It's about to be IFA, the annual tech conference in Berlin – and that means that we're in the phase where big tech brands are starting to make their early announcements. Case in point: JBL just unveiled a very persuasive little portable Bluetooth speaker to add to its lineup of durable audio options.
The JBL Grip is named very deliberately to evoke its size, since it comes in at around the same size as a large canned drink, and is therefore eminently grippable. It'll cost $99 (with UK pricing unconfirmed but likely to come in at around £90), and should be available to pre-order today ahead of an on-shelf launch on 28 September.
In case it wasn't obvious from the fabric covering and very splashy key art below, you should be able to rely on the Grip when it comes to durability, too. Crucially, it has IP68 water and dust resistance, which is extremely impressive, and means dust is a total non-issue, while it can stay submerged under a metre of water for up to half an hour without any trouble – weatherproof it most definitely is, then.
It's not just a tubular speaker, though, with some ambient lighting tricks up its sleeve too, in the form of a soft strip of light on one side that can be customised in the companion app. It looks like a nice addition, and should be colour-matched to your speaker by default.
The JBL Grip, like many of the best Bluetooth speakers, will live or die by its battery life as well as all of its other features, and it seems very solid at a quoted 12 hours on a single charge. A new setting called "Playtime Boost" will add a further two hours if you use it, apparently by optimising the speaker's audio for the space it detects.
The sound, meanwhile, should come in as more booming than you might think from such a small speaker, given it only weighs 385g, thanks to JBL using its Pro Sound system, although we'll have to hear it to really judge how it performs. If it can be a genuine contender to the excellent Ultimate Ears Wonderboom 4, then it'll be doing very well.
