You are now subscribed
Your newsletter sign-up was successful
Want to add more newsletters?
Every Friday
Louder
Louder’s weekly newsletter is jam-packed with the team’s personal highlights from the last seven days, including features, breaking news, reviews and tons of juicy exclusives from the world of alternative music.
Every Friday
Classic Rock
The Classic Rock newsletter is an essential read for the discerning rock fan. Every week we bring you the news, reviews and the very best features and interviews from our extensive archive. Written by rock fans for rock fans.
Every Friday
Metal Hammer
For the last four decades Metal Hammer has been the world’s greatest metal magazine. Created by metalheads for metalheads, ‘Hammer takes you behind the scenes, closer to the action, and nearer to the bands that you love the most.
Every Friday
Prog
The Prog newsletter brings you the very best of Prog Magazine and our website, every Friday. We'll deliver you the very latest news from the Prog universe, informative features and archive material from Prog’s impressive vault.
Let's be completely honest here: Rock and metal are two genres that sound their very best when played loud. How loud? Well, as loud as your neighbours, landlord or significant other can cope with.
It really doesn’t take a volume junkie to know that good music sounds better when cranked up. All the better, too, if you can blast it with all the modern convenience of wireless technology. What’s the point of having a stacked playlist of chuggers if you can’t recreate that famous Maxell advert, where the guy in the armchair is blasted facewards with pure and righteous noise?
Loudness is a powerful thing to wield, whether you’re in need of some pummelling ‘audio therapy’ or simply need the wattage to fill the room at your next shindig. But not every Bluetooth speaker is built alike. Quite simply, some are just better at being louder, whether small portables with a disproportionate bark or large party speaker systems loud enough to wake the neighbourhood. And where better to find out about all this stuff than right here? Louder is in the name, after all, and this time, ‘loudest’ is very much the game.
In this round-up of the loudest Bluetooth speakers going, you’ll find winners in every category, but if you want my top pick, I've given that to the SounndBoks 4 – a supremely adaptive high-watt party speaker that delivers where it counts.
For more information on loudness, how it’s achieved and how to pick the right Bluetooth speakers for your own needs, you'll find my FAQ section further down the guide.
Loudest Bluetooth speakers: Quick list
Marshall’s Bromley 750 is a 500-watt powerhouse of a party speaker, with a shedload of connectivity options besides the expected Bluetooth. There’s physical knobs and buttons for all the key controls (including, as a nice touch, tone controls a la actual Marshall guitar amps), and even wheels and a handle for easy moving-around. It’s a biggie.
For a huge sound from a small form, the JBL Boombox 4 fits the bill perfectly. It has a 28-hour battery and a 34-hour “playtime boost” mode for improved longevity over its predecessor – all while being louder than ever with its new driver array. Available in a variety of colours, the JBL Boombox 4 is an easy recommend for those looking to take the big sounds with them.
Former holder of the top spot in this very guide, this fourth-gen SoundBoks party speaker delivers thunderous sound – more than enough for your next function. You'll get up to 40 hours of music from a full charge, and it's dust and rain-proof too boot. The grill even pops off so you can paint it in any style you like for a nice customisation option!
Marshall’s Woburn III is a pint-sized performer and one of my favourites for indoor use, thanks to its balanced performance, ease of use and surprising capacity for producing earth-shattering sound. It’s an all-round excellent Bluetooth speaker, with a 24-hour battery life and even a HDMI-ARC input for using as a living-room soundbar (or should it be soundbox?).
Anker’s Soundcore Boom 2 is a party speaker on the smaller side, but with no shortage of bass output. Much of its prodigious output is given to its subwoofer, and a dedicated Bass-Up 2.0 mode unlocks an extra 20W of juice for pumping out the riffs. One for the heavy bass fans.
The Sonos Move 2 is every bit an improvement on the Sonos formula. It brings stereo soundscapery to a monolithic box, and some considerable volume too; use this on its own and be surprised by its bark, or pair it with a wider Sonos system for massive volume.
Best overall
✅ Buy if you want a floor-filler: The Bromley 750 is hugely powerful and endlessly connect-to-able; switch seamlessly from Bluetooth to DJ decks and back again for a rock-party fave.
