The Charge 4 JBL Bluetooth speaker by Harman Kardon is a moderate to medium power, desktop style unit with sufficient music watts to fill a typical size room with full sounding tunes. It also has a built in power bank for recharging light to moderate duty phones and smaller tablets.
But what do the watts a BT speaker has, tell us about how good it is? Firstly, the watt is a measure of how much power the speaker requires and outputs. Plus, this metric is a nifty comparison measure. Why? Because generally speaking, speakers with more watts of audio output tend to play louder than those with less.
While they do cost more, have bigger, heavier batteries and chargers, along with larger drivers and magnets, they nonetheless offer some big plusses. They have more dynamic range, a deeper bass response, and the models that play in stereo offer typically a bigger soundstage and better sound imaging to listeners.
Thus in general, the more powerful the speaker, the better it sounds, even at lower volume. You get improved clarity due to higher accuracy reproduction of the bass, midrange, and treble parts of the music. Plus, more reserve power likely means less clipping distortion too, even at higher volumes. So, the speaker’s maximum watts output is a primary indicator of speaker quality and performance. And as such, this value is of great interest to audiophiles and novice listeners alike.
In this case, the Charge 4, as a smaller Bluetooth speaker, is a decently loud model for all the bigger it is. Its watts can fill a small to medium size room with clear music. See below for details on its power output.
JBL Charge 4 Watts Details
- Battery Capacity: 27 watt-hours (3.6 volts, 7.5 amp-hours).
- USB Charger Power: 11.5 watts (5 volts at 2.3 amps).
- Power Bank Output Power: 10 watts (5 volts at 2 amps max).
- Play Time Per Recharge: Up to 20 hours.
- Total Audio Output Power on AC (RMS): 30 watts.
- Total Peak Audio Power: 42.42 watts.
- Output Power per Channel: 30 watts RMS (only one channel in this speaker).
- @Audio Output Power on Battery: Decreases as battery approaches depletion.
Notes on JBL Charge 4 Watts
- This speaker may not input enough enough power from a low power USB AC adapter (below 10 watts capacity) to keep the battery from discharging when playing at full volume, depending on what you’re listening to. So it could happen that even with the Charge 4 plugged in, you could still see it shut OFF unexpectedly. Thus on the (rare) occasions that this occurs, just stop playing the speaker for an hour or two, to let it build up some reserve battery power while charging. Then, fire it up again for continued party enjoyment.
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References
Revision Log
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- 2022-08-25: First published.