Customer Ratings & Reviews

I was excited to get my first Alexa product and expand my home automation even more. While this unit does have great sound quality and Alexa works effortlessly, there is one minor design flaw that limits its use. The positioning of the charging port on the bottom limits the position that this can be placed in if you want to keep it plugged in for home use. This forces you to lay the speaker on its side (horizontally). While not detrimental to the product, I feel that a more conveniently placed charging port would have increased its usability and allowed you to place it on a countertop the way it was designed to be: vertically.

I love the sound that this speaker produces! The music and lyrics are so clear and crisp. The built in Alexa is so convenient. The app that controls the system is also pretty handy and made the setup really quick, I was done in just a couple minutes. I would have given a 5 star review but Spotify is not a supported app! Since that is my main source of music I would definitely like to be able to use the full functionality of this speaker to control it but I've settled myself to manual controls for now. However, that is the only downside that I found - overall an excellent product with amazing sound!

I have been using the Google Home for 2 years, as well as a Portable Bose Speaker. And I choose the UE Blast because of the size, the company offers that the sound will be great, the portability, and the capability to have Alexa app integrated, and I wasn’t disappointed. I like the style and the large volume controls. And the fact that is water proof. The material allows made to get a good grip so you can carry it with confidence. The set up is pretty simple. I have an Iphone 7, and the first thing you do is to install the app. Once it finishes, it will guide you step by step. You have the enable the Bluetooth and connected the UE Blast as a Bluetooth speaker. Once you do that, the app will try to connect to the device, and then you set up your amazon account. I will start first with the functionality as a speaker. It is great, the sound is clear, very high for a large room and the speaker will fill the room with sound. I have used the speaker several times about the 70% of the volume in long sessions and I have got about 8 hours of Battery life. Using a 2amp usb charger adapter it will take less than 2 hours to fully charge. The Bluetooth range is really good, about 60 feet, with my iphone7. Now, the integration with the alexa app, works great. I have my Alexa account and I was able to play the radio app, using the same commands and same functionality as I used to do with my google home. To recap, the UE Blast turns into a Echo speaker. That means playing music without having to pair your phone too. All the features tha are available with Alexa are now built into UE Blast flagship products. This includes Wi-Fi functionality. By connecting to a network, or mobile hotspot, The US Blast “Alexa” is now portable wherever you go. I really like it!

The Ultimate Ears - BLAST Smart Portable Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Speaker with Amazon Alexa Voice Assistant - Blue Steel is a device that I could not get up and running at 100%. I had to call customer service to address my concerns, but the representative was not knowledgeable enough to solve my problems. First, I downloaded the Ultimate Ears app and followed the step by step instructions to complete setup. Second, I signed into my Amazon account to connect with Alexa voice control. Third, I downloaded the Amazon Alexa app as recommended. I asked simple commands such as, what is the time and weather? The answers were stated correctly by the Blast speaker. Problems arose when I tried to get it to play music from my Google Pixel and from Tunein. No sound was produced from the Blast; even though I saw the playback icon fluctuate that meant the song was playing. The second day I tried to test it out, I said Alexa play Tunein. It connected to Tunein, without any problem. When I said Alexa stop playing music, Blast kept on playing music. The only way I could stop the music playing was by shutting down the Blast completely. All problems with the Ultimate Ears - BLAST Smart Portable Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Speaker with Amazon Alexa Voice Assistant - Blue Steel come from the syncing with Amazon Alexa. Using the Ultimate Ears - BLAST Smart Portable Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Speaker with Amazon Alexa Voice Assistant - Blue Steel strictly as a Bluetooth device works fine. I can tap on Blast under my Blutooth settings and connect my Google Pixel phone and then I can play music from any installed app. If Amazon Alexa can work perfectly with Blast, then the Blast experience would be fantastic. The volume is tremendous, but I was not able to find out how to create more bass. The potential of the Blast is great, once Alexa is properly synchronized.

Set up was quick and the microphones pick up your voice from across a room even when the music is playing pretty loud. Alexa functionality was very good as well. The speaker gets loud without distorting and the sound quality is good - certainly better than some other Blu-tooth speakers I've had. The Ultimate Ears Blast was easy to unpack and setup, the packaging is very nicely put together and looks durable as a storage solution going forward. The volume controls and on/off button are easy to get at while the charging port isn't intuitive, it is fine once you get at it.

Figuring out how to setup this speaker wasn't easy, but I was able to do it in about 15 minutes. It has really good sound quality, especially via Bluetooth from a phone. Alexa recognizes your voice about 80% of the time, which is pretty good. However, this device is clearly meant to be used wirelessly. There's no easy way to get it to stay standing up when it's plugged in. It also goes to sleep when not used for a while (and cant be turned off) - this is different than simply muting the mic. One cannot walk into the room after it hasn't been used in a while and give Alexa commands. This is a major drawback. Overall, it's a decent device if you're willing to deal with some of the design issues.

I've never thought to get an Echo Tap or anything like that. But I love UE speakers, so one with Alexa built in changed everything. I have not been disappointed. The sound is great, like I'm used to with UE speakers. The ability to call up Alexa is a great bonus. The sound is better than my Echo, with deeper bass and I think just a crisper sound. We're big Amazon music listeners, so this speaker works out great. In addition, if you're off Wifi you can still stream to it Bluetooth. Set up was super simple. Download the app and follow the instructions to connect to your Wifi. The speaker is a good size for carrying one place to another. It feels very well made, and I'll mention again, the sound is great. If there's a downside, for me having used an Echo for a while now, I don't think that this speaker hears you say "Alexa" as well as an Echo does. My guess is that it just doesn't have as many mics or different ones. And I find that you have to Say "Alexa" and pause for just a second and then say the command. It just doesn't respond as fast as the Echo. I wouldn't call this a deal breaker at all. I don't know if it's hardware or something that might get better with some software updates in the future. But I would buy this speaker again and again. Highly recommended.

