JBL Charge 3 Waterproof Portable Bluetooth Speaker (Black), 1

Muy excelente

I was given one of these as a gift many years ago. It just finally stopped working. I did lots of research to decide which JBL would be the best replacement. I was very happy to see this model offered again. Its excellent quality, reliable and holds its charge for a long time. It really is water & dust proof. I used my older one while doing all sorts of projects indoors and out where moisture and dust were everywhere....it continued to work very well.

3 years later, this product still seams brand new. Never experienced a problem charging, holding charge, noise, sound, it’s all quite perfect. The sound range is awesome and it is super durable which is great when transporting and taking it with you. Don’t hesitate to purchase this! It’s promising and will last you years!

I typically love my JBL products, but I’m very underwhelmed by this speaker. I had a FLIP prior to this and absolutely loved it. Unfortunately, it ended up on the bottom of the Ozark lake last summer. I thought I would “upgrade” by getting the bigger version, but I don’t think its worth the extra money. It has a very muddy sound. The MIDs are set way too high. I’ve been using an equalizer through Spotify that helps some, but I still don’t love the sound. The highs get completely drowned out. Pros are that it feels very durable, it’s loud, and the battery seems to last quite awhile.

This was a great purchase, bought with the strap for golf cart. Use it while golfing with friends, battery last longer than expected. Great sound

Nice piece of equipment. But I didnt like the sound, which is the entire point, so I sent it back.

(Disclaimer: This is not a much a review as it is advice for avoiding getting ripped off.) As for the review on the JBL Charge 3, it definitely does not disappoint! It gets very loud for the size and the mids and highs are very crisp. The bass is decent, but its not gonna shake any windows. I dont own a flip 3 or 4, so I cant do a side-by-side comparison, but I have used one in the past, and from what I can remember, this one seems to get about 20-30% louder. So that is nice for a $20 price difference. I have owned several JBL products over many years and have never had an issue, and I definitely do not anticipate having one with the Charge 3 ***THIS NEXT PART IS VERY IMPORTANT*** There are a LOT of 1 star reviews of this speaker, but if you read through them, you will see that the majority (probably 90%) of the negative reviews are due to the fact they the purchaser received a counterfeit unit. This is easily avoidable. Amazon uses multiple vendors to ship the same product, and these vendors change quite frequently. Once your item is in the cart, you are able to see who is actually selling it. It is extremely important that you make sure the seller is listed on JBLs authorized seller list. I bought mine on Amazon from Acoustic Sound Design, and they are listed on JBLs authorized seller list, as are several others. If the name of the vendor does not show up on their list, chances are, you are going to be receiving a refurbished soon-to-be paperweight or just an outright fake.

