On the top of the speaker, you’ll find playback control buttons, including a power button, volume buttons and play/pause button. The JBL Charge 3 comes in a range of six different colors. Then there's the Charge 4, and it looks pretty similar to its predecessor too - though it's slightly more angular. One day JBL may produce a Charge that can be outdone by a new and plucky rival, but rest assured, that has not happened yet with the rather splendid Charge 5.As usual, the first thing to notice about a new product is its design, and both the JBL Charge 3 and JBL Flip 4 look pretty nice - though they also look pretty similar, though the Charge 3 is quite a bit larger than the Flip 4. It boasts marginal improvements, both sonically and aesthetically, over its predecessor, the five-star Charge 4.
The Charge 5 is currently as good a sound as you can get in a portable Bluetooth speaker design for under £200 ($200, AU$300). Female backing vocals in the later choruses are as present and as ethereal as Prince intended. Prince’s vocal in Sometimes It Snows In April veers between his trademark head and chest voices and both are equally as impactful through the Charge 5, alongside the pared-back keys and guitar. The walking bass guitar that underpins the track feels three-dimensional and is just one of several instruments held in check, alongside whoops from the crowd and occasional drum fills within a cohesive mix.īowed strings in British Sea Power’s melancholy soundscape, Tiger King, are detailed and accurate around the track’s sporadic cymbals and drum crashes, proving the Charge 5 is capable of delicacy and nuance as well as oomph and bass clout.Īny brightness in the Charge 5’s new tweeter melts away once the speaker is run in, leaving only cleaner, clearer treble frequencies. Vocals are also more energised and feel well-placed in what is an expansive mix for a portable speaker of this size.Įrykah Badu’s voice in Tyrone is emotive and as much celebrated through the treble frequencies as through her juicy lower registers. It’s a fairly minor upgrade, but the hip-hop riff intro is marginally more impactful – the leading edges of notes through the low end are crisper, resulting in a more agile performance. We cue up Chamillionaire’s Ridin’ on Tidal and the Charge 5’s extra ounce of prowess over the Charge 4 reveals itself. It’s a neat feature, although some existing JBL owners may be irked by PartyBoost’s inability to play nicely with the older Connect+ tech. Leaving the app, we press the PartyBoost button on the Charge 5, then on our Flip 5, and sound dutifully comes from both, clearly and with no notable lag. With another Charge 5, you can create a stereo pair by toggling across from “Party” (mono sound) to Stereo when hitting the PartyBoost button, but the app is otherwise basic and doesn’t offer anything by way of EQ optimisation. It’s good for firmware updates and to deploy PartyBoost from your phone, where other app-supported JBL speakers (including the Flip 5) will appear ready to link. There is support for the Charge 5 on the JBL Portable app, formerly called JBL Connect. What you can’t do is link the Charge 5 to the older Charge 4, or any older Connect+ enabled JBL speakers for that matter. JBL’s updated daisy-chaining tech means you can beef up your portable sound by linking the Charge 5 with up to 100 other PartyBoost enabled JBL Bluetooth offerings, although that is currently limited to the Boombox 2, Flip 5 and Pulse 4. The Charge 5 now features a JBL PartyBoost button on the control panel on top of the speaker, too, where the Connect+ button sits on the Charge 4.