Soundcore Boom 3i Review: A Seaworthy Bluetooth Speaker That Dunks on the Competition

Gizmodo

a day ago

I love when gadgets have a schtick. Like Lenovo's Tab Plus with an ungodly amount of JBL speakers, or Nothing's Android phones with lights on the back. Schticks are great, and schticks that are practical and actually work are even better. For Soundcore's $130 Boom 3i Bluetooth speaker, the schtick is all about throwing a speaker into water, which is unnatural for anyone familiar with how batteries work, but for the right person, might be kind of awesome.
See Soundcore Boom 3i at Amazon
Let me explain: Soundcore made its Boom 3i Bluetooth speaker very, very waterproof. That's IP68 for anyone who speaks water and dust resistance fluently. That doesn't just mean you can throw it into water; it means you should throw it into water. The Boom 3i is designed to float and is actually weighted so that the speaker faces upwards at all times. The idea here, as you may have gathered, is that you can bring it into the pool, or lake, or even the ocean—Soundcore says the Boom 3i is also more resistant to salt water than other waterproof competitors. Naturally, to test all that out, I turned to… my bathtub.
Soundcore Boom 3i
An incredible value and not just for outdoor speakers.
Pros
Cons
Sure, it's not the ideal environment to blast loud Bluetooth audio, but this is in the name of science, and in my small town of Brooklyn, New York, pools that I would ever step foot in, let alone ones that allow loud music, are not exactly forthcoming. And in my contained float test, the Boom 3i passed with flying colors, both literally and figuratively, since this thing literally lights up with built-in RGB lighting. What's even more impressive isn't that the Boom 3i floats; it's that it floats and still manages to play audio that sounds good. Because the Boom 3i is weighted, the side with the speaker grate on it, which actually projects the audio, always stays upright, so your tunes aren't getting literally drowned out.
There are some idiosyncrasies you should be aware of when using a Bluetooth speaker to play audio in a body of water. One of them is that the bass causes things to get a little splashy. If you toss the Boom 3i into water with the bass boost on at full tilt, you're going to see a lot of spitting happening on the sides where the tweeters are, which is kind of distracting/irritating, but also really funny to watch. Fortunately, Soundcore was very thoughtful in its inclusion of a 'Bass' button on the top of the speaker that can toggle the full amount of bass on/off depending on whether you're using the Boom 3i on land or in water. It took me a second to realize that, but once I did, this speaker felt even more luxurious. For the record, I highly recommend toggling bass off while wet-listening, lest we get splashed in our eyes.
Another pro tip is to make sure that the USB-C port on the back of the speaker is sealed with the attached rubber stopper before you give this thing a bath, because that's the only entrance for water that can and will ruin your speaker. I went straight from charging the speaker to bath time with my Boom 3i, and everything remained acceptably dry, but I also made sure the rubber stopper on the back was pressed shut diligently before dunking.
See Soundcore Boom 3i at Amazon
Another thing you'll notice right away is that the Boom 3i is also LOUD, which is great and totally fitting for a Bluetooth speaker designed to be used outdoors. In total, the Boom 3i has 50W of power, which puts it above loud-ish competitors like the JBL Charge 5—a speaker I've used outside for a few years now. In fact, this thing is so loud that I had to dial it back when playing music in my apartment for fear of getting a noise complaint. That's not me being annoyed; that's me telling you that if you're using this thing outdoors, you'll be pleased, especially given the size. This thing only weighs 780 grams, which is markedly less than the JBL Charge 5, which clocks in at 960 grams.
And it's not just louder than the JBL Charge 5, it also sounds a heck of a lot better. I compared the two back-to-back, playing the song 'Digital Love' by Daft Punk, and while the JBL Charge 5 is no slouch, the Boom 3i kind of blows it out of the water (pun intended). In particular, I find the Boom 3i feels a lot more nuanced than the JBL Charge 5, especially when it comes to pronouncing midrange frequencies that the latter Bluetooth speaker tends to leave out.
Sound-wise, it's not quite as good as the Bose SoundLink Plus that I recently tested, but Bose's entrant is also almost three times the amount of money, so that's really not a fair comparison at the end of the day. More so than the schtick of being able to toss the Boom 3i in water, I was surprised by the overall sound quality of Soundcore's newest speaker. When you factor in the price—just $130 retail compared to the Charge 5's $180 price tag—the proposition becomes even more appealing.
I'm not exactly an outdoors kind of person, but if I were, there would also be a lot more to love about the Boom 3i, including some nice-to-haves like 'Buzz Clean,' which is a feature that you can launch from the Soundcore app that vibrates the Boom 3i to help dust off any excess sand. There's also an alarm that you can trigger by pressing and holding the Bass button on the top of the speaker for five seconds—beware, though, it's loud. And speaking of the Soundcore app, there's also plenty to take advantage of there, including the ability to control the volume of the speaker remotely and even EQ if you think you want to fine-adjust the Boom 3i's levels.
Another important component of an outdoor speaker—one that you might be bringing camping or somewhere without ready access to electricity—is battery life. Soundcore rates the Boom 3i for 16 hours of battery life on 50 percent volume without bass boost activated, and from my testing, that estimate seems to be accurate. One thing I would have liked to see here, since, like I said, this is an outdoor speaker that people might take camping, is reverse charging, but sadly, the Boom 3i can't top off your iPhone or Android phone in a pinch. As long as I'm giving the Boom 3i a critique, I think the speaker kind of looks like a bomb or something. This is by no means the coolest-looking or prettiest speaker out there (certainly no Bose citrus yellow), but it gets a bit of a pass for being so waterproof and durable. Just know that if you bring this thing on an airplane, you may get pulled aside by TSA.
If you noticed that I'm near the end of this speaker review and I've barely said a bad word about it, that's because there is frankly not much to dislike about the Boom 3i. I'm convinced that after testing Soundcore's newest Bluetooth speaker, this is an incredible value in Bluetooth audio. Rarely do you get this level of sound quality with as many unique features as the Boom 3i, and for a price that actually undercuts or matches the competition by a good amount. Soundcore's Boom 3i may seem like a gimmick on the surface with a focus on water resistance and floatability, but once you start using this speaker, you'll be pleased to know that it's also solid all around, from the sound to the brick-like exterior.
See Soundcore Boom 3i at Amazon