LG makes some of the best Bluetooth speakers for sound quality and durability, but competition is tough right now, with a wide variety of choices from top brands, including Bose, JBL, and Sonos.
So what better way to help its products stand out than by bringing in the expertise of a Grammy award-winning musician, rapper, and record producer? The 2025 LG Xboom series was developed with the assistance of will. i.am, who contributed to creating the system sounds and, most importantly, tuning the audio.
The Xboom Bounce was launched alongside the Xboom Grab and the Xboom Stage 301. It sits between the two as a mid–sized portable speaker featuring dual passive radiators that literally “bounce” as the music plays. It’s loud, sturdy, and uses AI to cleverly optimise and enhance the audio.
I’ve tested countless portable Bluetooth speakers, and I continue to use the LG Xboom Bounce regularly, especially for hosting parties in my garden. Here’s why.
What's new?
The LG Xboom Bounce is a brand-new device for 2025, launched alongside two other devices: the Xboom Grab and the Xboom Stage 301.
It's a lot bigger and more powerful than the Xboom Grab, so will be better for parties. But it's a lot smaller and more portable than the Stage 301, which is more like a PA system that's made to stay at home.
How much does the LG xboom Bounce cost?
Available to buy now from the LG online store, the Xboom Bounce will set you back £169.98 in the UK and $199.99 in the US.
Design & Features
The Bounce boasts a unique design, echoing old-school boomboxes in a more compact and modern form. It has a pill-shaped profile from above, but sits like a brick on a table.
The speaker is jet black, featuring a silver Xboom logo across the front, outlined in red to coordinate with the diaphragms on top. Brushed metal plates on the front hold the strap, complemented by an LED light strip along the bottom edge, and a USB-C port on the back.
While fully portable, it is a bit too big to carry around all the time. It’s more suited for taking with you in the car or using in the garden than for stowing in a backpack. An elastic strap makes it easier to carry, or you can use it to hang the speaker, perhaps on a branch in the park or on the inside of a tent.
The Bounce offers an impressive 30 hours of battery life, easily lasting a full day or even a weekend away. Once the battery runs out, it takes about 3 hours to reach a full charge again.
If you plan to use it outside, you’ll be pleased to know that it can survive everything from pouring rain, salt water and dirt, to high temperatures, heavy vibrations and impacts. In fact, it passed testing to U.S. military standards, and it has an IP67 water and dust resistance rating. Naturally, I didn’t test throwing it out the window or chucking it in the sea myself, but the build certainly feels robust and long-lasting.
Several buttons are integrated into the top panel, allowing you to control the music without unlocking your phone. These include a power button, volume controls, a pause/play button, a Bluetooth button, an Auracast button, and the MY heart-shaped button that provides quick access to playlists on the LG ThinQ app or Apple Music (it's limited to these two apps, though).
The light strip adds an attractive extra feature, casting light outward into the room. It serves practical purposes, such as indicating when the speaker is in Bluetooth mode, while also adding flair to the design. You can set it to illuminate in various colours and types of motion, including wave, slide, or flickering, among others. Alternatively, you can have the light dance to the music using the AI Lighting settings.
To make the most of the speaker, you need to download the LG ThinQ app on your iOS or Android smartphone. Through the app, you can program the MY button, update the speaker’s software, adjust the light settings, switch between sound modes, view battery percentage, set up AI calibration, establish sleep timers, and more.
Performance
If you’re looking for big sound, the LG Xboom Bounce delivers. The volume can be adjusted on a scale of 1 to 30 in the app or with the buttons on the top panel. For blasting music on my own, I set it to 11 – and that was plenty. Even 20 was loud enough to be heard over a group of people, so 30 will easily kick off a party.
Thanks to its “bouncing” dual passive radiators, the audio delivery is incredibly immersive and vibrant, filling every corner of the room with strong bass, crisp treble, and a distinct mid-range. When I started using the Bounce as my everyday speaker, I had just come from its smaller sibling, the Xboom Grab. The difference in bass performance is huge, but even with that power, it doesn’t overwhelm the sound.
Listening to something upbeat, like adore u by Fred again.., the speaker balances the rhythmic house beats with pulsating synths and layered vocals, ensuring that no element overshadows another. Switching to something more soulful, like Love & Hate by Michael Kiwanuka, the vocals sound warm and expressive, building slowly throughout the track on a foundation of drums, bass guitar, and strings, all clearly audible.
The app features several preset sound modes, including Standard, Bass Boost, Voice Enhance, and Custom settings, which you can create using a six-band equaliser. However, I mostly used the AI Sound mode during my testing. It analyses each song you play and optimises it for the best listening experience. The difference is quite noticeable when compared to the other presets, offering much more depth.
To get the very best listening experience, it’s worth running AI calibration. It analyses the space the speaker is placed in and adjusts its audio settings accordingly. Each time you move the device, however, you will need to run this process again – because, unfortunately, it's not automatic. But it’s still a worthwhile feature.
If, for some reason, the Xboom Bounce isn’t loud enough for you, it has Auracast, allowing you to connect it to other compatible Xboom speakers in stereo. I can’t see many situations you would realistically need that much volume, but it’s great that the option is there – and it’s easily accessible simply by pressing the Auracast button on the top panel.
LG xboom Bounce review: Verdict
The LG Xboom Bounce is a powerful party speaker with a strong bass and an impressive AI Sound mode that optimises the audio depending on what you’re listening to. The AI calibration then adjusts it for the device’s positioning, although it’s a shame that doesn't happen automatically, because you’ll need to remember to run it every time you move the speaker.
The design of the device is, in my opinion, pretty great. It’s big, but that allows for its huge sound. It’s perfectly suited to outside parties because the sound carries so well, and it’s built to survive everything from rain and wind to sand and heat. The strap is a nice touch, and the lights make it look a little more interesting than other options.
Also consider
There are plenty of very effective, larger-scale portable Bluetooth speakers available. An obvious competitor to the Xboom Bounce is the Bose Soundlink Max, which has a bassy, energetic sound performance. Unlike LG’s device, it doesn’t have a microphone to take calls or speak to your smartphone’s voice assistant, and there’s also no AI optimisation for the sound. Still, it’s a top performer for audio quality.
Another portable party speaker worth considering is the JBL Xtreme 4. As the name suggests, it’s a robust piece of kit. JBL is known for its punchy audio delivery, and the Xtreme 4 lives up to that, but it adds in AI Sound Boost to ensure you don’t lose out on detail when you dial the volume up. Its battery lasts up to 24 hours of music, so less than the Xboom Bounce, but still plenty for most scenarios.
