JBL Portable

For almost a year I couldn’t use this app to use with my speakers to play them in stereo. To there credit they do seem to be addressing issues with the app. I can now do stereo playback. However, one thing still bugs me, the app does not show an accurate representation of just how much battery life your speakers have, it constantly says 100%. This wouldn’t be so frustrating if it wasn’t for the fact that the speakers don’t show up as a Bluetooth device connected on the iOS front page where you see you battery status for other devices like your watch or Apple Pencil. I seriously hope they address this. Knowing just how much charge your devices have is crucial. *UPDATE* Here it is, tail end of 2025 and this app is still garbage. I have a little Bose speaker that I prefer to use over my three JBL charge 5s largely because the app performance is largely flawless. I can have the JBL connected via Bluetooth and the app still won’t recognize that anything is connected. Beyond that it never seems to remember stereo pairing configuration and I spend needless time fiddling with it instead of actually enjoying music through the things. These are easily one of my most regretted audio purchases. I got them for the sound, but the confounding crappiness of the app seriously ruins the experience of this product. There are constants updates but the same problems persist, it’s like no one is actually doing any testing.

So I’ve had the speaker for about 2 years now and it by far is one of the best speakers I’ve ever used. But the only reason I’m giving it 4 stars instead of 5 is because it’s had a bunch of problems with charging, EVEN after I replaced the battery a couple days later it started doing the exact same thing it was doing before I replaced it. Now it’s working perfectly fine all the sudden and it’s only staying “charged” on the 1 out of 5 of the dots for charging and that’s what it was doing before I replaced it and I go on this app and it says it’s that low. Idk I take super good care of it always have and it’s still took a weird turn and idk if two years would be long enough for it to have anything happen to it but who knows. Please help idk if it needs an update but if so please send that haha. Thank you that’s my review. Send me a new JBL charge 4 or upgrade me to a charge 5 or trade mine in and upgrade me to the charge 5 and I’ll raise my rating but idk if it’s that worth the extra stars.

I’m a truck driver and I use my speakers all the time . I stopped using them before the update because they would go in and out . I just updated and I do see improvement on the sync, before the speakers would go out and come back on but would not be in sync with the picture. That problem looks like it is fixed. The problem now is they still go in and out , I use them with my iPad and I really love the speakers. I hope the developers can get this together and as the updates come out I will give my opinion on them . Also note they do not stay synced when you play them together. One will drop out and one will play on and off.I give two stars for the small update. Update august 5 . I will give five stars now because I haven’t had any problems with the connection for the last month. The app is working fine at this time.