(NEW) JBL PartyBox Encore Essential

I wanted a speaker for family nights, and outside activities that packed more features and more volume than your typical small cylinder you'd see with JBL's own flip, or the Bose Revolve speakers. At the same time, I was not in the market for some heavy tower beast you typically see with $600+ party speakers. This really met my expectations. Not only was the price (on sale) a good budget pickup, but it's goldilocks size and performance set it apart. It's easily luggable, has some water resistance, connects quickly and clearly to my iPhone. The panels on the back allow for different connections, including a Microphone connector, and apparently a connector for USB drives with mp3's on it. It also has an auxiliary connection if you want to play some lossless HIFI audio from your phone. The audio inside the house easily caps out at 50% before it's just ridiculously loud. This is both on battery or plugged into power. Depending on your own home, you may not need to even use the bass boost function, as it can become overpowering. When used outside, however, the bass boost is much more useful and helps round out the sound. The sound it produces is pleasant, warm and clear. It's clearly a sculpted sound to punctuate the lows (bass), but it doesn't drown out dialogue, vocals, and other instruments. It's clearly trying to be the life of the party with it's tuning. I think it does a wonderful job given how small it is for the sound it produces. My 2 year old uses the JBL microphone I bought separately for this speaker and loves to singe along with his favorite songs, as does my 6 year old. The Karaoke feature is basically a must if you have kids. It's a great way to keep singing a central part of your family's activities, without buying some throwaway frozen themed karaoke toy that's hard use and gets forgotten about. Highly recommended for families who want more sound and features than a Flip or Revolve or Soundlink but still want to be able to carry the speaker from place to place without much fuss.