UE MEGABOOM launch shows off range, snow-resistance

Having recently spent a good week putting the Ultimate Ears MEGABOOM bluetooth speaker through its paces, I half expected never to see one again – on to the next news and reviews. However UE had different plans and invited KitGuru and a number of other journalists to Milton Keynes last night for the official launch of the product. Held at the Snozone indoor ski slopes, we were asked along to see how the speaker performed in the snow and listen to its performance as a live DJ kitted out with six of the portable speakers, filled the slopes with sound.

For a quick announcement and demonstration before we were invited to head out into the snow, UE had kitted out a small bar area like a lodge, complete with sheepskin rugs, Christmas trees and lots and lots of MEGABOOMs.

And a polar bear

During the talk we were shown how resilient the MEGABOOM can be, as the head of UK marketing threw it on the floor and dunked it in a tank of water. All the while it continued to play its music flawlessly from her smartphone. In case we thought this was a big set up, we were given the chance to do some testing of our own, so we grabbed one of the speakers and took it ‘outside' to see if it was as durable as they made out.

Despite being thrown on the floor multiple times and kicked around in the snow, making it very wet, the MEGABOOM continued to perform flawlessly.

As we all got ourselves kitted out with waterproof gear, boards and boots, we were also introduced to one of the faces of MEGABOOM, British Olympic snowboarder Aimee Fuller, who was there to not only talk up the speaker, but to help some of the more experienced snowboarding journos and bloggers improve their game.

All the while, the resident DJ was bouncing away, mixing different tracks on the fly using only his phone and an impressive set up consisting of six different MEGABOOM speakers, all wired together. Two of the devices can be wirelessly connected for stereo sound, but you can hook up an infinite number if you have deep pockets and a lot of cabling.

While we all then had a chance to try snowboarding out for ourselves – I ache a lot today – UE showed us several demos of the speaker's abilities throughout the evening. The 30M range was showcased as people trekked up the slops with a speaker in tow, leaving the broadcasting smartphone at the base of the hill.

The fact that even most of the way up the slopes we could still clearly hear the DJ's mix was a pretty impressive display of its sound too.

The six-speaker set up sounded pretty good even this high up

All in all, it was a lot of fun and UE did a good job showing what its MEGABOOM is capable of. It's clear that my review impressions of it as a rugged, powerful speaker ring true. It is expensive though, especially when you throw VAT in the mix.

The MEGABOOM seemed pretty impervious to the wet, -5 conditions

KitGuru Says: Thanks to UE for inviting KitGuru to the event. As fun as it was, it turned out to be a pretty good demonstration of what the MEGABOOM is capable of too. 

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