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Like the JBL Pulse 3 and Pulse 4 before it, this latest fifth generation of JBL’s popular upright portable Bluetooth speaker is simply gorgeous. The entire outer shell of the Pulse 5 is clear plastic all around, save for the top and bottom caps which house the Pulse 5’s top upward-firing 0.6-inch tweeter and the bottom, down-firing 2.5-inch 30-watt woofer that gets just under an inch of clearance thanks to the device’s three rubber feet. Pairing the JBL 5 to your device, be it a smartphone, tablet, or computer, is as easy as pairing any Bluetooth device. Once paired, you can of course play music from your favorite streaming services, or push the sound to it from whatever you’re watching on YouTube or Netflix.
Bass is rather anaemic, leaving electronic music and hip hop sounding a little flat and lifeless. There’s just no real presence to the low registers. The mids and treble fare better, with decent clarity and detail for the money.Speaking of sonics, new design elements in this fifth iteration push even more air out from the upfiring 30W woofer, while a newly added 10W tweeter extends crisp treble to help balance the mid-lows. The Pulse 5 outputs a surprising bass volume for a compact Bluetooth party speaker, while maintaining clarity.
Sound quality is about what you’d expect of a Bluetooth speaker for this price and size – keeping in mind the actual size of the speaker component. There’s only a single 5W driver inside. It looks a bit like a trippy missile, but this 16-inch lamp’s size helps it make a statement in a room. Green wax floats around in blue-ish liquid, which gives it a very sci-fi vibe. We know it’s wax in there but if you wanted to pretend it’s some kind of alien ooze, you could likely do so while still moderately sober. On its own, a single Pulse 5 delivers mono sound (we’ll get into how it sounds below), but when connected to another Pulse with the PartyBoost feature, a stereo pair can be created. Or you can link multiple compatible speakers for a bigger sound. I only received one review unit to test out, so I was unable to try this feature.
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The JBL Pulse 5 handles most sound situations relatively well and performed admirably everywhere I put it. Why it made the cut: When the vibe is heating up, but you don’t want to wait for the light show to warm up, the JBL Pulse 5’s 360-degree app-controlled ambiance is available at the press of a button. Nope. You should turn your lava lamp off when you’re not home or when you go to sleep. If you’re not actively gazing into it or trying to set a real mood, you should turn it off then, too, because you’re just burning electricity for no reason. Final thoughts on the best lava lamps
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