The JBL Link Music is a brilliant speaker in each design and market positioning. It’s an incredible worth for the one that doesn’t need to pay so much for a good-sounding sensible speaker. Be forewarned, nevertheless; JBL’s app is clunky and startup might be sluggish. Hey: you give, you get.
The Link Music is the entry-level mannequin in JBL’s sensible speaker line, but it surely doesn’t compromise a lot when it comes to sonic efficiency. Especially ripe for placement out within the open, this little factor abides by basic JBL signature sound-shaping: assume heat, shiny and ahead. And it delivers the products in an evenly dispersed 360-degree sample, due to a downward-firing, high-excursion 2.5-inch spherical driver powered by a 20-watt digital amplifier with digital sign processing, and two oval-shaped passive radiators dealing with left and proper.
With only one energetic driver, the speaker’s output is strictly mono. While a combo-punch would most likely sound tremendous, you possibly can’t pair two Links for stereo.
This overview is a part of TechHive’s protection of the best smart speakers, the place you’ll discover critiques of competing merchandise, plus a purchaser’s information to the options it’s best to take into account when purchasing.
The JBL Link Music (left) is about the identical measurement because the lately discontinued Google Home (proper), but it surely sounds considerably higher.
Step again a number of toes from the Link and the sound subject actually opens to fill the room, with particular zing and stability when cranked to a medium-loud degree. The aural presentation isn’t as phat-sounding as a Sonos One or Bose Home Speaker 300, however at lower than half the $200 worth of these rivals, it comes shut sufficient for pleasurable rock, folks, jazz, hip hop, and even hoity-toity classical music leisure.
JBL’s typical midrange bump pushes vocals and throaty brass soloists ahead. Citizen Cope’s rap/rocking political rant “Contact” truly struck residence with higher readability on the Link Music than it did on a Sonos One, and he emoted virtually as articulately on the JBL as on the brighter-barking Bose Home Speaker 300.
Playing the last word (106-track!) Bruce Springsteen live performance set “The Live Series Collection” (newly found on Napster), I used to be struck many times by how a lot I felt (and miss) Clarence Clemons’ in-your-face live performance saxophone wailing. There’s additionally sufficient backside finish extension (right down to 60Hz) in a Link Music to make the room sway on an electro-dance pop thumper like Dua Lipa’s “Hallucinate,” discovered on a Spotify contemporary hits record.
Jonathan Takiff / IDGGet used to utilizing voice instructions, the JBL Link Music has minimal bodily controls.
Now being repeatedly discounted to $79.95 (down from the unique $119.95 MSRP), this mighty mite additionally ticks a bunch of the characteristic containers you could be hoping for in a wise speaker. Connecting wirelessly to a house community by way of dual-band Wi-Fi (802.11ac, however no ethernet port), a JBL Link Music runs on the Google Home platform, takes cues from an iOS 11.0+ or Android OS 5.0+ app, and from Google Assistant-aided voice instructions. So, it’s designed to do much more than pull in music, web radio, information, and podcasts. You also can ask the Google Assistant to serve up a recipe; reply a burning query; or command the lights, thermostats, window shades, and door locks in your sensible residence to do their factor.
The speaker design is non-controversial, mixing in with any décor. It’s a boxy however rounded-at-the-corners enclosure measuring 4.1 inches in diameter by 5.3 inches excessive, wrapped in acoustically impartial black or grey textured speaker fabric. A row of LEDs blink on the entrance if you wake the factor up with a “Hey Google” command Flush plus/minus buttons on the speaker’s rubbery high management the amount, whereas a critical, center-mounted Google Assistant button controls playback and alarms and timers. A rubberized backside saved this factor from creeping throughout the counter even when the Springsteen crew was in soul-shaking, earth-quaking revival mode on “The Detroit Medley” and “Higher and Higher.”
On the bottom, a small panel holds Bluetooth connectivity and microphone on/off switches and the facility line connector, the latter mounted about an inch up from the speaker’s backside. That placement isn’t as clear and neat as an underside energy port could be, however the product designers have managed to pack all {the electrical} guts contained in the Link Music cupboard, so there’s no clunky energy wart cluttering up the opposite finish of the flat line cable the place it plugs into an outlet. Hoping for battery play, too? Uh, not at this worth.
