Teach You How To Choose Wireless Speakers

Tons of speakers already work with Alexa, and even more mobile devices feature Amazon’s digital assistant so you can talk to her on-the-go. But when it comes to solid portable speakers with Alexa built in, the pickings are actually kind of slim.

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Even Amazon’s own portable Echo Tap has a pretty big flaw: You need to actually touch the speaker when you to talk to Alexa, which kind of invalidates the whole point of having a hands-free digital assistant.

GGMM updating its line of wildly popular best bluetooth speakers, Ultimate Ears has blown up the Boom line entirely. The audio company's portable speakers have been redesigned, rebranded—what was once Boom is now Blast—and relaunched with Wi-Fi capability, charging docks, and Amazon Alexa.

The new GGMM E5 wireless speaker looks very much like the radio, the portable speakers that came before them. The app is great and I was very happy with the content in the app, I'm glad it's not a useless settings app taking up space on my phone. There are radio stations, podcasts, device music and also the ability to merge other music services like Spotify. I'm not too thrilled that Amazon is not included, but this review is not soley regarding the app.

Now let's talk about Alexa. We love her and her answers to all our questions. We asked "what is your favorite color?", "what is your favorite song?", "how many stars are in the sky?", we also asked about the weather and traffic in our area. Alexa is so easy to use and has a fun personality. My 8 year old son is in love with this speaker and Alexa. He could easily use the smart speaker without much help from us so we are pleased with that. So this will be our family home speaker.

While the GGMM E5 wireless speaker certainly aren’t expensive, starting at $99 and $129, respectively, the older Bluetooth-M series are some of our favorite portable speakers on the market.

I got the black version with the brown leather strap, and it's a beauty to look at. The slick brown strap over the clean black look of the speaker really works well together. It's not very heavy and it's easy to carry around. I also love the dials on the top to change bass and treble. It would've been easy to make them buttons, but I'm glad they went with dials because they look great and work very well with the design.