I compared three bluetooth speakers: (1) TaoTronics Stereo 20W, (2) Bose Soundlink Mini Bluetooth Speaker II, and (3) JBL Charge 3. The first is very inexpensive, the second the most expensive, and the third in between. Background on my tastes: Every time that I get in a car, I turn up the treble. When I get a speaker system, I turn down the bass knob. I generally like my EarPods that come with the iPhone, especially given their price point. I have a pair of Bower & Wilkins P5 headphones (expensive), and I love love love the sound of those (once I put them in Bass Reducer mode on my iPhone equalizer). I had a $30 set of computer speakers for like 15 years that were the bomb - for whatever reason, they sounded incredible to me, just the right amount of everything. (They died a couple years ago, and Ive been trying to find something similar since.) So, Im not a snob, but I have particular tastes. Im willing to pay several hundred for the right sound. I dont know enough about sound to know how to describe what I like. I just have to hear it. The TaoTronics sounded very cheap to me, and I quickly eliminated them. It was a much tougher battle been the JBL and Bose. I spent about 2 hours comparing the two, playing different songs from different genres (pop, rock, alt, jazz, R&B, folk, hip hop, electronica) with different equalizers (in iTunes) to fine-tune the sound. In the end, I went with the JBL, and returned the TaoTronics and Bose. For most genres, the Bose have a clearer sound, compared to the JBL which are a little more muddy/less crisp. I love crisp clear speakers, so initially I assumed that I would go with the Bose. However, the Bose dramatically underperformed with certain types of music, particularly R&B and other bass-heavy music. The Bose fell short in two ways. First, the Bose just dont have enough bass. While treble is great on the Bose, there just isnt enough bass to handle R&B. R&B does not sound good on the Bose. The second problem with the Bose is that they put out dramatically less volume than the JBL. I intend to use the speaker in a single room of an apartment, so I dont need a huge amount of volume. For pop music, the Bose definitely put out enough volume. But with R&B, you need to put on some kind of Bass Booster mode for the Bose (and it still doesnt sound great), but this pushes the volume down even more. So, with the Bose, if youre listening to bass-heavy music, there wasnt enough volume even for my personal listening purposes. The JBL, on the other hand, get super loud, louder than Ill ever need. In the end, after some distress, I went with the JBL. While they dont sound as good as the Bose for many types of music, they still sound good. And they dramatically out-perform the Bose on bass-heavy music genres. The R&B performance of the Bose was just too bad to keep them. The downside with the JBL is that for most types of music, I will need to use an equalizer to adjust the bass/treble to get the right sound, whereas the Bose (for most music types) sound great without any adjustment. My decision to keep the JBL was based solely on sound quality, and nothing else. But there are other considerations. The JBL is waterproof, while the Bose isnt. The JBL is less expensive. The JBL is larger and uglier, but all in one unit, whereas the Bose has a separate charger unit (which might be a good or bad thing, not sure). I had some horrible pairing problems with the Bose at one point - though, I havent had either long enough to make any final judgment on bluetooth pairings. I had the JBL Charge 1 for three years before it died, which is decent but not great. I never had pairing problems with the JBL Charge 1, and I havent had any bluetooth pairing problems yet with the JBL Charge 3.

It sounds better than I expected, especially considering its size. JBL should be proud as it lives up to its brags.

Wow, the reviews were right. This is an outstanding portable Bluetooth speaker, with great sound that seems to outperform its size. Its a tad heavy, but not terribly so, and that is part of the reason that you get the sound performance that you do from the speaker. The unit is very ruggedly built, has clearly marked controls, and has a five-stage lighting area to shows battery charge. There are bass ports on each side of the speaker, with the mid-range speakers positioned in the forward-center location of the unit. There is even a connection on the bottom front under a flap for charging a cell phone. I have to say, I was impressed the moment I opened this up. The speaker comes packaged in a very, very nice box that takes its queues from Apple and Sony, but employs color in the design. There is a heavy, photographically imprinted outer box, which is quite thick and sturdy, and inside, folded boxes for each section. In addition, the inside top of the main box has a layer of padded foam attached to the top cover (removable from the box). The speaker itself, as does the charger, come individually wrapped in plastic, and the whole packaging array just speaks of someone who took the time to think about how people want to receive their products. This is one of the nicest packaging jobs Ive seen on a device. Then there is, of course, the speaker itself. As soon as you pick it up, you feel not only its weight but also its build quality. This thing feels very solid, and you can tell the first time you handle it. It took a couple of hours to charge using the included charger and cable, and--must I say it--the blue model with the orange charger and cord is just visually gorgeous. The most important thing is the sound, and I was not disappointed at all with the speakers performance in this regard. In fact, this being my third Bluetooth speaker, I have been impressed with how the unit reproduces sound, with a full range and some decent bass from the side ports. (Be realistic in your expectations: this is not a $600 speaker.) I have to say that the sound is surprisingly full-bodied, particularly for a speaker in its price range, and so I have to agree with most of the reviews I have read that this is among the very best of Bluetooth speakers in the price range, maybe even those in a higher price range. It is definitely putting out sound that one might only expect with a much higher price tag. Another cool thing is that the unit makes use of a lithium-ion battery which should hold back the memory effect, but more than that, you can actually use it to charge your cell phone in an emergency via a cable that connects between the speaker and your phone! The device is also water resistant. Combined with the quality feel and the beautiful packaging, this is simply an EASY five-star item!