❌ Avoid if you've got back issues: At just under 24kg, the Bromley 750 is anything but light.
Sound: ★★★★★
Battery: ★★★★★
Build quality: ★★★★★
Overall: ★★★★★
Marshall is a formidable player in the world of loud, as evidenced by its long career serving the needs of our brightest and best rock'n'rollers. Here, its consumer hi-fi division aims to truck in exactly that reputation – with a 500W party Marshall speaker that absolutely bringz the noize.
The Bromley 750 takes after the taller amp designs of Marshalls gone by, and with the same rugged versatility. All the controls are accessible by a top rack of knobs and buttons, and a replaceable battery pack is easily accessed on the rear (as are a whole host of analogue inputs besides the obligatory Bluetooth 5.3 connectivity).
Amp-y as it looks, the Bromley 750 actually disperses sound in all directions, thanks to clever speaker placement; put this in the middle of the pit and no one will be disappointed.
I’m a big fan of its connectivity, and also of the on-board EQ controls that ape the tone stacks of real-deal Marshall instrument amps. I’m also a big fan of the fact it has wheels and a telescopic handle built-in, particularly for its considerable heft. There’s no bones about it: the Marshall Bromley 750 is a heavy-hitter.
Best portable
✅ Buy if you want a big-sounding, waterproof speaker: This is made to be taken with you wherever you go and with 24 hours of battery and completely waterproof, it's a top option.
❌ Avoid if you're after something you're planning on using indoors: The design might be a bit old school for some tastes and won't suit all interior spaces.
Sound: ★★★★★
Battery: ★★★★★
Build quality: ★★★★★
Overall: ★★★★★
JBL is king of the castle when it comes to portable party speakers, and its Boombox series has been holding that particular fort for a while. With the arrival of the Boombox 4, it’s easy to see why – and also hard to believe the prior iterations were ever enough.
The JBL Boombox 4 is, in a word, louder. The Boombox 3, which used to hold this very position in my previous round-up, was plenty loud – but the Boombox 4 comes with two beefy new woofers, 50% more wattage and a considerably more output volume than its predecessor. It’s impressive stuff. That extra volume is a godsend for the better-attended of your shindigs, too, in that it increases headroom, making for a much cleaner reproduction of sound.
The only thing ostensibly missing from the Boombox 4 is a good old-fashioned 3.5mm aux port, but even on this front JBL has you covered. The Boombox 4 supports USB-C audio in, meaning you can stick a dongle in there for analogue action or even just straight-up connect a laptop for endless playlisting. And if you’re keeping it wireless, there is of course the same Bluetooth connectivity. Boom!
Best for parties
✅ Buy if you want a rugged, all-weather PA-style speaker: With up to 126dB of earth-shaking audio and IP65 weatherproofing, these SoundBoks truly deliver.
❌ Avoid if you're after multi-directional sound: These are more directional than other speakers on the market; if you want to put them in the middle of the action, you may want to look elsewhere.
Sound: ★★★★½
Battery: ★★★★★
Build quality: ★★★★★
Overall: ★★★★★
The fourth generation of SoundBoks' huge-sounding speaker range delivers yet another sonic assault on the senses. It delivers a whopping 126dB of sound, which is delivered thanks to two 10-inch 96dB woofers and a 104dB compression driver tweeter. In other words, it’s loud. Indeed, it at one point held the title of Best Overall right here in this list – usurped only by the incredible versatility of the Marshall Bromley that took its place.
The SoundBoks 4 retains the excellent 40 hours of battery from previous generations when played at mid-volume, with a playback time of 6 hours when cranked to the max. It can be connected to your smartphone or tablet through Bluetooth 5.0, but it also has dual-XLR/TRS inputs for the more pro PA-style setups.
It still wins over other contestants for the loudest Bluetooth speaker, too – particularly when it comes to build. Though still a heavy thing to lug around as it weighs in at a considerable 35.5 pounds, it’s nearly half the weight of similarly-specced speakers – and features IP65 weatherproofing too, so it’ll cope better with rain and dust than the competition. It also hooks up to the SoundBoks app where you can tweak EQ settings, add a personal pin number to protect your speaker and update firmware.
