Logitech has brought Amazon’s smart voice assistant to its popular line of portable speakers, Ultimate Ears (UE), by launching two new models; the ‘Blast’ and ‘Megablast’.
Whilst the new speakers closely resemble its existing Boom and Megaboom models, the popularity of the range should give Logitech some market strength in the emerging smart speaker battle.
As the name suggests, the ‘Blast’ will be the standard model and the ‘Megablast’ will be a louder, more powerful version.
The ‘Megablast’ reportedly plays music 40% louder, than its predecessor the ‘Megaboom’.
As such, the new Megablast will be the most powerful model UE has released.
The new Blasts will have an ‘alway-on’ capability, so consumers simply have to say ‘Alexa’ to garner a response. This is a notable upgrade from the preceding Boom models, who after a post-release firmware update, require consumers to manually activate Alexa.
The UE Blast and UE Mega Blast are marketed as powerful water-resistant portable speakers, integrated with Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Alexa support, plus a battery the company claims should last up to 12 hours on a single charge.
Consumers can recharge the UE Blast using an included microUSB cable.
The new Blast speakers can also utilise a ‘Power Up’ dock, which recharges the speakers simply by placing them on a home base – thereby, enabling the portable speakers to also function as an at-home speaker, with little added fuss.
Using WiFi integration, the UE Blast can stream music through iHeartRadio and TuneIn and Amazon Music.
Unfortunately, Spotify, Deezer and Pandora are not enabled. Logitech states it is working to add integration for these services, however, has not specified a date.
The new UE speakers will come in a variety of colours; from black to blue, and white to red.
Logitech is yet to confirm Australian pricing and availability, but the new UE Blast speakers will roll out to the US in late October.
They are set to be much more pricey than the previous Boom models – the UE Blast will be priced at US$229.99, the UE Megablast at US$299.99 and the ‘Power Up’ charging dock at US$39.99.
