Jawbone JAMBOX Wireless Bluetooth Speaker - Grey Hex..
GET Jawbone JAMBOX Wireless Bluetooth Speaker - Grey Hex By JawboneMost helpful customer reviews
1456 of 1510 people found the following review helpful.
Pricey, but impressive bluetooth speaker
By Steeler Nation
I decided to try out this highly rated bluetooth speaker for my iPad and iPhone and was shocked at its ease of use, sound quality, small footprint, portability and long battery life. I liked the choice of colors which makes these small speakers standout and easy to spot. When I first opened the package, I was pleased that the company included several high quality cords including both short and long micro USB cords for recharging and computer synching, charge adapter, and a tangle-free audio cord for non-bluetooth sources. You can create an account on the Jawbone MyTALK site to download voice profiles and apps. In pairing mode, it easily connected with all of our iPads and iPhones. I tested the iPad first with Netflix, Pandora, Hulu+, Air Video Server, and iTunes. Considering that the speaker is only the size of 2 stacked Wii controllers, the sound was surprisingly strong, clear, full-bodied, and free of hisses or pops that I have experienced with other bluetooth speakers and maintained the bluetooth connection without a single drop. Next, I paired both an iPhone 4 and 3Gs and both easily paired with the speaker. I ran Pandora and tested the speakerphone function which worked nicely. You can program a quickdial number that can be immediately dialed by pushing the round botton on the top when paired with a phone. You can download apps for voice commands which I didn't try since I rarely ever use, but the transmission and receiving sound quality is quite good. The next day, I went to work in the operating room and everyone was curious when I pulled out the small speaker and placed my iPhone by its side. There's no need to bring any cords which is the real advantage of using this speaker for true convenient portability. When I started playing my Pandora selections from the iPhone, no one in the O.R. could believe it was coming out of this small speaker. It obviously isn't going to challenge a Bose SoundDock or Dr. Dre Beatbox, but we all had a pleasant day in the operating room doing a full day of cases with great tunes and the speaker lasted the entire day using only 50% of the battery life. At home, I was surprised when my son was playing games on the iPad downstairs and the sound was coming through the Jambox speakers located upstairs with perfect clarity. I researched all of the bluetooth speakers currently available, and this stands out by far. Personally, I prefer using this small speaker which I can pull out of my labcoat, rather than carrying around a large heavy sounddock with cords shoved in a bag. I now leave the sounddock in my office. The only reason I didn't rate this 5-stars is due to the sticker-shocker price which I personally feel is a bit excessive and would be more competitive in the $150 - $170 range. At the $200 pricepoint, most people are audiophiles and will likely make the unfair comparison to larger sounddocks. On the other hand, this is perfect for people like myself willing to sacrifice a bit of room-filling base-rumbling sound for a truly portable wireless speaker with accurate sound reproduction. Overall, I am very pleased with my purchase and will buy another when and if the price drops.
*****update 9/18/2011******
True to my word, when this went on a Gold box deal for $149, I purchased a second speaker for the kids who used them on camping trips to watch movies on their iPads with their friends. I've been using this daily over the past year with only a few minor issues. I am not a big fan of the latest downloaded software update to add "Live Audio" sound processing which really dampens the sound volume too much to be effective and have only noticed a subtle difference for certain music files. I suspect there will be more reviewers who will knock this device due to dissatisifaction with the Live Audio update, but don't realize that this can be simply toggled on/off by depressing and holding the minus and plus buttons together a few seconds. After purchasing a second one for the kids to use with their iPads, I had to change the bluetooth device names to distinguish multiple speakers since it is default set as "JAMBOX by Jawbone." If you have already synced your i"Device" you will notice that it will keep the old name. Simply go to Settings/General/Bluetooth and select the Not Connected icon and select "Forget this device." This will reset the name for the device and you can simply rescan and resync with the speaker to update the name in your bluetooth device list. I don't understand why there are so many poor reviews for syncing problems which I have never experienced using iOS devices. Other reviewers have also recommended the Soundfreaq SFQ-1 which has equal (to my ears, slightly superior to others) bluetooth sound quality and comparable pricing. I like the SoundFreaq, but I still prefer the JAMBOX due to its smaller size and simple rectangular shape which easily fits in my coat pocket for portability. The sound quality coupled with design factor make this a much more flexible purchase. Ignore reviews that make unfair comparisons to larger expensive office/room audiophile speakers which serve different purposes. I use both the Bose SoundDock and Dr. Dre Beatbox and also really enjoyed the inexpensive, but discontinued Griffin Amplfi speaker which all give a wider and fuller sound experience but are all impractical to drag around with you.