Best for home
✅ Buy if you're a Marshall fan looking for a powerful home speaker: All Marshall speakers look the business, but the Woburn III is our pick if you want your lounge LOUD!
❌ Avoid if you're after a portable solution: The Woburn III is strictly for indoor use only.
Sound: ★★★★★
Battery: ★★★★½
Build quality: ★★★★★
Overall: ★★★★★
Marshall is quite simply killing it on the Bluetooth speaker front. The more recent Bromley 750 is in our top spot, but the Woburn III is a phenomenal speaker for indoor listening – not in the least due to the surprising amount of power packed in its princely form.
The third generation of Woburn speaker offers a brilliantly robust sound and has been built to sustain clear, low frequencies thanks to its 90W Class D amplifier for the woofer, alongside a total of four 15W Class D amps for the mids and tweeters.
Although the Marshall Woburn III Bluetooth speaker is low fuss, it is high maintenance considering it's not waterproof, dirt-proof, beer-proof… so keep this inside and away from spillage. All that said, I thoroughly enjoyed my time reviewing it.
"Marshall’s third generation of Woburn Bluetooth speaker is an excellent piece of kit, combining beautifully sharp, detailed and balanced audio with room-filling sound - even with the volume down a notch or two. A serious speaker that comes with Louder’s seal of approval."
Read our full Marshall Woburn III review
Best heavy bass
✅ Buy if you're looking for extra bass: This another excellent portable speaker and comes highly recommended if you're after some beefy bass.
❌ Avoid if bass isn't quite your thing: Some people just don't dig heavy bass and if that rings true for you, this isn't the speaker for you.
Sound: ★★★★½
Battery: ★★★★
Build quality: ★★★★
Overall: ★★★★
Soundcore may be better known to you by its parent company, Anker – an Amazon-shopfront fave in the world of charging cables, battery packs and other such consumer-tech object d’art.
The Soundcore name is Anker’s sonic footprint in the same consumer-tech space, and a prodigiously-sized one at that. This is the Boom 2, one of Soundcore’s largest and loudest wireless speaker systems – and is it a doozy.
The Soundcore Boom 2 is almost retro-futurist in looks, combining 3D-CAD rounded corners with 80s blockiness and some considerable RGB trigger-happiness for good measure. Its outsized carry handle tells you it’s destined for the party, wherever that may be; wherever you go, it’s bringing its 80W of power with it – split into a 50W sub and two 15W drivers. That bass-heavy imbalance is what makes this worthwhile.
When used normally, the Soundcore Boom 2 is a capable 60W system crammed into a small-ish lunchbox. When the ‘Bass-Up 2.0’ mode is activated, though, an extra 20W of bassy goodness are unlocked for maximum juice. Add in IPX7 waterproofing and floatability, and the Soundcore Boom 2 is a party speaker through and through with all the trappings to suit.
Best Sonos
✅ Buy if you want the best Sonos speaker for cranking out the tunes: With its recognisable design and booming audio delivery, if Sonos speakers are your thing, you won;t be disappointed.
❌ Avoid if you want portable power : The Sonos will take care of all your indoor audio needs - just don't think about taking it outside.
Sound: ★★★★
Battery: ★★★★★
Build quality: ★★★★
Overall: ★★★★
Sonos speakers are sort of the Apple devices of the hi-fi world. They’re closed books with minimal control surfaces, but which connect to one another smooth as anything – and give you a foolproof wireless sound system to show for it. Enough of any speakers can guarantee loudness, but the Sonos Move 2 makes loudness easy.
This Sonos speaker iterates upon its predecessor – the Move, which previously held this very spot – by adding an extra tweeter for more volume and a large, wider, stereo soundstage.
This is a big upgrade from monoaurality to stereoscopic sound, and all the better for the Move 2.
Various improvements have led the Move 2 to last a lot longer than its prior iteration, with up to 24 hours of continuous playback for you to look forward to.
Sadly, Sonos don’t make a habit of publishing information about power output or frequency range, so for now you’ll have to take my word for it that this thing can get loud, and deep, and surprisingly so in both camps.
