if i’m honest it’s pretty rare these days that i take a product out of this box and step back in amazement but that is exactly what happened with the jbl go 3. welcome back to mark ellis reviews thank you for tuning in thank you for subscribing if you haven’t subscribed yet just hit the little button below click the bell and you’ll never miss an episode this is the jbl go 3 waterproof bluetooth speaker i didn’t have huge expectations for this speaker to be completely honest i bought it for one very specific reason which i’ll get onto in a bit but i think my recent experiences with the likes of the homepod mini and the google nest audio have left me a little bit underwhelmed about these kind of devices i think as i mentioned in my recent comparison between the nest audio and the homepod mini these things sound like they look they should sound you know for all the computational audio all that stuff they just sound like pretty good speakers you know i i wasn’t blown away by them i just got the sound i expected that was not the case with this jbl go 3.
Quick spoiler it sounds amazing which i’ll get onto i’ll also get on to why this has filled a very important gap in my life a bit later but first let’s get into it so who is this for well as the name implies the go 3 can be taken pretty much anywhere it’s got an ip67 waterproof and dustproof rating so you can submerge it if you need to you can get it where you haven’t got to worry about it basically and i think for that reason if you look on the jbl website they show pictures of people having barbecues and working out outside to it and camping and all that sort of stuff so it’s that kind of speaker that you take with you out and about again it’s not while i’m using it i’ll get onto that later but yeah if you’re the sort of person who loves the outdoor life loves a bit of music while you’re doing that it’s built for you i bought this for 39.99 uk pounds that was as part of an amazon deal i think normally it retails for about 50 pounds 50 60 something like that for me that’s i think that’s a great price its nearest competitor is i have to look up the name as always with sony products is the sony srs xb12 that is again about anywhere between you can have it for 40 to 60 pounds same in dollars roughly i think at that price it’s a it’s almost a no-brainer i think once you go beyond the 90 100 pounds barrier that starts to get a bit tricky in terms of you know do i go ahead and spend this
money price-wise i think jbl have completely nailed it i love how this thing feels it’s got that absolute confidence about it that you could pick it up and throw it around and chuck it in your bag lob it on the floor drop it like i did a minute ago and just not worry about it it’s got this kind of very tight fabric finish which is a little bit like the homepod mini but it’s much much tighter in terms of there’s no give in it at all it also has this kind of rubberized bottom so it doesn’t slip on any surface feels so tight and well put together and it just again it exudes confidence which is again coming back to the reason this speaker exists you want that you don’t want to worry about this thing you want to love it around jbl don’t give you a case for it which i think says everything really you can get after market cases i’ll put a link in the description to one that looks pretty good but apart from that you just don’t need it you know it’s got this little kind of hook thing on it as well which obviously you can dangle it around your finger but you can also hang it from things if you need to it’s it’s just very conveniently designed it’s also got that classic massive jbl branding on it you know they’re very confident about that it comes in lots of
different colors if you look for that this is the kind of plain old black version which i like but there’s lots of different color options if you’re that way inclined and you want to you know spice up the jbl go through a little bit it just has lots of personality one thing i love i will just demonstrate it is the noise it makes when you turn it on and then when you turn it off it’s completely pointless it has no impact or bearing on the functionality but it’s just got a lot of character and i think again going back to homepod mini nest audio alexis if you put the voice assistants to one side as devices they just don’t have any personality they’re little round balls they’re little oblong things this just it’s just fun and i love that i love that kind of design so well done jbl the other thing to mention which i love is the hardware buttons on a lot of other devices these days we seem to be getting these non-mechanical touch sensitive buttons and i’ve never really understood why they exist because they’re just annoying you know you hit them accidentally you don’t get any tactile feedback from them i just don’t like them at all the jbl go 3 doesn’t have that it has proper clicky buttons which are so satisfying to use they’re just clicky enough to not be able to accidentally click them when you don’t want to and you just get that feedback that tactile feedback and every button on it actually and there aren’t that many buttons you know you get play pause volume up and down power on power off bluetooth that’s all you get but it’s yeah they just feel so good so again thank you
