Ultimate Ears has a new entry level speaker in its lineup: the $99 UE Wonderboom, and it’s an adorable little fellow that replaces the UE Roll as the cheapest Ultimate Ears speaker.
The Wonderboom ditches the flying saucer form factor of its predecessor and instead looks like a shorter version of its UE Boom 2 and MegaBoom siblings, allowing it to offer a similar 360 degrees of sound. The Wonderboom is also a bit thicker than the Boom 2 — think around half a MegaBoom — in order to offer more internal space for the acoustic design.
Photo by James Bareham / The Verge
Size aside, the Wonderboom fits right in with Ultimate Ears’ other speakers, with a variety of colorful acoustic fabric options, big rubberized plus and minus buttons for controlling volume, and an IPX7 waterproof rating. The end result is an an almost spherical version of the other UE speakers that just feels really good to hold in your hand, like a baseball.
The Wonderboom also has a few extra touches that bring some small but significant quality of life changes to the brand. In addition to a power and Bluetooth pairing button, the Wonderboom finally a third “UE” button that can be used to play, pause, and skip tracks on a connected device. That UE button can also be used to pair up multiple Wonderbooms without requiring the use of a companion smartphone app. And like the Roll, the Wonderboom has a small bungie cord for hanging it from things, and can float in water.