Customer Ratings & Reviews

I looked for a very long time for a good speaker that will fill my house with sound and not sound underwhelming. I bought 2 of these and did not know what to expect. I have an open floor plan in my downstairs and this speaker does not disappoint. I will most likely buy another next time it is on sale.

The sound out of this speaker is pretty good. However, the annoying sound at startup and shutdown cannot be turned off and is a nuisance specially if you are trying not to disturb others. I tried to smother it with a pillow when turning it off at night. The stupid sound still woke my roommate. The on/off sound is quite loud regardless of how you set the volume during usage. Lastly, the WiFi cuts off at random times. My other WiFi speakers do not cutoff as often.

While this is a nice speaker and I got a good deal on it, it feels like a step backwards from the UE Boom 2, which is the opposite of what I expected. The Alexa function is nice but mostly a novelty. Replacing the dual pairing stereo function with that is a poor trade off. This speaker does sound more clear than their previous models. The treble is more crisp. But the bass is so quiet, even after using the EQ app to adjust the sound profile. Overall, I am disappointed with the performance of this speaker, but it looks nice and gets the job done, so I'm not returning it at least.

I bought this for personal use as Bluetooth portable speaker. This product exceeds my expectations as it is connected with Alexa which is great in listening to my Amazon Music directly without using another device such as an iPhone or iPad. Voice command makes it simpler to use it daily.

I purchased for my 14 year old daughter, she loves to listen to music. It's small but powerful. Its bluetooth connection is great. My daughter takes it everywhere she wants music. SHE LOVES IT, so I love it. Wonderful gift for a teenager.

Purchased this to use on my scooter. Very loud. I could def hear it. Only downside the battery drains extremely quickly. Need to charge very often. Like every 40 mins of use on loudest setting.

First one stopped working after 1 day. Replacements been working for a few weeks. Sounds good for a little speaker, gets pretty loud not much bass tho

The Ultimate Ears (UE) BLAST Smart Portable Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Speaker with Amazon Alexa is UE’s first attempt at a wifi speaker with Alexa integration. Wi-Fi is a key point, this is not just a bluetooth speaker ( while an excellent bluetooth speak you should not buy it for that.) This seems to be nearly identical ( on the outside) to the UE Boom so if you want only a bluetooth speaker, you should be looking to that model since it much less expensive. Build - The speaker is a relatively small at about 7 inches by 3 inches. It is surprisingly heavy for its size, not too heavy but just an indictation of how solid it is. It is waterproof and dust proof so the entire speaker is covered in a rubberized plastic. The charging port and contact charging point ( more on that later) are covered by a cap made of the same rubberized plastic . It is screwed on to provide a tight seal. I like that aspect of the design but I can see the cap and screw being easily lost. I do not see those pieces as available for purchase on the UE site. As with most UE products, they are built like tanks. UE gets high marks for quality of design. Form - The speaker is cylindrical and designed to stand on one end but can easily be laid down if you choose ( not that you would want to.) When charging you cannot stand on the end in an upright position and have to lay it down. There is a charge base available called the Power Up charging dock but it will cost you $40 . This is a negative part of the design. In my opinion, you would want to have this always on a charging port in your home to take the place of Amazon Alexa. At the $230 list price, now you need to spend another $40 to use it the same way. Either they should have included it in the price or designed the plug in port so that you can stand up the speaker in the correct upright position. Function - As a speaker alone , it is great. The sound level is simply amazing for a a speaker of this size. It can easily fill up a room , very powerful. But power is not everything, I found the sound to clear with little or no distorition at high levels. Throughout the whole volume range the bass and treble were spot on . As a speaker alone, it is top notch. I would have like to see some controls for bass and treble in the app but there is none. So let’s talk about the app. Don’t get your expectations up, there is not much to it. It seems the app is there only to provide set up and does not do much more. You can see the battery level, turn on and off the microphone in the speaker and see some basic settings but that is about it. There is no equalizer, sound modes etc. When connected to Wi-Fi, you get the access to Alexa and can stream music from Amazon, iHeart and Tunein. You cannot ( yet) access Pandora, Spotify etc but can access most music services when streaming from bluettooth device to a speaker. I say this may change because I did not get a chance to test that aspect of it but I question what Amazon will allow to access since other music services are competitors. Beyond streaming you have access to the full Alexa suite – home automation, the Alexa app ( it worked great with the speaker) and much more. The microphones in the UE Blast were excellect. Not quite as sensitive as the Google home but did the job well. The speaker could mostly pick up my voice even with the speaker at full volume. in summary, this is a great speaker first and an Alexa enabled device second. It would be vice versa if the charging dock was included and the price was lower. The regular price on the speaker is about $230, plus the Power up charging dock is $40 plus tax; you are nearly at $300. At that price point, I do not think the value is there. UE needs to decide this is an Alexa device first, include the dock and have the overall price point at about $200. If they did that, this would be a 5 star product. Even so, I will still recommend it because of the stellar sound and quality and prices do come down over time.

Bought on sale. Good construction, materials and weight. Nice packaging. But having to download like 2 or 3 separate apps and accounts just to do something that google assistant speakers do out the box wasnt worth it for me. Terrible alexa functionality unless it was connected to home wifi, and i was connected to high speed hotspot for outdoor use since it is a heavy duty speaker. Sound was loud and nice but not $200 nice. First impressions when i recieved my package made me return product the next day and buy a JBL speaker.

I am deaf in one ear and was surprised when the blast was about two feet from my good ear the sound appeared to be coming from the tv screen some ten feet in front of me. This effect was NOT perceived by people with normal hearing, but I’m very happy.

Purchased this one solely on associate recommendation, wanted a blu tooth device with quality sound for at least 7-8 hrs. in a loud atmosphere. Box says this device holds a 12/hr charge(only received 2.5-3 hrs at 70% volume ). Sound quality is formidable though. Design and Alexa capability are also a plus. But I needed sound duration for a 10 hour work day in a shop environment. I will recommend everything about this product minus the battery life.

It's a good speaker, however I had some issues pairing with my phone it forced me to connect the speaker to a wifi to be able to use the app. This did not happened with the previous model

I bought the Blast for my brother's Christmas gift, but he bought himself another Bluetooth speaker so I decided to keep it. The first time I used it it sounded great but it lasted less than one hour. I changed it and tried it again the next day and again it lasted less than an hour. I took it back to exchange it but they no longer had any of the speakers, so I bought a Megaboom. Great service on the part of Best Buy but the only review I can leave is good sound if the battery wasn't defective I would have enjoyed it

Great speaker. Got it on sale for $95. Had to be black. The charging station was about $13 and had to be white. It's waterproof, but loses the wifi signal under water. Swimming laps with music didn't work out. Otherwise happy with it.

The Blast is a great portable speaker with quality sound. The built-in Alexia feature and connectivity to our WIFI make it an easy to use device when at home or at the cabin.

Great sound, Alexa is useless of you don't have premium. Doesn't connect easily to my devices.

great sounding speaker. Works good but battery no longer holds charge for long. Lasts about 20-30 minutes fully charged now.

I am loving my BLAST speaker with Alexa. It’s quite entertaining to submit requests to Alexa. You never know what she’ll say or play. Keep your speaker charged for endless hours of fun. If you have any specific questions, feel free to ask.

I love that I can add more of these as needed. I didn't want to wire speakers outside by the pool but with these speakers perfectly sync'ed, I can get a great sound outside. About 6 hour battery life has been my experience.

I use this speaker in my office to listen to music. It connects to both my iPhone and my laptop easily so that I can play the music on either device. It has very good sound quality and the music sounds great!