In one look
Expert rating
Benefits
- Room filling sound
- Portable and battery powered
- 3.5mm line input
- fun lights
The inconvenients
- Heavy
- No streaming or AirPlay
- No smart features
Our opinion
The portable LG XBoom XO3 has excellent sound quality and battery life and is a premium Bluetooth speaker despite the lack of smart features.
Best prices today: LG XBoom 360 XO3
$196.99
LG isn’t a heavyweight in the Bluetooth speaker market, but I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of its admittedly misnamed XBoom 360 XO3.
It’s a beautiful wireless speaker with solid sound quality and crazy customizable lights that can be plugged into the mains or charged via USB-C and used on the go with its rechargeable battery.
The lights are a bit of a gimmick but fun enough, and the XO3, as we know, holds its own when it comes to audio. It’s just a shame that for the price it doesn’t offer smart features or voice input like the similarly priced Sonos and Apple speakers – but the sound quality is excellent.
If all you need is a reliable Bluetooth speaker with room-filling chunks of sound, and you also want to connect something like a turntable via an audio jack, the XO3 is a great choice.
Design and build
- Heavy at 3.2 kg
- Attractive vase design
- Combination woofer, loudspeaker and tweeter
The XO3 is heavy for a portable speaker at 3.2kg and an imposing 165 x 327 x 165mm. It’s not a stick-in-a-bag-and-forget speaker, but it’s small enough that you can put it in a larger bag to take to the park or on a trip, or just move around in a another room. This is facilitated by the optional wrist strap included.
LG describes the design as a “modern vase”, which is pretty accurate. This is a symmetrical round vase shape in the gray color I reviewed or an alternative cream version. Either can blend into a well-appointed living room or bedroom as the look is quite ornamental.
There is a space near the top where the LED lights are. You can customize them in the Android or iOS XBoom app to play preset light shows to suit the mood you’re looking for.
Henry Burrell / Foundry
They can also flicker like a candle or you can turn them off. There’s even a strobe option that flashes your phone’s light as a mood starter. If you really want a speaker with funky lights, the XO3 will do just fine, and they’re fun, but I’ve usually turned them off.
The lights are in a plastic reflector, which is more important for sound distribution than the lights are for the product. Sound can emanate from the top and is directed outward through the shape.
Beneath the light reflector, the entire speaker body is covered with mesh fabric to allow sound to travel outward from the woofer and tweeter inside. It’s quite sturdy and I wasn’t too worried about it rubbing next to things in a bag or car trunk when transporting it.
On the top of the device are responsive touch controls for volume, play/pause, Bluetooth and lights, alongside a battery indicator. Red for a low warning.
Henry Burrell / Foundry
There’s also a loop to attach the included optional wrist strap for easier carrying, which sits above the USB-C port for charging and a 3.5mm audio jack for attaching an aux cable to audio devices . There’s no charger in the box, although there is a USB-C to -A cable for charging.
With IP54 dust and water resistance, you’ll be fine if you get caught in the rain while the music is playing, but the XO3 won’t survive a dip in the pool.
Connectivity
- bluetooth only
- 3.5mm audio input
- USB-C charging
While the speaker market is full of smart speakers such as the Apple HomePod and Sonos 100, LG keeps it very simple with the XO3. There are no smart features here and connections are via Bluetooth 5.1.
It can support AAC or SBC codecs but does not play FLAC or WAV files in their full high resolution quality. Multipoint support lets you connect multiple audio inputs wirelessly, and you can even link multiple speakers together for stereo sound, which I couldn’t test.
Battery life is claimed at 24 hours if you are listening to audio at 50% volume and not using the lights or EQ feature in the XBoom app. The device never failed me until I got home and plugged it in to charge, and I could consistently rely on it for all-day reading.
Henry Burrell / Foundry
The lack of smart features might irritate you at this price. You can’t talk to the XO3 to choose music, so you can’t use it as a smart home hub to control lights or appliances like you would the HomePod or a Google Nest or Amazon Echo product.
That means you don’t get Apple AirPlay or Google Cast functionality either – it’s really just Bluetooth. LG does, however, provide over-the-air software updates through the XBoom app.
