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Ultimate Ears’ UE Boom 2 and Megaboom are easily some of the best Bluetooth speakers on the market. Not only do they sound great, but with their rugged design and IPX7 waterproofing, they’re meant to go wherever you are, whether it’s the shower, beach, or just on your desk.
Today, the UE Boom 2 and Megaboom are receiving a firmware upgrade that adds push-to-talk functionality with Google Now (and Siri), allowing you to control music playback mostly hands-free. First, you’ll need to update the speaker using the companion app (screenshots provided below).
After that, a simple press on the Bluetooth button will pull up the familiar Google Now/Siri voice prompt, allowing users to speak the song, artist, or playlist they want to play and letting the voice assistant do the rest. It’s not quite the hands-free experience of smart speakers like Google Home or the Amazon Echo (since it’s not always listening) and in our testing, we had trouble getting the speaker to work correctly with Spotify. It was mostly hit or miss, but still a neat feature none-the-less.
Supported music services include Apple Music, Spotify, and Google Play Music and it should work on any Android device running 5.0 Lollipop on up (or iOS 6+). With Google Now and Siri integration, the ability to wirelessly chain speakers together, water resistance, great battery life and audio quality — the UE Boom 2 and Megaboom are killing it right now.
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