Flip 6 Portable Bluetooth Speaker

A portable speaker this size normally has one driver doing every job at once, which is why voices turn gluey the moment a bassline arrives. The Flip 6 splits the work in two.

The JBL Flip 6 is a two-way speaker in a tube roughly the size of a water bottle, pairing a 45 by 80 millimetre racetrack woofer on 20 watts RMS with a separate 16 millimetre tweeter on its own 10 watts. Giving each driver a narrower band to cover is how JBL gets to a quoted response of 63 Hz to 20 kHz with a signal-to-noise ratio above 80 dB. The low end comes from a passive radiator in each end cap, moved by the air the woofer pushes and drawing no power of its own, so there is no second amplifier to feed.

Two phones can stay connected at once over Bluetooth 5.1 and take turns playing. PartyBoost runs the other way: pair two Flip 6s for proper left and right stereo, or chain a longer line of compatible JBL speakers.

The charging port watches itself. If it detects water, salt or chemicals on the connector, the speaker plays a reminder sound telling you to unplug rather than quietly corroding, which matters more on an IP67 speaker than on most, since a rating JBL sums up as waterproof and dustproof, pool included, is an invitation to get it wet. Even the packaging is accounted for: paper and recyclable down to the inner tray, a hangtag over 90 per cent recycled, and soy ink printing.