The Special Occasion Speaker I Ended Up Using Every Day

Last summer, I was given a JBL Go 3 Bluetooth speaker as a gift. My plan was to use it while swimming — perfect for listening to summer baseball. It’s really a delightful, tiny speaker for that, but not only that, which is good since the weather here in Missouri just doesn’t grant that many suitable days for swimming.

If I add up the number of days I actually get to go swimming in a given summer (not that many) and the rest of the year (that’d be zero), the Go looked destined to collect dust most of the time. Not that I’m one to look a gift speaker in the mouth — I really appreciated it — but I did feel bad as I carried it in after what clearly seemed to be (and was) the last swimmable day of the year.

Whether you’ve looked at a speaker like the JBL Go for swimming, camping or other “go-ing,” for most of us, that means buying something frivolous.

Which isn’t to speak poorly of the Go itself. It’s an impressively clear, bass-y and loud speaker for its diminutive size. Looking at how small it is, I might have doubted you could even hear its output across a pool, but this little speaker should be loud enough for most small gatherings and outdoor activities.

The “activity” part of “activity speaker” is earned by way of the IP67 weather sealing. That should prevent outdoor particulates and dust from getting into it at all and even an accidental drop into up to a meter of water should be survivable. (No, I didn’t test that.) That’s almost as good as my iPhone itself (IP68). The buttons are rubberized and easy to operate by feel while the case is a very pleasant woven material that doesn’t seem to mind getting wet at all.

The Go 3 pairs quickly via Bluetooth and its dedicated Bluetooth button is easy to find when you want to switch what it is paired to. A distinctive set of tones play on power on, Bluetooth connection/disconnection and power off, convenient for knowing what the speaker is doing without looking at it.

In all, it is a good portable Bluetooth speaker. It easily meets or surpasses its 5 hours of promised battery life even at maximum volume and works fine off any USB-C cable while it charges. (The battery life is good enough, compared to frequent disappointments on such, that I was surprised the spec only says 5 hours.)

But, again, how often do I need an “activity speaker”? For most of this past winter, it sat on a shelf unused. And then, one day, my shower radio died. As I headed to the shower after a hard day, I walked by the speaker and the lightbulb appeared: “that would do an awfully good job of letting me listen to a podcast…” and, well, I was right.

My shower head is rather obnoxiously loud. While I can hear my iPhone while in the shower, I’ll miss softer, nuanced parts of a recording while the water is flowing. But, the Go 3 has no trouble overpowering that, whether playing a podcast or streaming the local radio station that carries Cardinal baseball via Siri’s iHeartRadio support.

(The Go sadly does not fix my team’s abysmal summer record.)

I went from maybe hoping to get a handful of days of usage out of the speaker each year to using it every day. And, I haven’t bothered looking for a replacement shower radio, because I realized just how tired I was of all the advertising I was listening to previously.

Thanks to the waterproofing, there’s no worry about the occasional splash or humidity. Thanks to the battery life, I can put it closer to the shower than the power outlet. And thanks to its volume, I actually get to enjoy whatever I’m listening to.

The only downside to the Go 3 as a shower speaker is its notable bass. While it does have a rubberized bottom, it has vibrated its way across the counter and into the sink more than once. Easily fixable by setting it on something even more rubbery, like a coaster, or wedging it in, but worth keeping in mind.

Is this what JBL had in mind with the Go 3? Based on the marketing materials, no. But I’d seen enough complaints about various shower speakers, I’d never attempted to get one. Turns out an “activity speaker” is just the ticket.