FAQ
What makes a speaker 'loud'?
If you’re looking for one of the loudest Bluetooth speakers, you’re after something with power – which means looking at its wattage. If you remember back to your science classes, you’ll remember that P=VI, V being voltage and I being current; in short, the more juice a given Bluetooth speaker’s integrated amps are able to provide, the more likely they are to provide blistering audio.
Sound level can be measured in decibels (dB). The decibel is a logarithmic unit of measurement, which means for every 10dB a sound’s loudness increases, we perceive a doubling of the volume. 70dB is the average volume of a friendly chat, while stationary traffic is measured at over 80dB – and the average gig reaches up to 110dB.
Relating decibels back to watts, you’ll find that you need exponentially more wattage to provide linear increases in perceived volume. In short, 100W speakers are theoretically 3dB louder than 50W speakers, just as 200W speakers are theoretically 3dB louder than 100W speakers. Your volume returns diminish the further up the pecking order you travel – so why buy slightly more power if the results are potentially minimal? Here’s your answer – headroom.
Amplifiers have optimal operating conditions, which typically aren’t “go full-blast”. At the upper end of that power spectrum, you’ll experience saturation and distortion as the natural dynamics of your favourite Om record meet the hard ceiling of your speaker’s max power output.
The higher the wattage of your loud Bluetooth speaker, the more room you have to pump the volume without sacrificing some of the psychoacoustic details that contribute to perceived loudness – which is, incidentally, a whole different topic of its own!
Talking about perception, there is a level of subjectivity to what ‘loud’ means for you as a prospective speaker-buyer. If your house is the pin-drop quiet type, a small portable speaker with a disproportionately large power output could be enough to blow the windows out; if you’re looking to fill your capacious and still over-attended garden with the Best Of Kiss in the summer, then you’ll a need big, heavy-duty Bluetooth speakers capable of cranking out watts in the hundreds (or even thousands).
Does the size and design of a speaker affect volume?
Fundamentally, it's the circuitry of a given Bluetooth speaker that dictates its volume potential. As explored above, power is the key to volume, and the more of it the better!
That said, loudness is a subjective thing, that speaks more to our powers of perception than anything else. As such, there are some fun and funky ways that speaker designs can boost the perceived loudness of their output.
Some speakers, like the Soundboks 4, will make clever use of a ported bass reflex system, a smartly-designed chassis vent that tunes the chassis itself to maximise the oomph provided by air moving in and out of the unit.
Others, like the Sonos Move 2, will use a completely enclosed chassis for a tighter, richer, more directional sound. Others still will use careful subwoofer placement to drive sound, for example, downwards through the surface on which the speaker is standing – allowing the whole thing to benefit from more boom through the ground.
Is it safe to listen to loud Bluetooth speakers?
It is perfectly safe to listen to your loud Bluetooth speakers – until it isn’t. Loud is good, loud is great and Louder is so named for these obvious and indisputable truths, but this doesn’t mean that loud can’t be a royal pain in the ear.
It doesn’t take much for loud volumes to negatively impact your ears and hearing, with prolonged exposure to sounds as loud as your lawnmower being enough to cause damage. If you do want to tread water in the thick milieu of a cranked QOTSA discography, make sure to give yourself extensive breaks between albums – overnight, if possible!
Of course, there are loads of variables at play as to the relative safety or danger of listening at certain volumes. Blasting a party speaker at a well-attended shindig, and listening with dozens of bodies between you and the sound source, will yield less harmful results than pressing your ear up against a cranked portable speaker on your own.
Either way, though, tinnitus is a risk, and no joke either; just ask Metal Hammer editor Eleanor Goodman, who has her own cautionary tale in her account of what it’s like living with Tinnitus.
What is the loudest Bluetooth speaker?
The loudest Bluetooth speaker I've reviewed is the Marshall Bromley 750, a 750-watt party speaker capable of reaching a max SPL of 127dB. But loudness is about more than sheer objective power, as demonstrated by some of the small and deceptively powerful speakers also in this guide.
