The JBL Charge 4 speaker has a group of LEDs across its lower front panel. These display battery fullness and charging status. In brief, the JBL Charge 4 battery indicator displays charging progress, and how full the battery is when not charging.
JBL Charge 4 Battery Indicator: How to Read These Lights
1. All Lamps OFF
When you power down the Charge 4 with no charger connected, no lamps light up, as shown next. The lamps also all show dark when you connect the charger but the battery is already full.
2. JBL Charge 4 Battery Indicator Shows Battery Recharging Progress
There are five lamps that light in succession as the speaker battery charging advances, as shown in the next picture. This speaker is charging when you see one of these lamps blinking white. When the battery fully discharges, the light on the far left blinks white while charging. Then as charging continues, that lamp stops flashing, and assumes a steady white glow. At that point, the next lamp to the right starts blinking white.
Note though, that you may see the first lamp (far left) blink red. This does not mean that charging is proceeding. Instead, it means that the speaker battery is quite low. So you should recharge it right away. This meter only flashes red when the battery is almost dead and AC power is not yet present. But when you do connect power, this red light changes to blinking white. Remember. This light never flashes red while charging.
3. When All Lamps Light Up Solid, Charging is Complete
As speaker charging advances, more of the lamps light up solid. That is, the flashing LED moves further to the right, until that blinking reaches the last of these five lamps.
Battery charging is about done when all but the last of the battery status lights light solid. The last one continues to blink for several minutes. Again, you know that charging is happening if one of the battery charge level lamps is flashing white.
This next picture shows the speaker just before completing a full charge cycle. Note that all the lamps in the battery status meter are glowing. However, the last one continues to blink.
The battery recharge cycle finishes when all battery status indicator lights turn off, as we show above. Thus, the battery is no longer charging when all lamps are OFF. Even with the AC charger still connected, no lamp glows when battery is full.
4. The JBL Charge 4 Battery Indicator also Shows Battery Fullness when Not Charging
When not charging, what was the charging indicator becomes the battery level indicator. The more lights lit, the fuller the battery. The fewer, the less run time remains.
Furthermore, these lamps show battery status for a brief time. They display it for a few seconds after you power up the speaker. Or whenever you press any of the buttons while the speaker is running, they’ll show it then too. To save power, these lamps go dark after some seconds. Thus to see the battery charge remaining indication once more, just press either the volume UP or DOWN buttons.
JBL Charge 4 Battery Indicator in the Portable App
If you run the JBL Portable app, then you can see the speaker’s battery indicator there too. Just pair the speaker and bring up the app as follows.
Then, once the app detects the speaker, it displays the speaker’s home page as we see next.
The battery indicator we point out with the pink arrow. It shows how full the battery in the speaker is. The more of that bar that is green in color, the fuller the battery.