InsideTech

EarFun UBOOM X Bluetooth Speaker 🔊🔥

Another summer time Bluetooth speaker review, this time for EarFun’s UBOOM X - an undoubtedly excellent portable speaker with impressive bass and volume levels. But also one potentially deal-breaking flaw.

Key features:
🟡 80 W power output
🟡 Customisable LED lights
🟡 30 h battery
🟡 USB-C in and out charging
🟡 IP67 dust and water resistance
🟡 Detachable shoulder strap
🟡 Bluetooth 5.3, SBC / AAC
🟡 Party connect with up to 50 speakers
🟡 Aux in playback
🟡 400 x 150 x 217 mm, 4.15 kg
🟡 $159.99 / £149.99 (discounted further right now at link below)

In the box:
- UBOOM X speaker
- USB-C to C cable
- Adjustable shoulder strap
- User manual

- - - - - - - - - - -

[Design]
Another pretty generic boombox-style design, but good to see both a metal grill (better sound quality over fabric) and metal attachment points for the carrying strap. The speaker and its included strap both feel sturdy and very durable. It has an IP67 protection rating, meaning you can fully submerge it underwater - it should easily survive most situations. Nice to have dust resistance too (beach-proof) which Bluetooth speakers regularly ignore. It also floats, which is very important (and it seemed to balance nicely in the water with the speaker grill facing upwards too…so floating pool tunes does seem possible here). Behind the rubberised rear seal are the dual-USB-C ports and an aux-in port.

We have some LED lights here to illuminate the 2 central woofers. It adds a nice pop of colour, which it makes it slightly more interesting than a lot of competitors, but these also aren’t especially bright. You can customise the effects in the EarFun app. The button controls on the top surface are rubberised and offer a nice, tactile click - but it’s a shame these aren’t illuminated so you can use them easily in the dark. All of the expected playback, power and pairing controls are here. Plus a toggle for the lights and the multi-speaker pairing button. There’s a 4-LED battery indicator on the surface here too, which is handier than the typical single LED most speakers offer. The heavy duty, large carrying handle would make it nice and easy to lug around…if only it weren’t so freaking heavy…

Overall the design would be absolutely fine…but weighing in at more than 4 kg is a serious drawback. You’ve got competitors (like the StormBox Lava I posted about below) that weigh around half as much and still offer the same power output. The UBOOM X is noticeably heavier than a lot of close competitors, verging on uncomfortably heavy…and that immediately puts it a major disadvantage.

[Battery]
Battery life provides up to 30 h of playback - and testing at around 50% volume (already pretty loud) I reached 29 hours 34 min - so it checks out. The lights and higher volumes will drain it much faster though. It recharges via USB-C (30 W, 10 min fast charge = 3 h playback) and can also act as a power bank, charging other devices ALSO via USB-C - excellent. Most competitors with a power bank feature lazily opt for an inferior USB-A out. They include a C to C charging cable too.

[Connectivity]
We have Bluetooth 5.3, SBC and AAC codecs and either stereo pairing with another UBOOM X, or party mode pairing with up to 50 others. No one is ever going to actually use more than 2 of these together, but still cool to have. There’s also a video mode (press and hold Bluetooth button) for low latency, which makes a subtle improvement. The multifunction power button can activate your phone’s voice assistant. The built-in mic makes taking calls possible…but the mic pickup isn’t great and I can’t see many using this. You’re gonna sound a bit distant at best.

EarFun’s app offers playback controls, video mode toggle, voice prompt and auto power off adjustments, along with lighting and EQ customisation. The carousel of preset EQs is a little cumbersome to use, but you do get a LOT of preset options (as well as a useful 10-band EQ). I would highly recommend using the EQ to find better sound than the stock settings.

[Sound]
The 80 W speakers deliver truly powerful, deep bass at very loud volume levels. There’s a distinctively warm, bass-focussed tone in the default settings, but I was surprised at how much I could brighten the sound and achieve much better clarity and detail with some treble-boosting EQ tweaks. This is a speaker that sounds great at lower volume levels as well as the ground-shaking higher levels it was really designed for. It’s quite clearly one of the better sounding Bluetooth speakers at this price point. You could comfortably use just one of these speakers to fill a garden with sound or create a party atmosphere in a large room - the sound remains largely distortion-free even at those super high levels. The speaker’s heavy weight is partially forgiven when you hear the powerful sound this thing can pump out - I imagine the vast majority of people will be very pleased with how this sounds. But it’s hard to not think about the (far lighter) competitors offering a similar sound to this.


[Summary]
EarFun’s UBOOM X is undeniably a great-sounding and very capable Bluetooth speaker. But you can’t ignore the (very strong) competition…and that’s where things might get awkward for EarFun.

The UBOOM X was always a hard sell at the original $189.99 / £189.99, but given their track record of frequently offering large discounts, perhaps it was always the plan to offer it at its current $149.99 price point. This is much more reasonable and brings it closer in line with competitors like Tribit’s StormBox Lava ($139.99) and soundcore’s Boom 2 ($129.99). Both offer the same 80 W power output, but arguably superior designs and certainly far better portability - weighing 2.3 kg and just 1.66 kg respectively compared to EarFun’s 4.15 kg. This alone makes a HUGE difference in how easy and enjoyable these speakers are to use.

The UBOOM’s bulkier build isn’t completely redundant - compared to the smaller StormBox Lava I tested recently, you get a much bigger sound, higher volume levels and more powerful bass at those higher levels. But the treble can also be tweaked to be clearer, more detailed and more crisp. Reading 80 W on a spec sheet can be misleading, and EarFun certainly offers a more powerful sound overall. You also get slightly better battery life at 30 h compared to around 24 h, along with a modern USB-C out port

If I was throwing a party…this is the speaker i’d rather have. But if i’m just buying ‘one’ Bluetooth speaker for my day to day use (as most would be)…its heavy weight becomes an issue. I think most would trade those volume gains for one of the much more compact and portable speakers from Tribit or soundcore. I’d personally get more benefit out of that day to day, especially when those competitors aren’t exactly slouches in the bass and volume departments themselves. I guess the floating, speaker-facing-up thing might actually appeal for that niche use case too. But are any of EarFun’s perks really enough to justify the speaker being drastically heavier? As great as it is, i’m finding it kind of tough to make a case for the UBOOM X here. As I said, I would prefer it in a party situation - set down in a corner and left alone…the weight is no longer an issue. But this kind of defeats the point of being a ‘portable’ Bluetooth speaker.


Let me know what you think about this in the comments. Got any specific questions about this or others it matches up against? More detailed testing and comparisons have been done behind the scenes! Perhaps we need to make another best Bluetooth speaker comparison video for the channel.

Here's a link to check it out on Amazon 👉🏼 amzn.to/4nX1zxK
It's an affiliate link so I may earn a small commission if you use it, that would be very helpful, and it costs you nothing extra!

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