JLab’s new party speaker puts a light show in your pocket

JLab has announced a new Party line of wireless speakers that continues an industry trend of adding animated RGB lighting to anything that plays music. That even includes the new budget-minded JLab Pop Party speaker — which is small enough to squeeze into a pocket but still features customizable LEDs.

The $19.99 Pop Party is the lightest and cheapest of the four new speakers, all of which are available now through JLab’s online store. It delivers up to 5W of sound through a two-inch full-range driver that’s paired with a matching two-inch passive woofer to boost the presence of lower frequencies. When not stuffed in your pocket it can be hung from a bag or strapped to the handlebars of a bike using a detachable loop, and its RGB lighting can be customized with animations, your favorite color, or to flash and pulse to match the beat of what you’re playing. Battery life is claimed to be over eight hours of playtime, but that drops to over five hours when you’re also using the RGB lighting.

The Pop Party’s IPX5 rating means splashes or rain won’t hurt it, but the speaker won’t survive a complete dunking. The other three speakers have a slightly improved IPX6 water-resistance rating, but they also can’t be fully submerged.

The larger $29.99 Go Party speaker doubles the Pop’s sound output to 10W using a pair of two-inch full-range drivers and dual two-inch passive woofers while expanding battery life to up to 16 hours, or up to eight with lighting activated. It also adds speakerphone functionality using a built-in mic.

The $69.99 JBuds Party speaker features the same number of drivers as the Go Party, but increases the size of the dual full-frequency drivers to 2.5-inches so they deliver 30W of sound with 12 hours of battery life, or up to 10 hours with lighting. As with the rest of JLab’s new lineup, the JBuds speaker’s sound profile can be adjusted using a mobile app, but it adds a media control knob and additional buttons on top for easier access to commonly used functions.

The $149.99 Epic Party speaker is the most expensive model in JLab’s new lineup by a long shot, but it boosts sound output to 100W in all directions using four 2.5-inch full-range drivers, a five-inch passive woofer, and a larger 5.25-inch subwoofer. The Epic offers the longest battery life of the new lineup with up to 16 hours of just sound, or up to 14 hours with the accompanying light show.

All of JLab’s new Party speakers include the ability to pair with a second speaker for a stereo sound experience, and using the company’s “LabSync technology,” up to 100 can be connected together with their sound and lighting effects synchronized to fill a larger space.