JBL Clip 5 vs. JBL Clip 4: Which one to choose

A good shower speaker is one of those buys that can have a huge impact on your daily life at a minimal cost, at least for me. Even if most flagship smartphones are waterproof enough that you could perch them on a shelf or door to listen to something while you bathe, it is so much nicer to listen to a speaker that you know is safe and can get louder and sound better than your phone.

As always, picking the right speaker for you comes down to balancing price with the features you actually need. Having spent the last few weeks reviewing the JBL Clip 5 and Clip 4, I can confidently say they get the closest to getting the recipe nearly perfect, even while sharing important similarities like their built-in carabiners, IP67 waterproof and dustproof rating, and price. In my book, for your $80, the JBL Clip 5 is the smarter speaker to pick, whether you’re looking to improve your showers or just need a cheap, durable speaker. Here’s why I’d pick the JBL Clip 5 over the JBL Clip 4.

1 The JBL Clip 5 sounds better than the JBL Clip 4

It comes down to power output and EQ

JBL Clip 5

The JBL Clip 5 is a waterproof Bluetooth speaker with a built-in clip, surprisingly rich sound, and support for Auracast.

The JBL Clip 5 has a similar sized dynamic driver to the JBL Clip 4, but a noticeably different power output. The Clip 4’s power is rated at 5W, which was still plenty loud in my experience, but the JBL Clip 5 can reach 7W, which lets it produce audio that I thought sounded fuller and more detailed than its predecessor.

Over the sound of rushing water, that might not make much of a difference, but if you plan on using the JBL Clip 5 anywhere else, particularly if you plan on listening to a lot of music as opposed to just podcasts, I think you’ll appreciate the nuance the Clip 5 is able to reproduce. Besides, it’s ability to connect to the JBL Portable app makes it inherently more customizable than the Clip 5. With EQ presets, you can quickly swap between different sound profiles and there are even fully customizable EQ settings if you want to get more granular.

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2 The JBL Clip 5’s battery life lasts longer

Software can boost it further, too

I’ve found that when you turn either the Clip 5 or 4 off you can stretch its battery life for days. Still, out of the box, the JBL Clip 5’s 12 hours of battery life is longer than the Clip 4’s 10 hours. Beyond that, by enabling a feature called Playtime Boost, you can add an extra three hours of battery life to the Clip 5’s playtime. Audio is played in mono when this feature is enabled, which flattens everything out, but it’s better than nothing.

In the grand scheme of things, the difference of two hours (or five, with software tweaks enabled) might not make all that of a difference to the home-bound listener, but take the Clip 5 to a beach barbecue or on a long hike, and you’ll probably appreciate its extra longevity.

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3 Pairing features make the JBL Clip 5 better in numbers

The speaker gets more useful the more you have

In my experience, if you own one cheap speaker, you likely don’t own multiple, but I understand the appeal of trying to recreate some of the speaker pairing magic of Sonos on a budget. A key differentiator between the Clip 5 and the Clip 4 is its support of stereo pairing through the JBL Portable app, and Auracast, through a dedicated button on the side of the Clip 5.

Stereo pairing is self-explanatory, you connect the two speakers to the app and go from there, but Auracast is a bit more interesting. Auracast is built on the Bluetooth standard, and functions in practice like Bluetooth forwarding. You make sure your Auracast enabled speakers are on, start the music playing on one, press its Auracast button, and then press the Auracast button on the other speakers you want to send audio to, and they should all sync and play your songs, podcasts, or whatever else. It’s a feature that might not be immediately useful, but it gets better the more JBL speakers you buy, not unlike being in the Sonos sytem, which gets more valuable the more Sonos speakers you buy. It’s not as flexible or high quality as Wi-Fi streaming at the moment, but it’s available at a much lower price, which is a nice plus on an $80 speaker.

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The JBL Clip 5 strikes an even better balance between features and price

I didn’t buy a Sonos Roam to have it be a shower speaker, but it became that because of how surprisingly rugged it proved to be. Unfortunately, that hasn’t made me any more comfortable getting it wet. I’d honestly prefer to use something a little more affordable and convenient than a speaker like the Sonos Roam 2.

From what I’ve seen and tested, the JBL Clip 5 fits the bill. Its basic design means that it’s safe to use in the shower, and easy to clip or hang in a variety of places, but more than just that, it sounds good, lasts long on a single charge, and is super simple to add to more elaborate speaker configurations if you really want. You can’t expect miracles from a speaker this cheap or small, but the thing is, even a marginal improvement, even the smallest sliver of extra convenience or fun, can go a long way to improving your life. I think the JBL Clip 5 is perfect for doing just that.

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