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To test a speaker like the Jam Titanium, we put it through its paces listening to a variety of different musical and audio sources from various genres and with different speaking voices. Throughout we listen for audio quality across the frequency range, as well as testing its abilities to broadcast at distance and high volumes.
As much as there are various factors that go into making a great speaker, audio quality is far and beyond the most important, so we will begin there. The Jam Titanium is a very competent wireless bluetooth speaker. It has some solid bass, that is quite surprising for its size and price point, and the rest of the frequency range is well represented. If there was a weak point, it would be the mid-range, which feels a little light with some tracks, though fiddling with your device's EQ settings can aid this.
Of course while the bass is good for a speaker like this, it does only extend so far down the spectrum. Like almost all portable speakers, there is very little of the ultra-low, rumbly bass that can so characterise a high-end speaker system with a subwoofer. However the Titanium does at least try, and you get low enough that it will give you that chest-kicking bass; though this can result in slight crackling at high enough volumes.
As with a lot of capable speakers, the Jam Titanium is often as good as the music source you give it to deal with, so higher quality tracks are recommended, as when given something of high-fidelity to play with, the Titanium does a very good job.
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As for other aspects of its operation, its range is not bad, extending to about 25ft in our own tests when unimpeded. This was reduced to 18ft when used indoors with the odd closed door or wall in the way, but in either instance that is more than enough, since going beyond such ranges begins to reduce your ability to enjoy the music anyway.
One aspect of the Titanium I was a particular fan of, was it is ability to control the music being played. Not only did it have volume controls as many other speakers have, but it has a pause and play function, which can be invaluable in scenarios where reaching for your phone is not easy.
Better yet though, this wirelesss speaker also lets you skip backwards and forwards in a play list. This lets the speaker stay the centre of your music listening experience, rather than the device it's sourcing its tunes from.
That is only augmented further by the ability to take calls to the device. It acts as its own speaker phone and works well with the caller coming through clearly and your own voice being transmitted just the same to them. You can even hang up on them with the play/pause button if you want to. This was one of the more impressive additional features, since it worked better (in this respect) than the much more expensive Ultimate Ears products we have reviewed previously.
