Review: JBL Clip+ Bluetooth Speaker

JBL’s latest portable Bluetooth speak if the Clip+. We’ve had one making the rounds here at Football Fashion over the past few weeks and have now got a world exclusive look at a multi-faceted accessory for your summer fun and training.

The JBL Clip+ is a lightweight, rubberized, splash proof speak that comes with a handle that can be used to hang it or attach it to a fixture of your choice (we like backpacks and gym bags) via a carabiner clip. It is extremely intuitive to use if you’ve ever paired a Bluetooth device to your phone before. We did it without even looking at the instruction manual provided.

The Clip+ has controls on both sides of its roughly circular casing. On the left there is a control to power it on, a Bluetooth control that you press to pair it to your phone and another to switch to telephone mode. The last control mentioned lets you use the Clip+ as a speaker phone. There are volume up and down controls on the right side. If you don’t want to connect via wireless there is a hidden 3.5 aux cable that you can unwind and plug into a music player.

We tested the JBL Clip+ with iPhone 6 and a Samsung Galaxy S6 phones. The sound quality from each was more or less the same via the speaker. It was quite crisp and loud enough to entertain a room the size of your average bedroom. We really liked the ability to increase the volume of the speaker without having to dabble with the phone connect to the Clip+. Similarly, the power on control doubles as a Play / Pause / Skip Track control.

The quality of the sound provided by the JBL Clip+ was on par with other Bluetooth speakers of its size. The most amount of distortion that we encountered was when we played bass-heavy tracks at high volumes. We found that anything acoustic or midrange came across quite clearly.

The JBL Clip+ takes about 2 hours to attain a full charge and lasts for roughly 4 hours of continuous music played once charged. There is a blue Bluetooth light beneath the grill on the front of the speaker that turns red when the device has less than an hour left of charge.

For its price point of just $49.95, the JBL Clip+ is a steal for not just the quality of the sound that it provides but for its portability, ease of use and splash proofing. It’s definitely a nice to have, good times Bluetooth speaker for the summer of 2015.