Review on 🔊 Ultimate Ears BLAST: Portable Waterproof Speaker with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Alexa Voice Control - Blue Steel by Michael Morgan

I had high hopes for this speaker. I have a UE Boom and thought the Alexa integration would be great. First, this is a great portable speaker. It has a rich sound and wonderful tones. Any music sounds great on it. I have a couple of issues: First, the Alexa integration doesn't work. I set up my house with a great WiFi signal. I have used this in my bedroom where I also have an echo dot. The point works perfectly every time. It looks like UE Blast has a very weak antenna. Songs fade in and out and you hear them fall and then connect (like bluetooth connects) and the song disappears completely, goes silent for a few seconds then reconnects. It's not wifi as I have a very strong signal right where it happens. It can be right under one of my 3 WiFi hotspots and it's still dropping out. When I just use it as a bluetooth speaker it works great. Also, why can't I use some features on other Echo devices? I don't like using Alexa as the name used to activate my Echo, and instead change each one to respond to "echo". This is not possible with UE Blast. You're stuck with Alexa. If you're in a true Wi-Fi zone, why not just ask if you just want to use it as a Bluetooth speaker? We still have to do some work on the user experience. Our expectations of smart devices are high.