Ultimate Ears Everboom reviewed: making an impact

A big sound in a water resistant package is everything that makes UE’s latest speaker, the Everboom, stand out.

With the warmer months on the way, the urge to play music out and about becomes more of a thing. Whether it’s a nice day out, a picnic, a hike and walkabout, or a proper camping trip, technology can let you take your sound to go, and you don’t have to be afraid of the “where”.

In fact, with the latest Ultimate Ears speaker, there may never have been a truer statement, as the often waterproof-focused brand builds a model that not only can survive the elements, but float in them, as well.

The UE Everboom is a speaker meant to survive. But does it do the basics of a speaker in the first place?

Design and features

No stranger to speakers in the first place, every “Boom” incarnation we’ve seen from, Ultimate Ears over the past decade or so has felt slightly similar. They’re all a barrel of some kind, whether it’s a slim cylindrical barrel or a slightly squished and more tubby barrel.

Portable speakers tend to epitomise the idea of a cylinder or barrel, and the Everboom is no different. It’s less a perfect cylinder, and more a punchy upright pill, even if it’s not as pill-shaped as the aptly named Beats Pill.

Rather, the Everboom is tall and yet a little fat. It’s what would happen if you took a cylinder speaker and sat on it, pushing its circular form into more of an oval while keeping the whole thing tall.

Decked in fabric and a typically water resistant design, the UE Everboom is at once reminiscent with all the other speakers Ultimate Ears makes, only it’s a little bigger to look at.

Ours was black with a bright yellow trim, and little dots all over that made it seem impervious to the elements, which it kind of is.

Inside sees two transducers and two radiators, tuned to deliver a 360 degree sound, all in a design made to be drop proof for up to a metre, dust resistant, and water resistant so much that it can float. It also has a loop at the back for joining an included carabiner, with the whole thing weighing a little under a kilo (960g).

And it can lie down or stand up, though the latter is the easiest form factor, with a flat rubberised base at the top and bottom, the former where the controls are and the latter where the USB-C charging port is, handy for charging the battery, which is rated for up to 20 hours of use.

In-use

Grab the speak and power it on, and the UE Everboom springs to life.

There are a few controls up top for power, pairing, an outdoor boost button, and a pause and play button which can be double pressed to skip ahead, whole volume controls are the more obvious giant plus and minus on the side of the speaker.

That’s about normal for an Ultimate Ears speaker, so it’s nice to see some things never change.

Pairing the speaker with your phone or tablet is easy enough — stick the speaker in pairing mode by holding down the Bluetooth button, and your phone can connect in settings.

Alternatively, bump the NFC section up top and it’ll find the right device to connect to, provided your phone has Near-Field Communication, which these days most do.

Playing music is easy enough: once paired, you can stream anything, but Ultimate Ears also offers an app with several equaliser settings and the option to connect extra UE speakers for stereo sound or just a bigger party.

Performance

The most important aspect of any speaker is the sound, and as usual, we’re putting that to the test with the Pickr Sound Test, which you can run with your own headphones and speakers.

Like all our tests, that starts with electronica and tracks from Tycho and Daft Punk, which is where we expect to hear crisp highs, comfortable mids, and solid and well-rounded bass.

What we get from the initial few tracks is very much highs and lows, while the mids could be better. In Tycho’s “Contact”, the deep bass hit we look for at the beginning doesn’t hit the way it should, while the thump from the drums and the keys definitely do. It’s definitely a style, and one we can associate with pop, dance, and other styles of music that don’t always need an approach of “balanced” sound.

Take the sound in Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Cut To The Feeling”, where the highs are sharp and punchy, while the mids and the lows can feel a little muddled together. You’ll get the drums on attack, but the rendition is somewhere between bright and bouncy.

Things firm up slightly in the likes Ariana Grande and Charlie Puth, while the mids can come across a little muddled and lost to the heft of the lows.

It’s much the same across other styles — rock sees more bass than needed, while any deep and earthy bass can feel like a detail-less rumble at times.

Highs are definitely what the Everboom feels tuned for, with everything else coming just behind, it seems.

Battery

The up to 20 hours of life seems about on target with what we found on the Everboom.

Sufficed to say, you shouldn’t need to keep a battery pack nearby for this speaker, and there’s even a little battery meter at the top front with white LEDs when you turn the speaker on.

Value

At $349.95 in Australia, the price of the loud Everboom isn’t bad, either. Street pricing tends to put the actual buying price closer to the $249 mark locally, making it a hundred dollars less if you look around, though this will jump around a bit.

That’s not a terrible price for the whollop of sound the Everboom delivers, and the more speakers you bring, the wider the experience is likely to be.

Other brands definitely have more going in terms of value — Australia’s BlueAnt is one — but even at the $350 RRP mark, the UE Everboom is decent priced all the same.

What needs work?

What needs work is the mids, the part of the sound that is neither high nor low, and often feels lacking compared to the rest of the package.

You’re probably not buying the Everboom for its sound rendition and recreation — that much we can work out. This is an outdoor speaker that packs a punch.

But it’s still a speaker, and so we feel it’s worth pointing out that some music will sound better than others here. Tracks with plenty of highs and meaty bass — dance, for instance — will be fine on the Everboom, and more or less feels what this speaker was tuned for. Pop and dance, essentially, with a loud sound that reverberates around.

What you won’t find on the Everboom is a speakerphone functionality, which feels like a missed opportunity given you could be out and about and needing to chat.

Interestingly, you will find a megaphone feature in its place, allowing you to talk to people through the speaker using your app. We’re not sure we’d use this feature in abundance, particularly given we’re near the speaker when it’s in use, but it might be handy on trips away. Leave the speaker nearby where the kids are playing on a camping trip, and provided you’re within Bluetooth reach, you can call out using the megaphone in the app on your phone.

It’ll be a little handy, but depending on range and other conditions, it could just be one of those features you won’t touch very often. A speakerphone would have been a definite winner for us.

As would have support for the speaker to work as a power bank. You can do that on speakers from competitors, but not the Everboom, which won’t charge your phone if you plug it into the USB port on the speaker. It serves one purpose alone: charging your Everboom speaker in the first place.

What we love

Despite this, the overall volume and impact the UE Everboom offers could be enough to win over fans.

This. Thing. Gets. Loud. So loud that when Ms 7 came in to this reviewer rocking out, she called it out for being “too loud”. Too loud for a seven year old. Not too shabby.

The speaker is also able to float, which is a handy addition if you need a speaker on the pool or at the lake. We probably wouldn’t go diving into the latter, but definitely in the former, it means music doesn’t have to be pool-side, but rather with you.

Final thoughts (TLDR)

Water resistant speakers are a dime a dozen these days: everyone has them. A decade ago, they were new and exciting. These days, not so much.

However very few float, and even fewer allow you to talk through them as if by intercom system. Those two features definitely make the UE Everboom stand out, but are they enough?

Frankly, we’re not sure. There are definite reasons to consider the Everboom, if only because it seems perfectly suited to parties and the outdoor life, but the sound could be that little bit better. With so many great speaker options out there, it really needs to be.

At the $350 mark, we’d probably look around, but if you can get closer to the $250 street price we’re seeing, the Ultimate Ears Everboom is a big-sounding portable speaker your outdoor adventure could see as a benefit. It’s all about making an impact, and it doesn’t do too badly at that, either. Worth checking out.