Ultimate ears blast, what is it and is the true 360 audio worth the buy? Ultimate ears blast is a mobile upright 360 audio boombox with Built in Alexa. Ultimate ears claims to provide a water tight true 360 sound with Alexa built in that you can take with you anywhere life may take you. Ultimate ears seems to fall short in a few key categories so lets dive in and talk about some of the good and bad with this product. First off out of the box your going to receive the Ultimate Ears speaker, micro sd charging cable, and some brief instructions on set up. Linking the speaker to your mobile device is done with in a matter of seconds. Ultimate Ears also provides an app that allows a few more features and the ability to update your speakers firmware. So lets talk about the app for a second. The app offers very little features as of writing this review. You can check your speakers battery life, link additional speakers, manage wi-fi settings and connect to and manage your Alexa and amazon account. That's really all the app has to offer and its kind of disappointing and let me tell you why. When i first turned on the speaker and linked it to my mobile device so i could stream music, the quality was average at BEST! I messed around a little bit with my mobile device's audio equalizer and it did seem to help out a bit however the equalizer is very basic and limited. I went on to Ultimate Ears app hoping to find an equalizer to help improve my audio quality and to my dismay they did not offer one. My mobile device's base equalizer did help to improve sound quality and made it at least sound decent. Everyone thing about the sound was truly average. While listening to some of my music all my tones were within equal range and never seem to over power one or the other. My bass never took away from my vocals and my mids never took away from my highs. Now as far as the 360 audio sound is concerned i do not feel this is a true 360 audio device. I own 3 other devices that are portable 360 audio boombox style and the sound coming out of those devices can be heard the same no matter where you are standing. With the Ultimate Ears Blast i noticed right off the bat that the speaker has a solid strip going down the speaker that houses the big volume up/down button. If you are standing in the direction of the volume buttons the audio is going to seem distant and far away due to the fact you have a solid strip covering up the speaker. With the speaker positioned at waist level i noticed audio pitch and quality varied depending on where you were standing in relation to the speaker. The point of a 360 speaker is to get the same sound and quality equally no matter where you stand in relation to the speaker up to a given point. The quality of the sound was so inconsistent that i found the best sound came from being within 5 feet of the speaker. Battery life also seemed to drop rather quickly. Ultimate Ears claims about 12 hours of battery life but i got about 10 hours before i had to recharge the speaker again. There is some good though. You have a portable Alexa that you can take with you anywhere that you can command to play your music or playlist and even get sports and weather updates. The unit is also water proof however i wouldnt be so quick to dunk it in water. It can easily shrug off any drink that may get spilled on it or if your having a poolside party any water that may get splashed on it will not affect it in any negative way. At the end of the day if your looking for a cost effective speaker that you can take with you no matter where you go that has a built in assistant then this may be for you. However if your like me and care how rich and consistent your sound quality is then you may wanna pass on this unit. My hope is that over time as the app and firmware updates the sound quality and functionality will continue to improve also.

Still a good sound, love the new design. The only downfall is you have to be connected to wifi to use alexa BUT as long as your phone is connected to the same wifi, you shouldn't have any problem navigating with your phone and the speaker. I did have this problem which was surprising though. Had it for a month and it just stopped turning on. Luckily bought the GSP on it.

This is my second time with a second device dealing with their support team to get their products to function correctly. I had a Boom which lasted 6 months - their support team asked for a video of it not working and even had me upload on YouTube to say they can’t access it. So i bought this speaker today to find out the app won’t even connect to WiFi. I literally opened it out of the box and it’s erroring out during the WiFi message. Bluetooth is working fine (so far) but wow - i can’t believe they’d release such a horrible app for an expensive product. I was looking forward to using the Alexa feature but i can’t even get that far in setting up this piece of junk. There goes $400 in UE products in the toilet

The Ultimate Ears Blast bluetooth speaker has good sound quality and volume. Unfortunately I have been unable to use the speaker to the full potential because of the terrible App setup procedure, which I was never able to accomplish despite weeks of trying. The app would start setup by seeing the speaker, but then on the next step it would always say "speaker unavailable" and I couldn't do anything else. The speaker connects to my phone and PC just fine via bluetooth for sound purposes, but I am unable to use it for Alexa and other advanced features. Customer service has ignored my attempts to get some help.

Excellent sound and a nice long battery life. We use the speaker when we go out on the boat all the time and never disappoints.

It was a good little speaker until it stopped charging and working after 2 1/2 years. I used it all the time to connect to my TV at our outdoor porch. For the price I expected it to work longer then that. Next purchase will be a less expensive one on Amazon with a extended warranty.

The UE Blast disconnect from wifi constantly. Randomly shuts off when playing Amazon music. Alexa is extremely slow when she does respond...if you can get her to respond. On a positive note, this is pretty awesome for bluetooth streaming. It has a nice full sound that can fill a moderate sized room. If bluetooth is what your looking for this is it! If you are looking for a wireless speaker to connect to wi-fi...this is not what you need.

Atrocious design, terrible sound, the charging port is in the weirdest place. Returned asap and got Bose soundlink instead. Way better!