Most party speakers are huge with flashing lights powerful enough to cause temporary blindness if you look at them wrong. TheJLab Go Partyis more subtle, like pre-party appetizers, but its water resistance, dual drivers, and $30 price make it compelling as a general-purpose Bluetooth speaker.
JLab Go Party
With its sleek cylindrical design, this speaker transforms any space into the perfect party zone. Packing 10 watts of crystal-clear, lab-quality sound, this portable Bluetooth powerhouse lets you customize both audio and lighting effects.
Price and Availability
The JLab Go Party speaker retails for $29.99 and is available to buy now. It comes in multiple colors.
It’s Stacked With Features For a Budget Device
Although a speaker’s sound will matter most in the end, having a full slate of features shouldn’t be discounted.
The flashy light strip is the most noticeable on the JLab Go Party, even if it doesn’t really improve the overall experience of the speaker. Still, you may choose between a few different light patterns or turn it off completely. This can be done in the JLab mobile app, available for iPhone and Android. By default, the lights will shut off when the battery gets low, but you can tweak that in the app.
The lights can bounce to the music’s rhythm through a built-in microphone. This also allows the speaker to be used as a speakerphone. Most people’s phones will serve as a better way to conduct conference calls, but the speaker can still handle it.
The speaker gets around 16 hours of battery life and is IPX6 water-resistant. That means it’s safe to use around the pool or while washing the car. I would avoid taking it to the beach, however, because of its lack of dust rating.
More importantly, there are dual drivers hidden beneath the exterior fabric. They provide enough volume to comfortably fill a living room, but are stretched thin in a backyard trying to entertain a group bigger than a family. Speaking of volume, I really like the twisting dial, rather than mashing rubber buttons to raise or lower the volume.
The Sound Quality and Volume Are Surprising For the Price
The sound quality of the Go Party, both at low and moderate volume levels, is quite good. That isn’t too surprising. What is surprising is how well it sounds for its $30 price.
The Go Party sounds evenly balanced with a full sound throughout the midrange. It can be punchy in the bass department with songs like Dua Lipa’sDon’t Start Herethat are mixed that way with a tight frequency range.
The deep bass is non-existent, as evident by Childish Gambino’sSummertime Magic, which lacks a bass drop around the 16-second mark. The Weeknd’sBlinding Lightsdoesn’t have the same expansive synths either. But that doesn’t mean the speaker inherently sounds cheap.
A lot of the time, a song’s nuance and frequencies are lost when listening outside anyway. So why pay double the price when a lower-priced option can get you most of the quality you’ll be able to hear?
The Mobile App Is Semi-Useful
Although most settings are controllable via the speaker’s top buttons, it’s handy to have a companion app. The EQ is tempting to adjust, but I found the default signature EQ to sound the best.
The two settings I like the app for best are adjusting the battery-saver options, for when to power down the speaker after it’s been idle, and when to turn the lights off, based on battery level.
You may also want to turn off the voice prompts after a few days, too. They’re helpful initially to understand what the speaker is doing, but after a few days, the robotic voice just becomes annoying. Luckily, there’s a simple toggle for that.
Should You Buy the JLab Go Party?
TheJLab Go Partypacks enough features and sounds good enough for its $30 price that it’s a great speaker. This is a perfect choice for people who don’t want to worry about losing or destroying an expensive speaker.
With the price as a guiding context, there’s just not much to complain about here. Of course, you shouldn’t buy this speaker if you want the best sound possible. But if a limited budget is your main constraint, then it’s a steal.
