JBL PartyBox Encore Essential Speaker Review

The JBL PartyBox Encore is a portable party speaker with a similar style to other speakers from JBL's PartyBox lineup, like the JBL PartyBox On-The-Go and the JBL PartyBox 110, though it's smaller in size and shaped like a cube. It isn't designed to blend in with your home decor but rather to stand out while you party to your favorite tunes. It rocks JBL's iconic PartyBox RGB light ring surrounding its main driver and comes with a built-in carrying handle atop it to help you bring the party with you wherever you go. It also comes with more party-centric features than other devices like the Tribit StormBox Blast, including a 1/4" input.

The JBL PartyBox Encore is a very portable party speaker. While it's on the heavier side and a little bulky, you can easily carry it in one hand thanks to the built-in carrying handle atop it. You also don't need to keep it connected to a power outlet for it to work since it's battery-powered, which gives you the flexibility to bring the speaker with you wherever the party calls you.

This speaker has the same solid feel as other JBL speakers in the PartyBox lineup and sits on four rubber feet. It's mostly made of rigid plastic with a grille on its front to protect its drivers. There's a robust handle built into its top to help you transport it. With the flap protecting its inputs tightly sealed, it's rated IPX4 for water resistance, meaning it's certified to withstand small splashes of water, so you don't have to worry about it getting a bit wet from some light rain when you bring the party outside. For a better-built JBL speaker, check out the JBL Boombox 3.

It has easy-to-use controls. You double-press its play/pause button to skip tracks and triple-press it to backtrack. There's also a knob around the play/pause button to control its volume, and the RGB light ring adjusts to let you know your chosen volume level. When you max out the volume, the RGB ring flashes and the sound cuts out for a quick second. The speaker chimes and displays a blue indicator light while in Bluetooth pairing mode. There's a battery life indicator light underneath the power button, and the power button itself turns orange when the speaker is off and is charging.

You can also use the Bass Boost button to bump up the bass in your audio. You can set it to two levels: Deep or Punchy. Its indicator light changes shade to inform you of your selected Bass Boost setting. You can use the TWS button to connect the speaker to another PartyBox Encore speaker to create a stereo pair; you can find its instructions here.

• JBL PartyBox Encore Essential
• Power cable
• Quick Start Guide
• Safety Booklet

Its frequency response accuracy is very good. With its Bass Boost feature set to 'Deep', it has a neutral sound profile overall, making it great for listening to a wide variety of audio content. If you're a fan of bass-heavy music, this mighty speaker can also produce quite an extended low-bass for its size, which can get deeper than that of the JBL PartyBox On-The-Go. If you want to pump up the bass even more, you can set its Bass Boost feature to 'Punchy' too. Unlike the PartyBox On-The-Go, it's also compatible with the JBL PartyBox app, which features a graphic EQ you can use to tweak its sound to your liking.

Its soundstage performance is alright. It can play stereo content without downmixing it to mono, so you can hear sound effects and instruments moving from one side of the speaker to the other. For example, if a song has the guitar on the left and the cymbals on the right, you'll hear the guitar coming from the left side of the Encore Essential and the cymbals from the right. However, it has a narrow and directional-sounding soundstage since it only projects audio from the front side of the speaker, as opposed to speakers with 360-degree designs. As a result, your audio sounds slightly different when listening from different angles, like when you're listening from behind the speaker.

The JBL PartyBox Encore has a decent dynamics performance. It gets loud enough to fill large spaces with sound, though it doesn't get quite as loud as the JBL PartyBox 110 and the JBL PartyBox 310. That said, much like the other JBL PartyBox speakers we've tested, it gets a slight performance boost in volume when connected to an outlet. The test results above represent the JBL Encore Essential's dynamics performance while operating on battery power.

Regardless of whether the speaker is running on battery power or not, there's quite a bit of compression present at max volume. This affects the quality of your audio at louder volume levels, so your audio doesn't sound as clear when it's at full volume.

This speaker has a good battery performance. While it's advertised to have a battery life of around six hours, it could reach up to over eight hours in our tests with its RGB lights off and its Bass Boost feature set to 'Deep'. It could also reach a complete charge in under three hours, as opposed to the advertised 3.5 hours, which is also great. That said, battery performance varies depending on your usage habits and chosen settings, like if you have the RGB lights on or off or if you use the speaker to charge devices like your phone. A power-saving feature shuts the speaker off after 20 minutes of inactivity.

Unlike the JBL PartyBox On-The-Go, the JBL PartyBox Encore is compatible with the JBL PartyBox app, so you have access to many features like a graphic EQ to tweak its sound, extra DJ sound effects, light show effects, and karaoke effects. If you're far from the speaker, you can also use the app to set its BassBoost feature to 'Deep' or 'Punchy' instead of setting it manually. You can use the app to connect the speaker to another Encore speaker to create a stereo pair, and you can assign each speaker either the left or right channel. You can also connect it to either a JBL PartyBox 110, JBL PartyBox 310, or a JBL PartyBox 710 to amplify your audio in a party mode, though you can't connect it to more than one speaker at a time. You can find the instructions for connecting it to compatible speakers here.

Aside from its charging port, this speaker comes with an AUX input to wire your devices to the speaker. Like other PartyBox speakers we've tested, it comes with a 1/4" mic input with its very own gain knob, and you can even control its bass, treble, and echo via its companion app. There's also a USB-A port you can use to charge your devices, like your phone, via the speaker. That said, while this USB-A port can't be used to playback audio directly from your devices like your phone or your laptop, you can still use it to playback your audio from a USB stick.

The JBL PartyBox Encore Essential has excellent Bluetooth connectivity. You can pair up to two devices to the speaker simultaneously, which is great if you want to quickly and easily switch between audio sources. It has an outstanding range, so your paired devices remain paired to the speaker even from far away. Also, unlike the JBL PartyBox 110 and the JBL PartyBox On-The-Go, it has low latency with iOS and Android devices, so the audio you hear remains in sync with the visuals you see on your screen when using the speaker to watch videos and movies.