Light-up JBL Pulse 4 puts the ‘blue’ in Bluetooth speaker

Do you know what synesthesia is? It’s a perceptual condition that causes people to taste words, feel scents or see sounds. If you’re not lucky enough to experience the world like this, JBL’s Pulse 4 (£229) might just be able to give you a flavour of what it’s like. With a load of LED lights installed beneath the speaker’s surface, it’ll light up in sync with your tunes, plus you can use your phone’s camera to scan colours for it to replicate. Its colour-changing coat doesn’t mean it needs to be kept in cotton wool as there’s IPX7 waterproofing, and despite all that illumination it’ll still play for 12 hours before needing a re-up via the USB-C port. Now all you need to do is decide what to listen to. Perhaps a spot of Blue Monday?

Tom Wiggins Contributor

About

Stuff's second Tom has been writing for the magazine and website since 2006, when smartphones were only for massive nerds and you could say “Alexa” out loud without a robot answering. Over the years he’s written about everything from MP3s to NFTs, played FIFA with Trent Alexander-Arnold, and amassed a really quite impressive collection of USB sticks.

Areas of expertise

A bit of everything but definitely not cameras.