jbl now the sound if you’ve watched this channel before you’ll know that sound is a big big thing for me i like things that sound nice again i’ll just reiterate i did not have high expectations for this i think i’ve been i suppose in a way disillusioned a little bit by other smart home speakers recently where it wished to sound okay when i first plugged this in and turned it on i did genuinely step back your mouth aghast it was like wow that is incredible i’m not going to attempt to play this for you on a video because you can’t experience it you have to hear these things in person but suffice to say this jbl go 3 sounds fantastic the best way to describe the sound this produces is it’s like a kind of live sounding sound which is no surprise really jbl are huge in pro audio that’s their background i think they even quote this uses jbl pro sound tech whatever that is it’s just a very simple classic speaker setup with a nice enclosure and that works you know simplicity works for all the computational audio and 3d clever audio all this all the stuff that you see in things like the echo studio and the homepod sometimes simplicity gets you there far quicker and it just produces a much more enjoyable sound now it’s not a sound that audiophiles are going to be impressed with whatsoever and it may not be for everyone to be completely honest rock it seems to be particularly well tuned for again no surprise when you consider jbl’s heritage but i’ve tried it with dance music with pop and i’ve also tried it quite a bit with podcasts and it delivers fantastic podcast playback your voice is just it just nails it no problem whatsoever it also fills a room pretty easily i’ve had it in one room and then left the room and you can still hear it nicely
it’s nice and loud there’s no noticeable distortion there’s no particular frequencies that are too harsh you don’t get really deep bass don’t get me wrong but it’s it’s just a pleasant sound it’s just an impressive sound given its size it’s just a refreshingly bold loud sound no distortion i don’t think you would be unimpressed with this the battery life’s interesting it’s rated at five hours and if i’m totally honest i’d just like it to have a bit more headroom that said and as you know i don’t do in-depth you know kind of detailed analysis on battery life on this channel but in my general everyday use it seems to do pretty well actually i haven’t even charged it yet in the two weeks that i’ve been using it so i’ve not used it day in day out but i’ve used it every day the only time i think it might be a worry is if you’re taking it out for extended periods of time so if you’re perhaps going camping or something or if you’re going down to the beach or whatever you’re doing and you want to have this with you all day those five hours might evaporate quite quickly they may not but it’s one of those things where you probably want to take with you a battery charger
battery pack just to get you through just in case but the other thing it has and the way it charges is via usbc i know i’m very boring about this but everything else on this desk apart from my iphone everything else charges via usbc and it’s just so so convenient that you can just unplug something plug it into this and away you go the only other thing i’m a little bit disappointed with is the fact that the only way that you know if it’s running out of battery is when the led starts flashing it would be nice to have some way of finding out how much battery it’s got i love the feature on the sony xm4s where you can hold down the power button briefly and it will tell you someone someone will actually say to you how much battery you have left the go3 doesn’t seem to communicate battery life back to ios which is some bluetooth headphones and and speakers do a little gripe but it does mean that obviously you’ll always have to think about charging it if you’re going out to use it for extended periods of time it would just be nice to know that actually you’ve got 95 left-hand got worry about it there’s no way of knowing that small gripe but it’s worth mentioning so what’s my use case for this it’s actually really simple this is now my perfect shower companion no laughing at the back in the past i’ve had some very cheap bluetooth speakers that you stick to the
wall and they just sound terrible i’ve even used my iphone given its water water resistance although it sounds good it doesn’t sound anywhere near as good as this being able to put it in the in the shower and not worry about it now i don’t hang it in the shower although technically you could do that i just put it on the side and i don’t worry about the moisture being built up in the room it’s just again i don’t have to worry about it and the volume is perfect you know even with a shower on you can hear it perfectly you know if you listen to a podcast you can hear every single word that the person is saying so this has become my shower companion and to be honest that’s the main reason i bought it i will use this during the summer when we get back to that stage and i’m in that point i might i might revisit it on this channel and give you an update but the main purpose of this speaker is to use it as a shower speaker and it’s brilliant it’s so good if you’re looking for something that you can take with you into the shower it’s just fantastic should you buy the go three i think this
comes down to a couple of things really no let’s say three things the first thing is if you are after just a portable loud bluetooth speaker that you can carry about anywhere you want and you don’t have to worry about it buy it buy it now seriously just stop watching this video go and buy it like me if you want a really good sounding speaker for the shower buy it again stop this video go and buy it if you’re after a intelligent home assistant don’t buy it because this does not include alexa it doesn’t have any kind of built-in home assistant it’s just not that sort of speaker it’s a very simple bluetooth speaker so if that’s what you’re looking for i’d recommend looking at something else however if you’re more interested in a smart home speaker keep watching for a link to my recent comparison between the homepod mini and the google nest audio and in the meantime thank you so much for tuning in i’ll see you next time you
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