Reviews for JBL Portable

So many issues getting 2 speakers to connect and play. My neighbor has the same speaker. I paused my music to take a call on another phone..and my speakers pick up the neighbors music. Seems like a total lack of security in this software. Then I have to spend 10 minutes trying to reconnect them to my phone. The speakers are great. THIS APP SUCKS.

So far, I've owned my speaker for 1.5 weeks and the app has successfully found it 1/3 of the time I try to connect. I've had to go through the entire Bluetooth discovery mode twice to connect to the app so I can edit my custom equalizer. Which can't be changed any other way!? Connection to my phone for Bluetooth play is not an issue at all, just the app connection. 👎👎 Won't go past the "searching for product" stage.

Stereo mode is almost useless. There NEEDS to be an option to default to stereo mode when it sees 2 speakers. It keeps dropping back to party mode with no notice. And just getting it into stereo mode to begin with is a horrible experience. Update: Now it apparently doesn't support my original JBL Charge anymore. Really?! I don't know why but my media player keeps pausing, and I can only assume its because the connection between my original Charge and my phone is breaking or something. My 2 JBL Charge 4's seem to work fine. Still very difficult to get them into stereo mode. With the previous version, you could just wait until you saw the battery level of both speakers, then stereo would work. They've now removed the battery indicator on the non-primary speaker so you just have to wait and guess when it's been enough time to query the other speaker. This app deserves negative stars!

I Love jbl speakers! But when I connect two of the pulse 4. The app hardly works, and I cant change the color of more then one at a time, witch is really annoying, and I have to disconnect and reconnect. It takes a lot of fiddling. I was almost better just getting one pulse 4. Would also be nice to be able to turn them on and off from the app. Jbl is great at making speakers.... just not apps so much. ☹

Even with the addition of the EQ, the app is still essentially useless. There are several other 3rd party equalizers that I'll always choose over the one available here. Recently it's stopped functioning altogether- I can't connect my device at all. Attempting to connect in the app causes my flip 6 to turn off completely. I can connect to Bluetooth normally, just unable to connect to the app. I've tried several things to fix the problem, without any success.

I wish I had read the reviews, before wasting money on a second JBL flip5. I was so excited at the sound with one, that when I saw you could link 2 for stereo, I ordered a second. Little did I know that the app is useless, and works about once in every 5 tries. It has to be uninstalled, and reinstalled constantly, and even then the stereo option came up only once for me. Yes, party boost mode works, but that's not the point. Really frustrated at how junky the app is, compared to the product.

I left a one-star review before after spending at least a half an hour not getting anything to work. And then I tried one more time after leaving the review, and the app finally connected. It still took a couple of tries to get the firmware upgrade to take, but it worked. Not fun. Not intuitive. But I'm doing this because the Bluetooth has been disconnecting frequently. I've only had this 3 years so I hope it's not at the end of life already.

Charge 4 is okay. The app is trash. It looks nice, but rarely recognizes my speaker EVEN WHEN IT'S CONNECTED AND PLAYING. When it does work, there's basically no worthwhile function. You can set up stereo or party mode if you have multiple JBL BL 4/LE devices, and you can theoretically update firmware. The 3.0 firmware upgrade doesn't always show as an option, and has never completed. There is no equalization in the app to deal with the over amped bass and poor mids. Feel like I wasted my money.

Works ok, mostly. Can't find any instructions so have to figure things out. I wanted to use my try new Xtreme 2's for L/R stereo and it took a minute to figure it out. Should be straight forward. Works most of the time but lots of interference and the right channel is constantly cutting in and out. Seems like it needs some work to be good. I'll probably return one of the speakers because of this. No point having both speakers if stereo is spotty half the time. The speaker themselves sound good.

Stereo mode is extremely buggy. Despite saying that it saves your configuration, it never does, always leaving me to reconfigure my speakers every time I turn them on. It wouldn't be as big a deal if they weren't misleading with their information on the app. A shame, because their speakers are really quality. I wish more companies could match their good hardware with equally as good software.

Overall, pretty good with a few glitches. I have about 8 compatible speakers, so the party feature is a real party for me. The party feature goes out occasionally and sometimes the app can't find the speakers, even though they're connected to Bluetooth. It also let's you add firmware. JBL switched to a new firmware that's not available on older units, not cool. That will make me wary on future JBL products.

Useless - fortunately the speakers connect without the app. This app is supposed to enable stereo mode, but almost never detects the speakers successfully. I've had for almost a year, stereo mode successfully enabled twice. Sounds great when it manages to work. Speakers will randomly turn off on occasion during playback, but I think thats the Flip 5's and not this app. They sound good, but one may want to avoid this product entirely.

Angry. I was already annoyed at the color options to begin with on this speaker compared to my pulse 2, as they were limited. The rain option is gone, and campfire really is bad too. Now you've taken away the color wheel AND my ability to use the camera to customize colors (which was already way better on the pulse 2). I'm disgusted, I could have gotten a regular speaker for cheaper without lights. It's pointless now. I'm also mad you've taken away features I've already spent too much $ on.

Does not work. Android phone via Bluetooth works perfectly without the app. I'm still wondering what the app is even for. Will day this, I have a Go3 and that did not show up on the options list when the app asked what product to contact to. If that were actually the issue, that would be an additional concern that they don't even update their own lists for their own products. Uninstalled, easy decision.

App SUCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I had purchased a second Clip 5 and was looking forward to playing music in Stereo with both speakers. I got them to stereo connect, then did the update (because it stated that I could make a stereo connection permanent). After the update, it wouldn't pair up and said I needed to update the software. When I looked at the software, it said that it was up to date. Apparently the app and the devices don't work after updates. Hope I can get my money back.

It's useful only when using a speaker to listen to music. Otherwise, it's not very useful. Kinda obvious, I know, but the app uses quite a bit of storage for something I only use a couple of times a day at most. I haven't tried the group speaker stuff yet so I can comment on that. The EQ customization sounds good but I'm sadly not very good with it so I'm sure it sounds better when I don't meddle with it.

Garbage. Won't connect to my Flip 6 even after doing ALL the suggested "fixes" like three different times, and with the speaker connected to my bluetooth. Beyond frustrating. I wasn't a fan of the speaker to begin with, but I read that the app would give me some control over the sound so I wanted to try it out before I make the decision to return it. Very disappointed.

Having been reluctantly forced to abandon my quarter+ century-old frankensteined portable discman with jury-rigged speakers arrangement after it gave up the ghost, and since nobody manufactures boom-boxes anymore, I instead decided upon a slightly smaller, wireless contraption and subsequently purchased a JBL Clip5. Nice sound, deep and rich. And, as long as I remember to charge it, usually lasts 6-8hrs at medium volume. Doesn't like to charge well on anything other than what came in the box.

The app is useless. It couldn't find my JBL Go 4 even though it was connected to my Bluetooth with the music playing. I gave the app permission to discover nearby devices and everything that's needed. Went through the steps of disconnecting, unpairing, forgetting the device, and then reconnecting, but still nothing. I expected more from such a well-known brand to be able to connect with their own devices through a Samsung S23 phone. No reason at all not to work properly. I'm tech-savvy, too.

I love the app ! Been using it for a couple years now and never had any problems with the app until recently I can't seem to get the EQ to work right. I've tried clearing the cache, restarting my phone and Bluetooth speaker and uninstalling and reinstalling it again and it still isn't working right. I really am upset about it too ! Maybe I can try getting ahold of the JBL administration and they can help because I give up !!!