A compact speaker in a tight spot
The $199.99 LG Xboom Bounce sits in the middle of the company’s revamped and narrowed line of portable Bluetooth speakers. Designed in collaboration with artist will.i.am, the Xboom Bounce delivers balanced audio with impressive range and volume. We like its compact size and light weight, which make it easy to carry around, as well as its durability, decent battery life, and nifty light show. It’s held back by limited codec support, a frustrating companion app, and a weak microphone, all of which lead us to recommend the Editors’ Choice-winning Edifier D32, which has better sound, multiple audio inputs, and can run on wired or battery power, for the same price. Design: Subtly Elegant
The LG Xboom Bounce diverges from the style of earlier LG Xboom speakers. It still carries some of the red and black accent coloring, but otherwise presents a unique shape and swaps out the all-caps “XBOOM” logo for an all-lowercase “xboom” one. The new design is almost pill-shaped but has a flat top and bottom, giving it much simpler geometry than LG’s older Xboom speakers.
Two metal plates on either side of the front edge give the Xboom Bounce an industrial look. An elastic band that connects the plates and wraps tightly around the back of the speaker acts as a carry handle or can be used to hang it. The speaker is easy to carry even without the handle, as it weighs 2.9 pounds and measures 3.9 by 10.3 by 3.7 inches (HWD). The strap deforms somewhat easily and feels like it’ll show wear and tear long before any other element of the speaker, but at least it’s replaceable. The speaker otherwise feels quite sturdy and has an IP67 rating, so it should survive minor drops, most dust, and significant splashes of water.
The speaker is a composite of several different materials. The top is coated in a soft-touch plastic. The bottom has a removable, ribbed plastic cover that provides access to a replaceable battery, which is novel for a Bluetooth speaker. Two circular rubber feet stand it up and absorb vibrations. A small light-up strip wraps around the entire base of the speaker, though it only illuminates the front edge. Above that, the speaker is covered almost entirely in a textured mesh material. A thin spine at the back of the speaker splits that mesh and houses a USB-C port, the speaker’s sole wired connection.
Two passive radiators sit on either side of the Xboom’s top panel. A row of physical controls is lined up between them. They’re a little hard to see, given they’re black buttons on a black background. They include power, volume, and play/pause controls; a Bluetooth pairing button; a Party Link button; and a small heart-shaped My Button that changes the lighting and summons music from your phone, based on user-assigned settings.
The Xboom Bounce combines a pair of tweeters and a single racetrack woofer. LG, somewhat ambitiously, considers this a 2.1-channel setup. The drivers are tucked safely away behind the front mesh cover. The woofer measures 3.66 by 2.08 inches, but LG doesn’t specify the size of the tweeters, nor does it list the speaker’s frequency range other than to say «20,000Hz.» It supports Bluetooth multipoint, works with both AAC and SBC codecs, and includes a microphone to power speakerphone functionality.
