The JBL Xtreme 3 has a white light bar in its front lower area that acts as a Charging Indicator. This meter displays battery status. Specifically, it tells whether the battery is draining or charging. Thus, it displays charging progress, or how full the battery is while charging. It also tells how much battery “juice” remains when discharging.
JBL Xtreme 3 Charging Indicator: How to Read It
1. The Charging Indicator is Entirely Dark
When you power down the Xtreme 3 with no charger connected, no lamps light up, as we see next. This bar also shows as dark when a charger IS present but the battery is already full.
2. JBL Xtreme 3 Charging Indicator Shows Battery Recharging Progress
There are five tiny LED lamps inside the speaker, that illuminate the Charging Indicator bar in various degrees. These light in succession as the speaker charging progresses. This speaker is charging when part of the bar blinks white. At the beginning of charging, the bottom edge of the bar blinks white. Then as charging continues, more of the bar lights up, and flashing end of the bar moves upward.
Note though, that you may see the bottom most part of the indicator blink red. This does not mean that charging is proceeding. Instead, it means that the speaker battery is critically low and that you should recharge the speaker immediately.
It only flashes red like this when the battery is nearly dead and AC power is not present. But when you do that, this red flashing begins blinking white. Remember though, that this light is never red while charging.
3. When All Lamps Light Up Solid, Charging is Complete
As speaker charging continues, more of the bar lights up solid. That is, the flashing LED moves further up, until that blinking reaches the topmost part of the bar.
Battery charging is complete when all but the very last little segment of the indicator lights solid. That continues to blink for several minutes.
Note that during the charge cycle, part of the indicator is dark (top most portion). This lets you know about how much more the battery must charge before reaching fullness.
The battery recharge cycle finishes when the entire battery status gauge goes dark, as we saw above. Thus, the battery is no longer charging when all lamps are OFF. Even with the AC charger still connected, no part of the indicator glows when the battery is full.
4. The JBL Xtreme 3 Charging Indicator Also a Battery Charge Remaining Meter
When you disconnect the charger, what was the charging indicator becomes the battery charge left indicator. The more lights glowing, the fuller the battery. The fewer glowing, the less run time remains.
Now this bar shows battery status for a brief time after you power up the speaker. Indeed to save power, this bar darkens after some seconds. But you can make it display again. Just press any of the buttons. So to see the battery charge remaining once more, just tap the volume UP or DOWN buttons.
The next picture shows the speaker ON, with the entire battery meter bar aglow. This means that the battery is between eighty and one hundred percent full.
JBL Xtreme 3 Charging Indicator in the Portable App
If you run the JBL Portable app, you can see the speaker’s Charging Indicator there as well. Just pair the 3 with this device. Then bring up the app.
Then, once the app detects the speaker, it displays the speaker’s home page as we see next.
The 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.