On the one hand, larger Bluetooth-connected wireless speakers have come a long way. Battery life is good, sound quality has improved significantly over the tinny and poorly-amplified units we saw in the early days, and the ability to connect multiple units to a single source and built a pretty good stereo experience anywhere you happen to be have made these devices a desirable upgrade to the portable music decks of our past. But… they’ve become a dime a dozen. If you look on Amazon, there are literally over 120,000 Bluetooth speaker available. So, what’s going to make one more interesting than another?
How about lights?
Yes, the latest feature making its want into some of the higher-end (above $100) Bluetooth speakers are lights – specifically LED lights that can add an attractive light show to your musical party experience. The Pulse2 from JBL will light up with a number of visualizations – flames, rain, fireflies, and more. The app that controls it will even produce ambient sounds, like thunderstorms or nature noises to go with the lights. But perhaps the most unique lighting feature is that the speaker has a small camera lens that will let you sample colors in your room and recreate them on the unit so it fits in with your design motif. Depending upon your design sensibilities, this could be the killer feature.
The Pulse2 by JBL is available from Amazon for $148.
[Note: JBL provided a review unit; all opinions are the author’s.]
But how does it sound? Does it sound any better than the original JBL Pulse?
I was looking at buying the original JBL Pulse, but the reviews were the sound was a little flat. Hoping this one might sound a fair bit better because the lights could be thee killer feature.