Best Bluetooth Speakers For Outdoor Entertaining
Rugged, Portable Outdoor Sound
First up, we have a new portable Bluetooth speaker from Sonos — the Sonos Roam. The Roam is highly portable and its handy shape begs for it to be picked up and taken everywhere. It has a tubelike or a “pill-shaped” form-factor and it weighs just shy of a pound. Even though this is a small portable speaker, the Roam packs a big sound.
Roam is designed to stand up vertically or you can lay it down horizontally. If you stand it up, the Roam will deliver room-filling sound and this also means it takes up very little room. If you position it horizontally on an uneven surface like grass, its triangular design will direct sound up to your ear for a better listening experience. The Roam also supports Sonos’s automatic Trueplay tuning technology. So, with this, Roam is always optimizing the sound for the speaker's location and the content that’s playing.
Smart Indoor & Outdoor Sound
Next up, we have a pretty recent newcomer to the portable outdoor speaker market. The Move 2 is a great smart speaker from Sonos. It’s an all-in-one speaker with outstanding sound that runs on a rechargeable battery. If you didn’t already know, Sonos offers a complete ecosystem of high-performance smart speakers that can cover your whole house with music. The Sonos Move 2 lets you expand on this smart home concept by bringing the music already playing inside your home outside to the patio or screened-in-porch.
One or two of these will cover a typical screened porch & backyard very well. Sonos added a level of weather resistance, so it would be ok to leave this out on a covered porch for a while. The Move 2's internal components are protected by a shock-resistant case, so it’s fairly durable if it slips or takes a fall.
Soundcast is another great option for portable outdoor sound as each model is specially designed for outdoor use. All Soundcast products are weather-resistant to varying degrees, but unlike a lot of speaker companies, they actually define a spec for how resistant they are.
First up, we have the Soundcast VG5 Bluetooth Loudspeaker. For about the same price point as the Sonos Move, the VG5 is a larger, rugged portable powerhouse. At a little over 17-inches tall and about 8-inches wide and deep, the VG5 is moving into the “serious speaker” category.
There’s an impressive 6-inch powered subwoofer built-in plus two 3-inch aluminum-cone drivers fire out big stereo sound — and yet this one is still small and light enough to carry around. You’ll be able to feel the bass with the VG5 and fill up a much bigger area than the Sonos Move. Two of these paired together are a great idea for your next social gathering outdoors or even a pool party.
Portable Music-Performance Machine
Up next, we have the JBL PartyBox 310 Portable Bluetooth Speaker. This is for the person who wants an outdoor speaker to Bluetooth music with, but also wants the option to plug in a guitar and a microphone and be the entertainer. This one includes mic & guitar inputs that let you or your friends serenade your guests with professional-grade JBL sound and it lights up the outdoor experience too.
For this price category, we see this one as the best Bluetooth speaker for larger outdoor events, requiring some “off-the-grid” features to help the music and your devices stay powered plus karaoke features that rock the party. It weighs in at almost 40-pounds, so it’s much heavier compared to the Boombox 2, but the sound coverage this provides is significantly louder and closer to what you will find in a professional PA system. This beast is capable of outputting a massive 240 Watts!
When the sun sets, cool light shows light up your outdoor area with a variety of mood-setting modes. With subtle pulsing and powerful strobing effects, there's a setting for every mood. We see this being especially useful for parties that need a touch of professionalism. You can even set these up on speaker stands for more visibility and even better sound. The colorful light shows really level-up the energy of the party.
