So the both the JBL Flip 6 And JBL Charge 5 are two great sounding speakers from JBL that both got a significant speaker set up upgrade. Specifically, both the Flip 6 and Charge 5 are now packing dedicated tweeters which helps them with their instrument separation. However, there is a middle child here that we need to address, and that is the JBL Pulse 4. Now the Pulse 4 looks amazing… but definitely don’t pick this speaker up is sound quality is your main concern.
Now regarding pricing, the Flip 6 retails for $130, the Charge 5 retails for $180, and the JBL Pulse 4 now retails for $250… pretty steep if you ask me. Cause when this speaker first came out, it used to retail for $200. But due to inflation… now we are here. Long story short… with the Pulse 4 you are mainly paying for the light feature… but if you want better sound… you defeneitly want to go with either the Flip 6 or Charge 5. Nonetheless, if you want to pick any of these speakers up, they’ll be linked down below.
Now first lets talk about the design of these speakers. Both the Charge 5 and Pulse 4 are mid sized speakers. And transporting either of these speakers isn’t too bad. However, the flip 6 is noticeably smaller than either of these speakers and it also have a built in loop. So with this speaker you can easily hang it to something if you really wanted to… and the Flip 6 fits in your bike’s water bottle holder. Which I know a lot of cyclist like to do. Now even though technically the pulse 4 is easy enough to carry around with you… this isn’t the best speaker to take on the go with you cause of its mostly acrylic body. So you definitely want to be carful about not scratching or cracking this body. Where as with this other two speakers… the have mostly fabric wrapped bodies. So they are going to be able to better stand up to constant abuse. Now even though all of the speakers are technically water proof… personally I would try to avoid getting the Pulse 4 wet… cause this is actually my second pulse 4. My first pulse 4 died of water damage. So overall what I am trying to say here is… both the Flip 6 and Charge 5 are good durable portable speakers… But if you want the most portability then go with the Flip 6, pretty obvious. Where as with the Pulse 4, this speaker is better used strictly as an indoor speaker. Both because of its durability, and speaker set up.
However, one area where the pulse 4 really shines… is its light feature. The Pulse 4 really does have an amazing looking light feature. It is very dynamic and it is very bright. And through JBL’s app you’ve got a few different lighting modes to choose from, you can make your own, and you can even customize the color of you light feature so that it matches the rest of your RGB lights in your room if you’ve got them. Simply put, JBL really kills it when it comes to their light feature. However, if you decide to use this light feature… it will take its toll on the battery life.
Now speaking of battery life… this is another reason why you would mostly want to use the Pulse 4 as an indoor speaker… this speaker does like to live on the charger. Now even though the Pulse 4 has an advertised battery life of 12 hours… personally real world use with this speaker playing at 80% volume, and with the light feature set to 50% brightness… this speaker is really only good for about 6 hours.
And actually… the Pulse 4 has a slightly smaller battery than the one found in the Charge 5. The Pulse 4 has a 7260 Milliamp Hour battery where as the Charge 5 has a 7500 miliamp hour battery. And since the Charge 5 doesn’t have a light feature to power… it has an advertised battery life of 20 hours. And real world use with this speaker playing at 80% volume… the charge 5 is good for about 10 hours of playback time. Not bad at all.
And then, there’s the Flip 6 which has a 48 hundred milliamp hour battery and has an advertised battery life 12 hours. But real world use with this speaker playing at 80% volume its good for about 8 hours of playback time. So again, if you want portability… then both the Flip 6 and Charge 5 are better options because they have better battery lives than the Pulse 4.
Now when it comes to charging the speakers… they all charge via a USB C port as they should. And with both the Flip 6 and Pulse 4… this is the only port that you will find on these speakers. Where as the Charge 5 has a USB A out port so that you can charge your own devices. Now personally I think its great and all that the Charge 5 has this USB A out port… but I think this USB A out port is going to become obsolete in the near future cause most phones these days now come included with USB C cables instead.
And its also very important to keep in mind that you can’t use a wired connection with any of these speakers. None of these speakers have an Audio jack, and the USB C Ports on all of these speakers are strictly used for charging. So you can only use these speakers wirelessly.
Now when it comes to performance, all of these speakers have zero latency across the board when watching movies or videos on your phone whether you’re using an iPhone or an android device. All of these speakers can be connected to 2 devices at the same time which is great if you’re a power user cause you can easily hot swap from one device to another… or this way you and a friend can both be DJ. And when it comes to audio codecs… all of these speakers are strictly using SBC. which is fine… but I do wish JBL would at least move over the AAC.
But now lets talk about actually listening to music with these speakers. Now regarding speaker set ups… the Pulse 4 has the least impressive set up here. The Pulse 4 has a single upward firing transducer… so if you want to get the best sound out of this speaker you do want to use it indoors so that its sound has a ceiling to bounce off of… and the Pulse 4 has a single downward firing passive radiator. And since this radiator bounces its sound off of the table… the pulse 4 has an impressive amount of bass given that it only has on passive radiator. And when it comes to out put… the Pulse 4 is rated at 20 watts. But then there are the Flip 6 and Charge 5 which both have a single frontward firing woofer, a frontward firing tweeter and dual passive radiators that shoot out the sides. Now the Woofer on the Charge 5 rated at 30 watts and the tweeter is rated at 10 watts… where as with the Flip 6… its tweeter is also rated at 10 watts, but its woofer is rated at 20 watts. Nonetheless, both the Flip 6 and Charge 5 have much more impressive speaker set ups than the Pulse 4 which really does help them sound much more open. But let me just show you…
So like you may have just seen… both the Flip 6 and Charge 5 have a woofer which focuses on the mids and they both have a tweeter which focuses on the highs. So this speaker set up does help them sound much more open. Where as with the Pulse 4, since the transducer is doing both the mids and highs… this speaker does sound narrow by comparison. But now we’re going to jump into the sound test. All of these speakers are playing with their stock EQ, both the Charge 5 and Pulse 4 are playing at 70% volume where as the Flip 6 is playing at 81% volume.