Despite the measurability of sound volume, it’s a variety of factors that make a set of speakers feel truly loud, from its approach to EQ, to its physical design, to the environment in which you yourself are listening. Context is key; you won’t always need a Bromley or a Soundboks to blow the windows out. Power is objective, but loudness is very much subjective.
How we test the loudest Bluetooth speakers
Bluetooth speakers can be for the living room or portable – either way, we need them to be able to play hellishly loud without complaint.
The biggest challenge when it comes to testing Bluetooth speakers has got to be their low frequency response. Can they do justice to deep growls and thunderous bass? A quick blast of Motorhead's Ace Of Spades will usually tell us what we need to know. Does Lemmy’s bass sound dirty but tight? Do Phil Taylor’s machine gun beats knock you back on your boot heels? What we don’t want to hear is a confused mash of noise.
The Louder team also listen for ‘presence’. Bluetooth speakers can sound monophonic, with all their energy emanating from the same physical space. What we value is a wider soundstage, whether this is achieved through clever digital signal processing or an inventive driver/passive radiator configuration, it doesn’t really matter.
Finally, to assess their treble performance, we inevitably fall back on Do It Again by Steely Dan, which remains a challenging soup of electric piano, cymbals and soaring vocals.
Why you can trust us
⚡ Louder was established in 2017 and founded on long-running brands including Metal Hammer, Classic Rock and Prog (launched in 1986, 1998 and 2009 respectively)
⚡ Over 80,000 products reviewed on site, from music listening tech to albums and box sets
⚡ Our reviewers are all passionate music fans who draw on decades of testing experience
Louder’s reviewing team consists of music fans, musicians and professional product testers, who between them have accumulated decades of product reviewing experience, writing thousands of words on music listening gear across thousands of reviews on Louder. Our tests also inform our buyer's guide - just like this one.
As lifelong music fans, we're serious about the tech we listen to our favourite artists on. We want them to sound incredible, giving us all the detail those bands intended us to hear, and deliver the perfect balance of bass, mids and highs.
We're looking for pure immersion in our chosen sounds, whether it's a classic '70s rock album, or a cutting-edge noise band.
And we tested the loudest Bluetooth speakers with albums we know inside and out, and that we've listened to on a variety of systems already, so we know exactly what we should be hearing and when we're being short-changed by lacklustre audio.
Meet the experts
James Grimshaw is a freelance writer and music obsessive with over a decade in music and audio writing. They’ve lent their audio-tech opinions (amongst others) to the likes of Guitar World, MusicRadar and the London Evening Standard – before which, they covered everything music and Leeds through their section-editorship of national e-magazine The State Of The Arts. When they aren’t blasting esoteric noise-rock around the house, they’re playing out with esoteric noise-rock bands in DIY venues across the country; James will evangelise to you about Tera Melos until the sun comes up.
Scott has spent 37 years in newspapers, magazines and online as an editor, production editor, sub-editor, designer, writer and reviewer. Scott maintains Louder’s buyer’s guides, writes about the best deals for music fans, keeps on top of the latest tech releases and reviews headphones, speakers, earplugs and more for Louder. Over the last 12 years, Scott has written more than 11,500 articles across Louder, Classic Rock, Metal Hammer and Prog.
Latest updates
12/02/26: We've updated the guide to include our no.1 pick, the Marshall Bromley 750 and the JBL Boombox 4. In addition, the Quick Links section has been completely updated and the product list re-organised to bring our selections up to date for 2026. The old FAQ section has also been improved and updated to help provide you with everything you need to know before purchasing a new speaker. 19/06/25: The guide has been updated to include two new products: Soundcore Boom 2 and the Sonos Move 2. Expert verdict panels have been added where applicable in the product guide, alongside the addition of "At a glance" and star rating boxes. The FAQ section has also been updated and expanded. A section detailing why you can trust the Louder team is also now included, along with a "meet our experts" section.
Read more
You can trust Louder Our experienced team has worked for some of the biggest brands in music. From testing headphones to reviewing albums, our experts aim to create reviews you can trust. Find out more about how we review.
- Best turntable speakers: Take your vinyl listening to the next level
- The loudest headphones on the planet: You want volume? You got it
- Best Bluetooth turntables to put a modern spin on your vinyl
