JBL Eon One Compact

I wanted an allround speaker as a practice amp for singing, acoustic and electric guitar, bluetooth playback and the occosional jam session. And I love how this speaker facilitates all of that. For me that's the main thing that strikes me about this speaker it is so versatile.

1. Portability
The battery lasts ages, I charge about once a week even though every day for an hour. I just don't have to think about it. I notice that because of its portability I take it along everywhere where I need some extra sound level.
2. Connections
This is probably the best feature of all. It has 4 channels! I can sing duets with a friend, play guitar and have a backing track running. While controlling the level of each channel with the app. This is the main thing that made me choose this JBL above the Bose S1 Pro.
That said the phyisical controls are a bit limited, and I don't like the green ring ui around the pot meters its not clear enough what the current setting is. They should have gone with discrete leds from 1 -10 or something. All in all it's a minor thing and makes you use the app more.

3. Sound quality
The sound from the speaker is very neutral and requires some tweaking with the EQ to make it pop to your liking. Personally i put next to my Sonos speaker and tried to emulate the tone as much as possible. And the good thing is with this speaker you can do that, yes it takes a little time and fiddling, but you can get the sound you want and I love what I hear. I boosted the bass and treble.

So all in all a terrific all round speaker that has tons of features, can go plenty loud and puts all of it in small easy to use package.

I use this with acoustic guitar and mic for song. Primary use are very small cafe's, occasional street music, and a mini-rig for demo-ing myself to new customers.

It's fairly low weight and ergonomics makes it easy to handle, and setup time is extremely fast as mixer is onboard - just plug in, and go (after initial playing around and getting the sound and volume right)

This is a very nice sounding box and with only just a little eq'ing everything sounds very good and pleasantly natural.

I also like that it charges the battery - or operates directly from - the quipped 220v IEC mains connector - and that you can power you ipad or pedals from the built-in usb ports (although if you have the box on a stand as I usually do, it will be some nasty long charger cables... better to have a seperate powerbank ;) )

Although I really like this box, there are some drawbacks. Firstly, In order to turn effects on and off, you need the app - not really a problem, but sometimes having a footswitch is just more convenient.

The sound level is OK - but I find myself driving it at max volume to get a decent sound level, i.e. it just blinks red occasionally indicating clipping starts. Clipping is not digital or analogue distortion, but the jbl it starts compressing the sthe sound more and more noticably the more it "clips" - so you are not hurting anyones ears, it just becomes... well, squashed. I miss a some headroom here, as I find when driving speakers they tend to loose "control" over the sound.

Bottom line is that this speaker without competition for its price. This speaker sounds awesome for my guitar and vocal, but I wish it was just a tad louder.