8 Great Portable Speakers for Your Next Road Trip

Do you travel frequently and dread coming back to a silent hotel room at the end of a work day? The availability of digitized music means that bringing your favorite tunes along isn’t a problem, though it’s understandable if you can’t stand for the tinny sound produced on your iPhone’s built-in speakers. We’ve put together a list of the top portable speakers for your road trips, suited for a range of budgets. These speakers aren’t all play, either—they will work well for a presentation, too.

The Soundfreaq Sound Kick is a lightweight, portable speaker that incorporates the company’s UQ3 sound enhancement technology within its compact form factor. A unique XKICK chamber expands for a bigger sound during music playback and slides closed for storage. Its rechargeable lithium ion battery offers seven hours of music playback and, with the built-in USB port, will juice your smartphone as well. The Sound Kick costs $99.99 and works via Bluetooth with A2DP-compatible devices or a standard 3.5mm headphone jack.

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The Geneva Sound System XS is an all-in-one Bluetooth speaker, FM radio and alarm clock. Touted as a portable audio system, it comes with a rechargeable lithium ion battery that offers more than five hours of play-time. An LED display shows information pertaining to volume, mode and current frequency of the FM radio. The device comes with a leather-like clamshell case and is small enough to slip into a briefcase. The Sound System XS is available in red, white and black and has a list price of $29.95 on Amazon.

The most expensive portable speaker in this lineup, the Bang & Olufsen Beolit 12, is also the only one that offers AirPlay support. Pushing the edge of portability at 2.8 kg (nearly 6.2 lb), the Beolit incorporates 120-watt class D amplifiers under the hood to drive a 4-inch woofer and two 2-inch tweeters. The Beolit 12 offers eight hours of battery life when used in wired mode, and 4 hours on AirPlay, while its built-in power supply and integrated compartment for the mains cable allows for convenient recharging. Available in four different color combinations, the Beolit 12 is priced at $799.