As someone who doesn’t tend to trust voice assistants to pick up the right song, I was perfectly happy to trade those ‘smart’ features for the portability of the speakerphone. I like how LG focuses entirely on music playback, battery life, and versatility of the XO3.
Henry Burrell / Foundry
There’s also a 3.5mm jack for audio input, which made it easy for me to hook up my turntable to the speaker (there’s no included 3.5mm audio cable, but they are not expensive to buy). Connected and plugged into a USB-C charger via the mains, the XO3 is a good option for a permanent and compact turntable speaker.
Sound quality
- Excellent rounded sound
- Good EQ options
- 360 degree audio
This big sound vase is designed to deliver 360-degree sound, and LG delivers on that promise. Wherever you place it in a room, the XO3 produces full, well-balanced sound – although it lacks the smarts of the HomePod, which can adjust the direction of audio by not projecting it into a wall if it detects that it is nearby.
Despite the lack of such sensors, I never found the XO3 to distort or sound bad anywhere I placed it.
The sound is formed by a 4 inch woofer, a 2 inch mid-range driver and a 1 inch tweeter. The combination of these many components results in a wonderful sound.
Henry Burrell / Foundry
Loyle Carner’s ‘Speed of Plight’ is well-rounded, with bass notes that rumble nicely behind tight drum highs. Likewise, Nilüfer Yanya’s “Midnight Sun” fills the room when you turn up the XO3’s volume, but it doesn’t distort and it can keep the frequencies separated enough for consistently clear sound. You can easily set the mood and get lost in the music with this speaker.
The speaker carries the bass and percussion well on Ezra Collective’s “Lady,” cementing the XO3 as a good party speaker. I was hoping the bass would be strong but controlled and I wasn’t disappointed because in songs like this it’s very well tuned.
If you’re actually throwing a party or just want to give the speaker an extra boost indoors or outdoors, in the XBoom you can enable the ‘sound boost’ preset. It boosts the low end noticeably but keeps a good mix across most genres.
Henry Burrell / Foundry
I preferred most of the music with it. Even Bach sounds good with a little bass boost.
You can also customize the EQ with a responsive six-channel EQ dial. I’ve often found a better mix of levels this way, especially with indie rock like The Strokes, where in “standard” mode the speaker can sound a little flat unless the volume is really pushed to bottom.
In addition to bass control, the XO3 handles mid and high frequencies well. I’ve never listened to a song thinking it sounded muddy or poorly reproduced.
Pricing & Availability
The LG XBoom XO3 costs $299 from Amazon in the US or £299 direct from LG in the UK. It is also available on Amazon, Richer Sounds, AO and Currys.
As of this writing, several retailers have the XO3 on sale for around $199 / £199, which is a more palatable price.
That’s relatively expensive for a speaker without smart features. You might prefer to spend $249 / £249 on the Sonos Era 100 – but this speaker, like many others, needs to be plugged into the mains.
The Sonos Roam is smaller and costs $179 / £179, but needs to be connected to Wi-Fi to take full advantage of its features, and its battery life away from a charger is just 10 hours against more than 20 for the LG.
For simply enjoying music on a really good speaker, without the complication of Wi-Fi connections – and on battery power – the LG XBoom XO3 might be a no-frills winner for you.
Its closest rival is the Marshall Middleton, which has excellent sound quality and is much more portable for $299/£269.
Verdict
It’s a little pricey for a Bluetooth-only speaker, but the LG XBoom XO3 makes up for that (and its clunky name) by delivering exceptionally loud audio quality from streaming, MP3 and line-in sources.
What you lose in smart features, you gain in portability – and while the XO3 is quite heavy, being able to quickly stream music outdoors, at a barbecue or in the park is worth the sacrifice of smart features if it’s worth it. is what you are looking for. . If you don’t want to bother with Wi-Fi, AirPlay, the XO3 is great.
With fun optional lights, an attractive design, great battery life and water resistance, the XO3 should last you many years.
Specifications
- 1 woofer
- 1 midrange speaker
- 1 tweeter
- 360 degree sound
- Bluetooth 5.1
- 3.5mm line input
- USB-C charging
- Up to 24 hours of autonomy on battery or mains
- IP54
- XBoom Companion App
- 165 x 327 x 165mm
- 3.2kg
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