![]() On paper, the Flip 5 is just over 7 inches long and the circular ends measure less than 3 inches in diameter themselves. This means that it fits very nicely into a water bottle pouch on a backpack, but because it’s also designed in a thin, lengthy chassis (rather than a rounded oblong one) it slips nicely beside notebooks or laptops inside your bag. It’s just a small cylinder that fits in the footprint of a small water bottle or a portable coffee tumbler. There are no strange clips jutting out, no odd rounded parts creating an offbeat shape. What I like most about the form factor of the Flip 5 is that it doesn’t feel like there’s a whole lot of wasted space. Lifewire / Jason Schneider Portability: Unassuming but not tiny If you purchase the Flip 5 from the JBL site you can actually use an online tool to design your own pattern, making your visual options virtually limitless. Standard colors include everything from a subtle black or white to a stark mustard color or the bright red probably most familiar for the brand. Of course, the most important aspect of the Flip 5’s design is just how customizable it is. I do like that rubber rings around either end because they aren’t exactly symmetrical and give the speaker a bit of extra character in its shape. The black unit I have isn’t super-flashy, and the only real pop of color comes from the metallic orange JBL logo on the front. That design flourish also has a functional purpose since those subs fire bass in either direction. Taking it out of a bagand putting it on a table shows that you mean business, and the pulsing subwoofers on either side of the device look cool when they’re moving. With that said, the speaker does look great. I’ll get more into the playback quality in a later section dedicated to sound, but it’s important to note that even though the speaker grille goes almost fully around the device’s perimeter, there aren’t speakers firing in every direction. This looks cool, but it also implies a degree of “360-degree sound”. The cylinder chassis with a directionally fired main driver and two gimmicky pulsing “subs” on the ends of the device has been the go-to design for JBL for a few generations, but it’s also been copied by the likes of Ultimate Ears and countless overseas manufacturers. I got my hands on a black Flip 5 and spent about a week seeing what this thing could do.īecause the Flip series is JBL’s most popular portable Bluetooth line, the Flip 5 ends up being the de-facto flagship of the lineup. The sound quality itself is pretty solid, albeit a little bassy, and the price point might be a little high for a speaker in this category, but it certainly has its applications. ![]() Taking up no more space than a small water bottle and built with side-firing subwoofers, this speaker design does very well at dispersing sound to a small gathering without taking up much space on its own. The cylindrical look of the Flip series in and of itself has spawned a whole wave of off-brand copycats, and it makes sense. It’s also worth noting that tracks from services that offer lossless streaming (such as Apple Music, Tidal, Qobuz, and Amazon Music) sound noticeably better on the Charge 5 than the lossy tracks available from Spotify or YouTube Music.The JBL Flip 5 is one of the most classic examples of a full-featured, portable Bluetooth speaker. ![]() ![]() If your tastes run to more contemporary hits like those by Bad Bunny, Harry Styles, Kendrick Lamar, and Kate Bush, the Charge 5 sounds so good that I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that contemporary mix engineers use the JBL portables as reference speakers during their mix sessions. On notoriously low-fi recordings like Question Mark and the Mysterians’s “96 Tears” and the 13 th Floor Elevators’s “You’re Gonna Miss Me,” the Charge 5 doesn’t sand off the rough edges that give garage-rock classics like these their sonic teeth. Tambourine Man,” the Charge 5 delivers exceptional detail and separation between voices and instruments, whereas lesser speakers tend to turn the midrange into an indistinguishable wall of sound. On Apple’s ‘60s Rock Essentials playlist, the Charge 5 consistently impresses. ![]()
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