*** update 10/10/2011 ***
The new Jambox 2.1 software upgrade has fixed all the problems with the previous LiveAudio upgrade. The new SoundClarity algorithm is really nice and preserves the higher volume levels. I turn the LiveAudio off when we're in the operating room and it gives nice spatial sound and turn it back on when I'm alone in the office for a softer, but improved sound. I've noticed continued bad ratings complaining of frequent bluetooth connection drops. I have 2 Jambox speakers (blue and black) and have used them daily for 10 months with our iPhones, iPads, and recently an Asus Transformer android tablet and honestly have never had a single connection drop. I use the devices to listen to music in the operating room for 8-10 straight hours and we have have never had a dropped connection. I wonder if folks were unlucky to get a bad speaker or perhaps their problems are actually with their media devices that have outdated bluetooth protocols (i.e. non iOS devices).
1467 of 1578 people found the following review helpful.
Battery failed in less than 60 days and manufacturer refuses to honor warranty
By JC Chupack
On 8 Oct 2011, I received a Jawbone Jambox Bluetooth speaker as a gift, which my husband purchased for me on 6 Oct 2011 from Amazon. It was a great product, with good sound clarity. I was very impressed with the speaker's range and capabilities, although I did feel the usability left a few things to be desired. However, I had a problem in that it didn't seem to hold a charge. I contacted Jawbone's support via e-mail (form on their website) on 29 Nov 2011 for assistance. Unlike many other support services, their agent seemed to be truly reading my e-mails and not just scanning for keywords and sending form responses. However, once we got to the point that we determined an RMA was in order, support informed me that they were "out of stock" and couldn't promise when they'd have a replacement unit in stock. They said I could send my unit in but they couldn't tell me when I'd get a replacement. They could not even give me a range, e.g., 4-6 weeks, 2-3 months.
However, at the same time as they were telling me they were out of stock and could make no promises, they were selling my exact model on their website with indication that they are "in stock", so the claims of being out of stock ring false. When I pointed this out to the support representative, he provided no explanation for the discrepancy but instead continued to say they were out of stock. He recommended I continue to "check in with them" periodically to see if a replacement was available. I asked if, per their stated Warranty, if they could offer a refund since a replacement or repair seemed to be unavailable. Unsurprisingly, they declined that option.
This feels to me very much like an attempt to get out of honoring the warranty by putting the consumer off and/or making it so unappealing as to discourage pursuit of the warranty. At best, I suspect that they're simply "out of stock" of replacement units, i.e., re-furbished units, even though the warranty says replacement will be either new or re-furb and not limited to re-furbished units. I don't think that it's honoring the spirit of the warranty to delay replacement on that basis. I further think it's against the spirit if not the actual wording of the warranty to refuse to replace a faulty unit in any way when the unit failed in less than 60 days from the point of purchase. Finally, I think it's beyond the sense of reason to tell a customer with a ~$200 product that is now a paperweight that it's up to them to keep contacting you periodically to find out when the warranty will be honored. Admittedly, I've been lucky enough to not have very many issues requiring warranty service with my other electronics, but when I have, I have never run into this sort of shenanigan.
After this, there is no way I will spend money with them again, and I advise others to do the same. It may be within Jawbone's legal right to handle warranty requests in this way, but I think it shows an unwillingness to stand behind the quality of the product as well as a lack of caring about their customers once the sale is complete. As for my specific situation, I'm basically out of luck. I'm past the return window (30 days) to return it to Amazon. I'm not the only person who has run into this battery issue, and I wouldn't be surprised if that was part of the cause of their "out of stock" issue on replacement units. Buy at your own risk, because you may or may not ever be able to get Jawbone to actually honor their warranty.
Edited 12/3/2012: Jawbone sent a replacement (which seems to be a new unit) on 11/20/2012 (more than a year after this review), which I received on 11/23/2012. So far, it is working fine, and I will update again after a few more weeks with status as to whether it outlasts the previous unit. I posted more details about my email exchange with Jawbone in the comments on this review, but the most notable aspect is that Jawbone claims to have improved their warranty handling but did not make any specific commitments to a) honor warranty requests or b) ensure in-stock units in reasonable timeframes in the future. While my specific issue has been resolved by this replacement, I don't know that I feel right saying that others should feel fine ordering this product given how long it took to get a response and that the response (both below and in the exchanges in the comment thread on this post) was non-committal as far as how other people's issues might be handled.
