Ultimate Ears’ speaker lineup is getting busier, and it’s already grown to six products with the recent introduction of the $249.99 Everboom. This speaker is a smaller, more portable version of the Epicboom I reviewed late last year. And its main appeal is the same as every other UE speaker: it’s a rugged, waterproof speaker that’s great for both indoor and pool parties. You can connect the Everboom to other UE speakers in party mode to play music in sync across all of them. The controls are easy to use, especially the company’s signature oversized volume buttons.
What makes the Everboom different? It has a fully customizable EQ, something not all of the company's speakers offer. Like the Epicboom, there's an outdoor mode that adds a little extra volume and punch to the sound when needed. And UE includes a carabiner, making it easy to carry the Everboom in your bag or hang it in creative ways.
Both the Epicboom and Everboom improve overall audio fidelity compared to the UE's cylindrical speakers. Like those, they output 360-degree sound, so you don't have to worry about listening to them from a particular sweet spot (at least in theory).
It turns out that the Everboom's sound is typically clearest when you have the left or right side of the speaker directly in front of you. Head-on, vocals can lack clarity and detail since the drivers seem to be oriented sideways, though stereo separation is impressive as a result. For indoor listening, I typically kept the volume level between 30 and 40 percent, and that was plenty loud. Outdoors you can crank it up even higher, though the speaker starts to strain and sound overly compressed once you're at the 70 percent mark.
I don’t think the Everboom’s sound performance elevates it much above other established (and more affordable) competitors like the JBL Charge 5, the Bose SoundLink Flex, or even the recently released Beats Pill. I’d rate it higher than a device like the Sonos Move in terms of sound quality, but there are endless alternatives worth considering before shelling out $250.
That said, the Everboom rose to the occasion when I took it upstate for a brief getaway to a lakeside cabin. Listening to Zach Bryan's new album, the Everboom did a good job of separating John Mayer's guitar riffs on “Better Days” from the bulk of the mix. Nathaniel Rateliff South of here It was also a pleasant listen, although again I found myself pointing one of the left/right sides of the speaker toward me to get the best clarity.
But some genres may prove too much for him. The Hold Steady's The price of progress The sound was more muffled than I'd like. In this regard, the larger Epicboom does better, as it has larger drivers (and more powerful bass). But on the other hand, the Everboom is much easier to take on trips, as it's lighter and considerably smaller. Battery life is more than adequate, with 20 hours of continuous playback.
That said, I don’t know if anyone is buying UE speakers for critical music listening. The brand has a good reputation for making durable products that can last for years (and now, thankfully, the entire line has finally switched to USB-C). The Everboom has IP67 water and dust resistance, and will float if you drop it in a pool — and still play music afterward.
But don’t expect any cool extra features. The Everboom at least includes multipoint, so you can pair two phones to the speaker at once. And it has NFC support for very fast pairing. Still, I can’t help but feel like Ultimate Ears is resting on its laurels when other companies are giving you more. For example, the Beats Pill offers lossless USB-C input, and JBL is just starting to embrace cutting-edge Bluetooth technologies like Auracast. Meanwhile, the Everboom can’t even be used as a speakerphone. UE’s app has a new megaphone feature that lets you speak into your phone and stream that to your Boom speakers, but how often will that be useful?
The Everboom isn't a bad buy—none of UE's products are if all you're looking for is a decent-sounding, highly reliable speaker. But we're in an age where I expect more than just “Yeah, it sounds pretty good” from a $250 wireless speaker. The Everboom doesn't offer enough to justify that price, and I'd wager that most people will stick with the company's more well-known Boom 4. It offers many of the same benefits for less money.
Photography by Chris Welch