If you love music and spending time outdoors, you need a speaker built to withstand the elements. Generally, water and electronics rarely mix, especially if the IP rating isn't up to scratch - waterproof speakers, however, are a completely different breed.
Get hold of a proper waterproof speaker and you'll soon see that the best models are built to withstand being splashed or sometimes even submerged in water for several minutes without malfunction. Still, it's not an experiment we'd recommend unless you're sure of your hardware's integrity, especially if you don't want to end up with a fizzing speaker and a pond full of dead fish.
If you need a rugged portable Bluetooth speaker that won't break at the sight of water or dust without compromising on sound, you're in the right place. We've tested every speaker in this list in our dedicated listening rooms, as well as taken them out on our travels to test their durability, exposing them to the harsh, drizzly realities of the British climate so that you can be sure your next speaker purchase serves you well the next time you're heading out.
I'm a staff writer who has listened to and reviewed dozens of products - from Bluetooth speakers to wireless headphones - during my time at What Hi-Fi?. A lover of the great outdoors, there's nothing I like more than picking up a portable speaker and heading on a long run, a hockey field or just a rainy garden to test its waterproofing credentials. When it comes to choosing the best waterproof speakers, I focus on the IPXX rating (i.e. how much water it will withstand), the durability of the build and finish, battery life, as well as the all-important sound quality for the price.
How to choose the best waterproof speaker for you
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A good waterproof rating should be high on your checklist of things to consider when choosing a waterproof speaker. The most common rating used in consumer electronics is the IP (Ingress Protection) standard, with ratings written as "IP" followed by two numbers – the first represents dust resilience, the second represents water resistance.
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Those models with a rating of IPX4, for instance, are only splashproof (the 'X' means the product wasn't tested for resilience against dust ingress.) But one of the most common specifications in newer models – in the speakers listed below – is IP67, meaning that particular speaker is safe to immerse in water up to 1m deep for up to 30 minutes and it's dust-proof, too. For a full explanation of the IP ratings and what they mean, check out our IP ratings explainer.
While Bluetooth is pretty much a must for these portable designs, wi-fi connectivity is less important when it comes to a waterproof speaker. Still, it's a great addition if you'll be using your speaker at home too and want to integrate it with your smart home set-up (using Amazon Alexa, Siri or Google Assistant).
Decent battery life is also a key consideration – nothing spoils a long hike or away day like a flat battery. Whether you want a budget buy or can stretch to a much pricier and more capable model, there's bound to be something for you in our recommendations below.
If what you want from your ideal outdoor speaker is portability, affordability and water resistance, the consistently impressive Tribit Stormbox Micro 2 is up there with the best. A small, satchel-friendly Bluetooth speaker that's one of the cheapest options on this list, the Micro 2 still delivers a surprising amount of sonic wallop.
Admittedly, it doesn't harness the 360-degree sound design of many of its rivals such as the JBL Flip 6 or the Charge 5 (see below), but we found it is one of the best value options if you’re on a tight budget. It sounds good, it's well-made and it performs time and again regardless of place, climate or your taste in music.
With a robust woven finish design and squat, compact design, the Micro 2 delivers enjoyable audio and impressive battery life - we coaxed 12 hours of listening out of a single charge. An IP67 rating, meanwhile, let one of our reviewers use it in the shower without any issues or damage. Again, the Stormbox Micro 2's diminutive size and durable design make it well-suited for travelling far beyond the confines of a bathroom or kitchen.
Audio is also really strong, and much bigger, punchier and louder than you’d expect from such an undersized device, with that midrange in particular offering real meat and muscle no matter the genre. The only issue is that it can start to suffer from distortion at louder volumes, but based on our head-to-head tests, you’ll have to pay more and invest in either a more expensive JBL Flip 6 or UE Wonderboom 3 to move up to the next level.
Read our full Tribit Audio Stormbox Micro 2 review
JBL's love of rugged, dependable hardware is reflected in its great portable speakers range, making it practically synonymous with the entire concept of hardwearing outdoorsy audio. The Flip 6, happily, is a JBL speaker through and through.
The old Flip 5 was a past What Hi-Fi? Award winner, a trick that JBL has more or less repeated with the five-star sequel. The Flip 6 doesn't exactly change much from its predecessor, and rumours of an upcoming seventh-generation model might threaten its primacy in the near future, but for now, this really is one of the finest speakers of its type and price anywhere in the world.