So first lets focus on the Pulse 4 cause this speaker sounds and performs very differently than these other two speakers. Like I mentioned earlier, since this speaker has a single upwards firing transducer… the Pulse 4 sounds much more narrow than these other two speakers that have a dedicated tweeter and a dedicated woofer. But also since the Pulse 4 shoots the majority of it sound upwards… if you want to get the best performance out of it, you want to use it indoors so that its sound has a ceiling to bounce off of. But speaker set up aside, But speaker set up aside… the bass on the Pulse 4 can be a little over powering… and the highs are a little too emphasized. Making this speaker sound narrow and nasally. And then there’s max volume… this speaker gets almost as loud as the Flip 6… but for sure, this speaker doesn’t get as loud as the Charge 5. Overall, the Pulse 4 sounds decent and it gets the job done… but if you are getting this speaker… you are mainly getting it cause of its light feature.
But now lets move on to the Charge 5 and Flip 6. From a performance stand point both of JBL’s speakers sound as open and have the same instrument separation as one another… and I can’t stress this enough, they have way better instrument separation than the Pulse 4. However, with the Charge 5, you are going to get noticeably more bass, and its also going to get louder as well. Where as with the Flip 6, I can’t help but feel that this speaker is a little quicker to juice up the highs… so the Flip 6 can at times sound a little brighter, where as the Charge 5 sounds more balanced. Nonetheless, both of these speakers like to put an emphasis on the vocals and the bass comes in hard when it has to. However, with both of these speakers you can now directly customize their EQ to your liking. And this is a pretty big deal cause JBL has taken forever to add an adjustable EQ to their speakers… and this is actually a feature the Charge 5 didn’t launch with initially. So you definitely want to upgrade your firmware. And I wouldn’t be surprised if the Pulse 4 got an adjustable EQ in the future as well. Now personally I like my Charge 5 just the way it is… where as with the Flip 6… I like it with its bass up one click and the treble down one click. But with all of that being said… regarding sound quality, the Charge 5 is the best option here. It has great instrument separation, it has more bass than the Flip 6, and it gets louder. And it now even has an adjustable EQ. The Flip 6 also sounds great, but it doesn’t get as loud and it doesn’t have as much bass. And with this speaker, I really recommend that you go in and lower the treble. But without a doubt, the Flip 6 sounds way better than the Pulse 4. The Pulse 4 sounds good enough to get the job done… but you’re mainly paying for the light feature.
But finally let's talk about paring these speakers up with other speakers. All of these speakers are using JBL’s Partyboost, meaning that you can pair them up to any other JBL Partyboost speakers like lets say a JBL Boombox 2, an Xtreme 3, Charge 5, JBL Flip 5, JBL Flip 6, or to a JBL Pulse 4. And you can pair up to 100 speakers together.
And the fact that JBL decided to use Partyboost on their Flip 6… it is safe to assume that future JBL speakers are also going to use Partyboost. So I don’t think you have to worry about your speakers becoming obsolete all of a sudden like when we went from the Flip 4 to the Flip 5… and JBL decided to introduce a new speaker pairing protocol which wasn’t backwards compatible.
However, it is very important to keep in mind that you can only pair a JBL Partyboost speaker to other JBL Partyboost speakers. You can not pair a JBL Partyboost speaker to any of JBL’s older speakers using JBL Connect Plus. Now I know this sucks… but Partyboost does have better range than JBL Connect Plus.
Also keep in mind, if you want to have left and right stereo sound going on your speakers… you need to have 2 of the same speakers. If you already have a flip 5 and youre thinking about getting a flip 6… you can pair them up and get them to play in sync… but they won’t do left and right stereo. And also keep in mind, you can not pair your smaller Partyboost speakers to any of JBL’s larger Partybox speakers.
So overall, there is some fragmentation to look out for with JBL’s speaker pairing protocol. But nonetheless, JBL’s Partyboost is one of my favorite speaker pairing protocols. Its easy to use, it always works, you’ve got a good amount of speakers to choose from… and for the time being… it looks like JBL is going to continue using Partyboost.
But with all of that being said, both the JBL Charge 5 and Flip 6 are some of my favorite speakers to recommend right now. And it looks like JBL has been listening to the community. Thanks to the new speakers setups found on the Flip 6 and Charge 5, these speakers have better instrument separation and sound more open… and they both now have an adjustable EQ. But obviously, if you decide to go with the Charge 5 you are going to get better sound and better battery life than the Flip 6. However, the flip 6 is more portable. But if you decide to go with either of these speakers… I don’t think that you have to worry about them becoming obsolete in the near future cause it looks like JBL will be sticking to Partyboost for now. And then there’s the Pulse 4… this speaker looks amazing, there is no denying that. However, this speaker just doesn’t sound as good as these other more affordable speakers, And you’re better off using it indoors cause of its speaker set up and its real world battery life isn’t as good… but I mean I can’t blame it cause it has that light feature to power. Overall, for me, the Pulse 4 is hard to justify given these other two options… but if you’re after looks… the Pulse 4 definitely won’t disappoint in that department.