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Testing a speaker like this involves us using it over the course of a week for various tasks, including listening to music of different qualities, podcasts and non-musical audio sources, as well as testing its durability. To do so we submerged it in water for an extended period and dropped it from a significant height to make sure it continued to operate as intended afterwards.
In terms of musical quality, the Ultimate Ears Roll does a great job for a Bluetooth speaker. It would be unlikely to blow away a big dedicated set of home speakers, or an ultra high end headset, but when compared to other portable speakers, this one really stands out. It is bassy enough to do justice to dubstep tracks and the highs and mids are crystal clear throughout the volume range.
The app provides regular updates and additional functionality.
Although the roll does not have the same frequency range or volume as its bigger brother the MegaBoom, it does a good job of emulating it in a smaller package. It does however suffer from the same issue of the bass dropping off a little at the top end of the volume scale.
Dropping it a couple of notches from maximum seems to offer the best of both worlds.
If your friend has a Roll too, you can twin them for stereo play.
However, if you are the kind of listener that prefers the volume to never fall below “11,” then the Roll may leave you wishing for a little more attack. Perhaps due to its size and shape, it does not have quite the same powerful kick as the Megaboom, or its more comparably priced cousin, the original UE Boom. 85 decibels is plenty loud for most situations of course, but for when you want that little bit more, it fails to deliver.
When it came to the durability tests, the Roll stood up to them like a champ. It was dropped onto various hard surfaces from a height of two metres and survived without difficulty. Sound was not affected in the slightest and as far as I could tell, we could have done it over and over. However, this is not a test of how many bumps the Roll can take before it breaks, but rather whether it could handle being knocked off a high surface. It passed with flying colours.
Bass can be improved a little by setting the EQ to “Bass Jump.”
To make sure the waterproof claims were accurate, we placed the Roll under a foot of water for 10 minutes. While there was a scary moment near the start when a number of air bubbles escaped the charge port's covered flap, the Roll had no problems with that at all and even continued playing the music throughout its submersion. Water pressure has no effect on it either, as blasting it with a standard shower head did not interrupt the music playback.
Playing music underwater actually looks pretty cool, as bubbles rise up with each bass thump.
The Roll is also brilliantly portable. Due to its low profile, it fits in just about any bag or pocket and thanks to its built-in bungee tie, you can attach it to everything from your bag – to your shower pole, to your belt loop. Whatever the situation, chances are you will be able to hook the Roll to something, making it easy for you to take it with you wherever you go and have music right along with you if you want it.
This is a big upgrade in many ways over the Boom and Megaboom, which while perhaps better speakers in terms of producing sound, are not particularly portable due to their shape and size. They can attach via a bundled carabiner, but it is nowhere near as intuitive as the Roll's bungee.
The giant buttons on the front are also easy to use and if you press them together, you can even find out how much battery is left. This is important, as while the Roll does last for more than seven hours of playback, it does require a good five to charge fully.