467 of 519 people found the following review helpful.
WARNING
By Corey Greenberg
(Update 6/7/12: If you want to cut to the chase, I found a much better alternative to the Jawbone. Logitech's Mini Boombox http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005PUZOYM/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&m=ATVPDKIKX0DER. It's a lot better and a lot cheaper than the Jawbone, and several months in it's still working flawlessly. Highly recommended.)
This company should be ashamed of this buggy, defective product and the absolutely useless "customer service" it has in place (and trust me, you WILL be calling customer service if you buy a JAMBOX.)
I purchased a new JAMBOX from Amazon on Tuesday, Feb 7th and received it the next day. As it was supposed to be a Valentine's Day gift for my wife, I unboxed the JAMBOX to set it up for her so she could start using it right away.
Right out of the box, the JAMBOX worked fine. It wasn't as loud as the reviews had led me to expect it to be, but it had good sound quality and was decently loud for such a small powered speaker.
The problems began when I did as the manual recommended and configured the JAMBOX via USB by installing the Jawbone Updater app. This "app" simply launches your web browser and has you set up an account at [...]. at which point your JAMBOX is recognized and updated to the latest firmware. You can also choose a different voice for the device, so it talks back to you in a male or female accent in several different flavors.
The software update went fine, the app told me my unit was fully ups to date and ready to go, and that's when my JAMBOX stopped working entirely and never worked right again.
The JAMBOX wouldn't pair over Bluetooth anymore with a Mac, a Windows 7 laptop, or an iPad. When it did pair, nothing came out of the speaker but loud static. Even when the JAMBOX wasn't paired with anything, it still had a loud static noise.
I Googled the issue and found a ton of people having the same problem, and nobody had found a solution even when dealing with customer service. still, I called customer service anyway to see for myself if these were isolated incidents or not.
The first customer service rep I spoke with was a very young woman with zero knowledge of the JAMBOX and no technical understanding at all. It was very obvious she was reading from a telemarketing response tree screen, and she mispronounced L.E.D. "led" as in "Led Zeppelin". She also gave me bogus info about doing a hard reset, which was refuted by...
The SECOND customer service rep I spoke with. He told me the 1st rep's advice to press the call button six time quickly and then hold on the 7th time was wrong - instead I should turn the device off, then as soon as I turned it on again, quickly press the call button 6 times to do the hard reset.
He actually said, "Yeah, it's really tricky, sometimes it takes 10 tries before the reset works."
TEN TRIES?! What kind of nonsense is this? What company puts a product on the market like this without a simple and solid reset option? $25 WiFi routers have a reset button. But a $200 JAMBOX doesn't? Shameful.
This being the 21st Century, I'm well accustomed to gadgets shipping with little to no quality control or beta testing, and it's understood that I'll have to Google around a bit to find out what how the hive mind has solved whatever lingering issues any new device has. This is the first time I've ever spent an hour Googling a product problem and finding NOT ONE SINGLE SOLUTION AND/OR SATISFIED CUSTOMER. Don't believe me? Check out JAMBOX's own official forum right here: http://forums.jawbone.com/t5/Jawbone-Speakers/ct-p/speakers.
This company spent a ton of money on slick Web videos and buying up all the right gadget reviewers so the JAMBOX would get great buzz. Unfortunately, the JAMBOX itself is a piece of crap. The tech support is non-existent, and even the company's own user forums, where by all rights there should be company representatives answering questions and pointing users toward the right solutions, are only populated by angry buyers like me who feel like suckers for believing the hype about this magical tiny Bluetooth speaker that filled a room with loud, full stereo sound and fit in the palm of your hand.
Maybe you'll read this and write me off, thinking "heh, every gadget has a few angry nuts who just like to complain because they're miserable to begin with", etc. But let me tell you something: I have NEVER written an Amazon negative review before, and I've bought thousands of items here. All kinds of tech products. Never have I felt as wholly scammed by a product and a company as I have with this JAMBOX.
You've been warned. If I can save one person from the crappy afternoon of fruitless troubleshooting I had today, it was worth the time it took to write this.
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