Performance

UE made the BOOM's bigger brother a lot bigger, which made room for larger drivers, and larger drivers require larger amplifiers and batteries for reasonable battery life under normal circumstances. The UE MEGABOOM will roughly last as long as the smaller BOOM, but at much more volume. The bigger speaker can not only be louder but projects better as well, which allows it to fill a room with sound more efficiently.

The bottom end is one of the biggest improvements over the original. It now extends quite a bit deeper and is more linear. This coupled with its somewhat better slam makes listening to bass-intensive music so much more enjoyable. Worth noting is also that you can get a really well-balanced sound for the indoors if you play around with the EQ.

The pre-configured EQs are good, but there is quite a bit to gain by playing around with a custom one as the MEGABOOM responds well to EQing. For near-field listening, the bass is a bit over the top in UE's EQ, but it is easily trimmed down. With the EQ trimmed, the sound quality is really good. It surpasses many two-speaker PC system setups, which is impressive considering these are battery powered. While not quite up there when compared to the KRK Rokit mini-speakers, they are surprisingly close. They totally decimate the Quinpu mini-speakers.

Playing around with the stereo configuration really reveals how well these speakers perform at lower volumes. At full tilt, these will distort a little in the bass department, which is pretty normal with such a speaker design. The bass is a fair bit elevated even when EQed flat for in-door listening, which adds to the issue. The amplifier inside these speakers is definitely a good match for the units it is driving since the sound quality is amazing at low-to-medium volume.

Play time is as UE details on their webpage. We can match the numbers at slightly lower volumes for outside use, but, again, how volume is perceived really depends on the environment and how well you can place these speakers. You can easily get over 20 hours out of the battery for normal in-door use. We got one to go for 25 hours before it had to be recharged, which is impressive since they were running in stereo mode. The EQ had the bass dialed down somewhat, and the music played was a mix of classic rock and the best Spotify had to offer, plus some regular Danish radio.

App

As we saw on the BOOM, the MEGABOOMs can be paired to function like normal stereo speakers, which is a great trick. It makes the solution much more versatile as you can now have two at home for normal use to just grab one when on the go. UE calls the feature "double up", and it works flawlessly.


Ever since the firmware update on the original BOOM, the devices remember each other to auto "double up" when they are in each other's proximity.


They also store their loaded EQ profile, which is another very convenient feature. UE BOOM products are spectacular when it comes to their hassle-free operation, and the app works incredibly well in an Android environment. We did a brief test on an iPhone 6, and everything worked just as well as on an Android device.


New for the latest version of the app is that you can update the firmware on your BOOMs directly from the phone.