for protection against submersion.
Every speaker on this list can clock at least seven hours with decent recharge times. Naturally, larger speakers will have larger batteries, but even small speakers should offer over six hours of battery life.
Weight: 0.93 pounds | Dust and water resistance: IP67 | Battery life: 14 hours
Among all the speakers I’ve tested, none have impressed me quite as much as the Wonderboom 4, mainly owing to the quality of sound it’s able to produce in such a small package. It’s about the size of a small candle and can easily fit into a backpack, carry-on, or even a tote, yet it’s loud enough to hear from across my living room, all the way into my kitchen.
Pairing is simple: All you have to do is hold the pairing button and it shows up in your phone or tablet’s Bluetooth menu right away. It will connect immediately when powered back on. You can easily pair two Wonderbooms together for a stereo experience with a couple button pushes.
At louder levels, usually around 80 percent or higher, sounds can start to get muddled, especially with genres like hip-hop or metal (I tested with Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter II and Lamb of God’s Sacrament), and the vocals can drown out instrumentals. It’s not enough to detract from how good the Wonderboom sounds, though. When kept below that threshold, songs sound as clear and vibrant as on other UE speakers such as the Boom. As for podcasts and audiobooks, I was able to play those at louder volumes without audio quality suffering, and could hear them over the water running as I washed my dishes.
The Wonderboom 4 is chunkier than the JBL Clip 5, so it’s slightly less portable, and its elastic loop is less effective than the Clip 5’s metal clasp for attaching it to things, but the speaker also produces clearer sound, likely owing to its larger size.
To test its IP67 rating, I dropped the Wonderboom into a pool of water in my sink three times while playing music. The music sounded muffled and quite terrible at first, but once the water dripped out, the speaker was back to sounding good as new. You absolutely should not try this, but know that if you’re using this as your pool-party speaker, it’s safe. It has a plastic door that covers the charging port when not in use to prevent water from sneaking in and mucking things up. It’s rugged enough to withstand being carried with you on your next vacation, or just getting moved from room to room.
While the Clip 5 and Go 4 are both smaller than the Wonderboom 4, this is the most portable speaker I’ve tested that gets closest to the sound quality of bigger speakers like the Pulse 5. It’s quite similar to our previous best Bluetooth speaker overall, the Wonderboom 3: Its sound is nearly identical, and the design hasn’t changed. The biggest improvement is the switch from micro-USB to USB-C, which will make the Wonderboom 4 easier to travel with if you have a phone or laptop that charges over USB-C (as most do these days). For this model, Ultimate Ears also added a podcast mode to the equalizer, and while it did make voices sound more crisp, I didn’t find the difference noticeable enough to change modes when listening to audiobooks or podcasts.
The Wonderboom 4 has a fabric loop that you can use to clip it onto other objects, like a backpack.
Photo: Jordan McMahon
Weight: 0.56 pounds | Dust and water resistance: IP67 | Battery life: 16 hours
If you want to get a speaker that’s affordable and doesn’t cut corners on audio quality, Sony’s SRS XB100 sounds surprisingly good for costing well under $100. The sound isn’t quite as clear at loud volumes as with the Wonderboom, but the Sony has louder bass, which some people may prefer, and it’s overall clearer and louder than the JBL Go 4. While listening to Elton John’s Madman Across the Water, I found the vocals easy to hear without the instrumentals being washed out. For hip-hop tracks like Run the Jewels’ Blockbuster Night Pt. 1, the bass felt punchy without overpowering Killer Mike or El-P’s vocals, even with the volume turned up while I was running a robot vacuum in another room.
While JBL and Logitech use a fabric covering over their speakers, Sony uses a matte plastic finish that’s more durable, easy to grip, and pleasant to look at (the speaker comes in four colors, including vibrant shades of orange and blue). The speaker has a fabric loop that you can easily attach to a backpack (though the Clip 5’s mechanism is more effective). It also has the longest battery life of any travel-size speaker I’ve tested, lasting about 13 hours.
Weight: 0.62 pounds | Dust and water resistance: IP67 | Battery life: 12 hours
Most of these Bluetooth speakers are portable, but the Clip 5 is the most travel-friendly I’ve tested thanks to the built-in eponymous clip that lets you attach it to nearly anything, including a bike basket or shower head. The speaker has rubber ribs on the back that allow you to place it on smooth surfaces without having to worry about it…