UE Wonderboom 3 Charging Light

Front view of the Wonderboom 3 speaker.

The UE Wonderboom 3 charging light is a single LED on its top panel, close to the front. This lets you know battery status, whether it’s draining or charging, or whether it’s low or not when discharging. However, it does not show charging progress. Nor does it indicate how full the battery is at a given time while charging. And it does not show much energy remains when discharging. But it does change color when the battery reaches almost-dead state. So in this post, we describe how to read this light.

UE Wonderboom 3 Charging Light: How to Read It

1. The Lamp is OFF

When you power down the 3 with no charger, this lamp goes dark. The lamp is also OFF when the charger IS present and the battery is full.

Top view of the UE Wonderboom 3. Showing the dark -Power- button.

2. UE Wonderboom 3 Charging Light: It Shows Charging Is Happening But Not How Far Along

The status light flashes in a gradually dimming and brightening pattern white as the speaker charges. On this speaker, this LED is the only visual indication that charging is happening. But it does not tell how far along the charging is.

The glowing charging light.

This slowly fading and brightening white pattern displays while charging, whether the speaker is OFF or ON.

An iPhone sitting in front of a UE Wonderboom 3.

3. When the Charging Light Goes Out, Then Charging is Complete

As speaker charging continues, the light keeps slowly blinking white. Furthermore, battery recharging is over when the lamp goes out, or turns solid white. It turns OFF when the speaker is OFF, and switches to a solid white glow when the speaker is ON.

The battery recharge cycle finishes when the speaker status lamp turns OFF. Even with the AC charger running, the lamp does not glow when battery is full. Not unless the speaker itself is running.

4. UE Wonderboom 3 Charging Light Does Not Tell How Much Charge Remains Until It’s Really Low

When you disconnect the charger, what was the Charging Light becomes the battery charge left indicator. Well kind of. If it glows solid white, then the battery has some play time left. Anytime the speaker is ON, you can hear battery status. Just press the Volume UP and Volume DOWN buttons at the same time to hear it. The number of blinks in the sound indicates battery fullness.

But when the battery goes very low, the lamp turns from solid white to solid red.

Note that once this light turns red, the speaker will not power up again until you charge it a little. Indeed if you try to boot the speaker with a nearly dead battery, the lamp blinks red rapidly. Then the speaker shuts down after a few seconds. So this blinking signals that the battery needs a charge before you play the speaker again.