JBL Go 3 Review — The Best Waterproof Speaker?

Mark Ellis
ILLUMINATION
Published in
7 min readDec 29, 2020

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Image courtesy of author

It’s a rare occurrence these days when I unearth a product from its packaging and stand back in amazement, but that’s exactly what happened with the JBL Go 3.

This tiny, rugged, waterproof Bluetooth speaker is bloody amazing. And these words come from someone who has experienced the “boundary-pushing computational audio” of the HomePod mini.

Let’s just quickly confirm that for all the computational wizardry that’s going on inside Apple’s diminutive smart home speaker, it just sounds like any small speaker should. It’s ok — completely to be expected.

But the JBL Go 3 is another story — and not just because of how fabulous it sounds. There’s much more to it than that, and, for me, it has filled a significant gap in my life (which I’ll get onto later).

Who is the JBL Go 3 for?

I should start this review by confirming that the JBL Go 3 isn’t a direct competitor for the HomePod mini, Google Nest Audio or any of the Alexa devices. They include a smart assistant and other home-oriented…

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Mark Ellis
ILLUMINATION

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