It's super durable, too, with an IP67 water and dustproof rating seeing the Flip 6 match the durability of the excellent Tribit Stormbox above. Not only can you get the Flip 6 wet at the beach, but you can also afford to allow quite a bit of sand to get near it as well.
Yes, it's still 'just' a Bluetooth speaker – but what a great-sounding Bluetooth speaker it is. If you want to boost the sound presentation to your liking, you can now tweak things thanks to a new EQ feature in the app. For a nominal price hike over the launch price of the Flip 5, there’s certainly more detail here, too, while that improved IP rating offers peace of mind when you're hitting the road.
In terms of overall performance, the Flip 6 remains a firm recommendation.
Read our full JBL Flip 6 review
Bluetooth speakers come in all shapes and sizes, yet we can't think of many that offer the sort of value and reliability as the JBL Charge 5. We hope a new Charge model will come along soon, but for now, we're convinced that this is one of the absolute best performers around. Those multiple What Hi-Fi? Awards don't lie, after all.
The JBL Charge 5 rocked our world by showing itself to be even more durable and better sounding than the four Charge models that have been before it. Its predecessor carried an IPX7 rating, meaning it could handle being submerged in water to a depth of 1.5m, but the IP67-rated Charge 5 builds on that durability by also being almost completely dustproof. Like almost everything JBL makes, it's so reassuringly solid and well-made that you'd be forgiven for thinking that the fifth-gen Charge could survive a nuclear fallout. For all we know, it could.
Thanks in part to a 10W tweeter and racetrack-shaped driver, the Charge 5 provides as good a sound as you can currently get in a portable Bluetooth speaker design for around £200 ($200, AU$300), as well as boasting sonic and aesthetic improvements over its predecessors.
We're keen to see what JBL comes up with for the upcoming Charge 6 - for the time being though, our current What Hi-Fi? Award-winner remains king of the castle.
Read our full JBL Charge 5 review
If you want that classic combination of rugged durability housed within a bulky, boombox-style interior, you could do far worse than the JBL Xtreme 3. Anyone serious about outdoor pursuits and cranking the sound all the way up when the time comes should consider the Xtreme 3 above pretty much anything else on this list.
The durable Xtreme 3 is yet another classic JBL outdoorsman, a versatile, talented five-star wireless speaker that’s as happy chilling at home as it is being the life and soul of a sweaty student party. As rugged as the rest of its stablemates, it's IP67 dust and waterproof-certified, making it perfect for getting its (metaphorical) hands dirty in the great outdoors.
You might be forgiven for thinking that, given the bulky construction, the Xtreme 3 might be more preoccupied with the amount of bass it’s producing rather than focusing on musical quality. Happily, the Xtreme 3 proves to be a careful and considerate performer from the lowest of lows to the highest highs, giving impressive detail, dynamics and a strong sense of timing.
Bassheads will be more than satisfied with the healthy low-end clout on offer, but there’s quality as well as quantity on display - this is a speaker that never feels out of its depth no matter how complicated the musical arrangement.
We know for certain that a new Xtreme 4 is on the way soon, complete with Auracast and some fancy AI sound calibration tech, which means one, maybe two things for the current model. Firstly, it might be ousted from this list rather soon and, second, its price might start to plummet as the fourth-gen model takes the reins.
Read our full JBL Xtreme 3 review
There's nothing better than seeing style and substance come together, and that's exactly what you're getting with the rather wonderful Bang & Olufsen Beosound A1 (2nd Gen). It looks the part, it sounds the part, and by Jove, it's built to last, too.
Yes, most of B&O's range looks more at home in an art gallery than stuck on the side of Skegness beach, meaning you'd be forgiven for thinking that a go-anywhere bit of Bang tech would be a little like having a portable version of Rodin's The Thinker stuffed in your backpack. Happily, the Beosound A1 is tougher than its delicate looks would suggest, and the A1's IP67 rating should mean that it's happy being subjected to a 30-minute swim up to a metre deep.
Quoted battery life is also a solid 18 hours at normal listening volume, or up to 48 hours at a more conservative level, so running out of juice halfway through your camping trip shouldn't be too much of a concern.
The A1 supports Qualcomm’s aptX Adaptive Bluetooth 5.1 codec as well as Alexa voice control, which is a bonux. Sound performance is authoritative and expansive with a weighty, pleasing bass presentation, and there's even a convenient strap for ease of transport.
It's expensive, sure, but if you have money to spend, the Beosound A1 is a rather remarkable all-rounder.