Jonathan Takiff / IDGBetter hope you don’t have to mute the JBL Link Music’s mics in a rush, that button is on the again of the unit.
The Google Home app have to be put in and an account arrange in your smartphone or pill to get the present going. You’ll even be requested kindly to murmur a number of phrases into the speaker’s two top-mounted pinhole microphones, so the Link Music can thereafter perceive and reply to you personally. Up to 6 person voices might be individually registered. If you’ve already performed this with different Google Assistant sensible audio system, you gained’t have to repeat your self. Despite its Bluetooth connectivity, the Link Music doesn’t have speakerphone capabilities.
Beside music-playing duties, Google Home additionally recognized and sought to attach the Link Music speaker to appropriate gadgets it noticed on my residence community (kinda creepy), together with a Schlage sensible door lock and a Honeywell sensible thermostat. Once performed, it’s ripe and able to deal with a “wake up” or “I’m home” mission, with preset (or person personalized) command strings that, say, light-up Philips Hue bulbs in addition to turning on the radio information. Parental controls can be imposed—routinely shutting off the sound—when it acknowledges youngsters’ voices asking for the flawed stuff.
With such range of goal comes some app roughness and person confusion in operation of the core music-serving chores.
Jonathan Takiff / IDGThe JBL Link Music delivered a pointed Citizen Cope missive with higher readability than the Sonos One it competes with.
Yes, it’s attainable to create a house community of identical platform audio system from completely different makers. I additionally had a similarly-sized however sonically inferior (and now discontinued) Google Home and a much bigger however much less feature-packed JBL Link 300 at play in a multi-room take a look at with the Link Music. But setting this up was a balky course of that took a number of tries to create a speaker group that may then collectively fire-up with a easy voice or tapped command.
I’ve additionally discovered that these audio system go critically to sleep. On startup, it might take so long as three minutes earlier than all three audio system had been acknowledged and accessible on the app display, with the Google Assistant apologizing “Hmmm… Something went wrong. Try again in a few seconds.” (At least the platform acknowledged a malfunction and proactively fastened it.)
In my crowded residence Wi-Fi surroundings, the JBL Link Music additionally suffered typically at start-up from a ghosts-in-the-machine sputtering noise that would final from a number of seconds to even a full track. This sign interference drawback was extra prevalent when trying a multi-speaker group stream. Restarting and limiting the present to simply the JBL Link Music speaker righted the playback of Bob Dylan’s aptly named new “Rough and Rowdy Ways,” set on Google Play Music. I’m considering two or extra matched Link Music audio system would most likely handshake and cooperate higher than a rag-tag assemblage of latest and outdated audio system.
JBLJBL Link Music sounds amazingly good for its sale worth.
When the celebs aligned, the Link Music did bear in mind kindly how I’d beforehand been working this system: Returning to a pre-selected speaker group and music, and taking part in in good synch with audio system in adjoining rooms or perhaps a ground or two away.
More of a pisser is the shortage of an easy-access menu within the Google Home app for looking, discovering, and deciding on music content material, as I’ve discovered to depend on within the obsessively entertainment-focused apps for Sonos and Bose sensible audio system.
That’s much less of an issue when you realize what you need to hear and have subscriptions to the suitable companies. A Link Music speaker permits you to verbally name out requests to free and paid variations of Google Play Music, YouTube Music, Spotify, and Pandora, plus the subscription-based Deezer, SiriusXM, and Apple Music.
Tune-In is the default aggregator/search engine totally free web radio stations on the Link Music speaker (don’t miss our complete guide to internet radio), and it labored much more precisely with Google Voice Assistant than Alexa has (on different audio system) at comprehending my Philly-accented requests.
Several different music companies I get pleasure from weren’t selectable via Google Home: Amazon Music, Napster, Qobuz, and Tidal. But these I can remotely browse, choose, and stream to the JBL speaker from my smartphone utilizing Chromecast, Apple AirPlay 2, Bluetooth 4.2. I had the most effective expertise with Chromecast, which—fact be advised—is de facto fetching and casting the chosen content material from the cloud, quite than from the person’s telephone.
So yeah, I had some issues with the JBL Link Music sensible speaker, although some had been of my very own making—as a result of I’ve discovered to demand so much from much more polished, expensive, fastidiously built-in multi-room sensible speaker methods. With expectations extra modest, the littlest Link ought to hold you very entertained.