The JBL Charge 5 speaker is portable, robust, powerful, and affordable at this cool new discount
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Can a good old fashioned portable Bluetooth speaker represent a smarter buy than a smart device with various modern voice skills from a company like Amazon, Google, or Apple? If you want to be able to take your favorite music with you wherever you go, the answer is obviously yes, especially when talking about a model as popular and as well-reviewed as the JBL Charge 5 that also happens to be on sale at a very cool discount right now.
For a presumably limited time only, Amazon is allowing its customers to pay 50 bucks less than usual for their favorite version of the Charge 5 from a range of color options that includes black, blue, gray, green, pink, red, teal, white, and even camouflage.
Given that this "dumb" portable speaker normally costs $179.95, its current quality/price ratio seems pretty much unbeatable, with the latest Amazon discount adding $10 to the e-commerce giant's previous promotion on the JBL Charge 5 while not quite matching the $60 Prime-exclusive markdown from July.
In the absence of Alexa assistance, you'll obviously have to use your phone to manually stream music to this affordable, reasonably robust, stylish, and lightweight speaker, which can play tunes for a whopping 20 hours without interruption or wall-hugging.
The Charge 5 is even capable of pulling double duty as both a speaker and handy power bank for your smartphone or tablet, although if you choose to leverage that latter functionality, you'll of course give up some of the speaker's extraordinary battery life.
Designed primarily with outdoor enthusiasts in mind, the heavily discounted JBL Charge 5 can survive water immersion and prolonged contact with dust and dirt, not to mention that the rubber elements at both ends make the speaker easy to grip and hard to damage.
But perhaps the most important feature of a non-smart Bluetooth speaker is its audio quality, and to the surprise of absolutely nobody the least bit familiar with the JBL brand, that's actually one of the Charge 5's key strengths, with a long excursion driver, separate tweeter, and dual bass radiators joining forces to deliver stunning sound... for the sub-$200 category.
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