Read our full Bang & Olufsen Beosound A1 (2nd Gen) review
Check out most of Ultimate Ears' rather youth-oriented PR and marketing campaigns and you'll notice that water is a recurring theme. More specifically, UE makes a big deal out of the fact that most of its speakers, be they big, small or in between, are happy floating in water for minutes at a time without suffering any lasting damage whatsoever.
Check that first requirement off the list early, then – the Wonderboom 3 is waterproof and dustproof thanks to its IP67 rating, and its float-ability means it should withstand the most lively of pool parties and outdoor adventures. Battery life, meanwhile, is 14 hours and a full charge takes around 2.6 hours on average, which is hardly shameful by any measure.
Sonically, the Wonderboom 3 is an exciting listen. Bass is impressive given its small form factor, and the sense of dynamics on display is similarly impressive. You also get a ‘boost’ button on the underside of the unit that's a rollover feature from the Wonderboom 2 that restricts the speaker's bass frequencies, allowing the UE to play louder through the midrange. This in turn makes the sound easier to hear when used outdoors, making it all the more attractive a speaker to bring with you on a trip.
There's no built-in mic or app as featured in the Wonderboom 2, but even so, the Wonderboom 3 is an eminently portable, great-sounding Bluetooth speaker that won't break the bank at its £90 / $100 retail price.
Read our full Ultimate Ears Wonderboom 3 review
The Sonos Roam is a strong candidate for those looking for an off-roading, hiking, beach-combing, deep-diving speaker with a slim design and a feature set to rival the best of them. Given Sonos’s recent run of superb-sounding products, one that we can drop in our backpack and take on a ramble has been highly anticipated – especially since the Move, the company’s first battery-powered speaker, was more portly than portable in comparison.
Sonically, the Roam is an admirable effort, even if we can't help feeling that Sonos' diminutive portable swaps out truly detailed sound for a greater emphasis on usability, build quality and durability. That's not an entirely bad thing for an outdoors speaker, but the Roam's slight lack of crystal clear detail, coupled with some rather average timing and dynamics, means it can't take the crown from its JBL competitors.
However, it's a nicely portable design with a pleasing, full-bodied sound, and unusually for this type of speaker, it can connect to your home wi-fi (and thus get access to a host of music streaming platforms), making it suited to anyone wanting a speaker to slot into a well-developed Sonos ecosystem. Let's hope the sequel steps up its game in the sound department, because only then will JBL really be sweating.
Read our full Sonos Roam review
Anyone who looks at the Tribit Stormbox Micro 2 or the JBL Flip 6 and thinks, "hmm, they're nice, but a bit chunky for my tastes" should really consider the JBL Go 3 as more their sort of thing.
The diminutive, soap on a rope-styled Go 3 features Bluetooth 5.1 plus a maximum power output of 4.2W, up from Bluetooth 4.1 and 3W in the previous iteration. The dinky little speaker's main limitation is that it takes 2.5 hours to charge fully, and you can still only get a comparatively meagre five hours of playtime from a single charge, making battery life something of a limiting factor.
If you can live with this, there's much to celebrate in the sound department at the level. The extra power and overhauled design have resulted in some solid sonic enhancements, so much so that we awarded the Go 3 full five stars in the sound department when we had it in for testing in early 2021.
It's also an aesthetically pleasing little fella, once again sporting an IP67 rating to give it that go-anywhere reliability. That probably makes it better suited to showers than long-range, weather-beaten excursions, though, and if you're planning a trip to the Andes, you might want to consider one of this list's bigger boys instead.
Read our full JBL Go 3 review
How we test waterproof speakers
We review hundreds of products every year at What Hi-Fi?'s state-of-the-art testing facilities in London, Reading and Bath, including all kinds of Bluetooth speakers, and of course waterproof ones. We test all products that come through our doors as a team of experts with over a century of combined experience, ensuring no expert opinion ever goes unheard.
Every Bluetooth speaker is judged on a performance-per-pound basis, and we make sure to compare speakers with similarly-priced class leaders to help ensure we get a good sense of a speaker's performance as well as help us to settle on a score.
Outside of evaluating the audio performance of every waterproof speaker, we also test features like battery life, water resistance, Bluetooth connection strength, ease of use and set-up, among other things – including whether it's as rugged as it is claimed to be. It's important we get a full sense of both a product's practicality as well as its performance to gauge its overall value.
As a matter of course, there's no input from PR companies or sales teams when it comes to reviews, with What Hi-Fi? enjoying a sterling, decades-long reputation for delivering unbiased, honest feedback.
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