Wonderboom
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Ultimate Ears' Wonderboom 2 gets better sound, longer battery life
Two years ago, Ultimate Ears' launched a beefy Bluetooth speaker that offered 360-degree sound in the body the size of a soda can. Now, the company is updating the Wonderboom with design flourishes cribbed from the Boom 3, bigger sound and a longer battery life. The Wonderboom 2 gets specially-tuned audio profiles to make tunes sound better outdoors, and its power has been bumped from 10 hours to 13.
STEM kits that will get your kid's hands dirty
Contrary to what you might think and hear, apps and screens aren't the best tools for kids to learn STEM concepts, even coding. Why? Innovation, pattern recognition, exploration, experimentation and creation underlie STEM principles. Kids need to manipulate tangible things. It's how they learn. While there are some great apps that supplement STEM learning, the best STEM activities for kids are blended ones -- the ones that require hands-on exploration, screens optional. Those that do require screens, like ones with coding apps, should augment the experience, not be the sole focus. Many of these toys and kits are designed for classroom use but are perfectly adaptable and suitable for home use, too, as my two kids, ages five and seven, will shout from the rooftops (supervised, don't worry). Check out these awesome blended learning STEM kits and toys. They'll have your little inventors ready to apply for their first patent in no time.
The nine speakers we recommend in our back-to-school guide
Though our back-to-school guide includes plenty of headphones, we threw in just as many speakers. Whether you intend to host a few parties or just want the convenience of a smart speaker, we found a number of models that we feel earn their space in your dorm. As you might expect, our list of nine picks include plenty of smart speakers, including usual suspects like the Apple HomePod, Google Home and Sonos One. Our feeling is, if you're going to invest in bookshelf or desktop speakers, you may as well have the option of using voice commands. That said, nearly half of our recommendations are portable, with highlights from JBL, Bang & Olufsen and the category leader, UE. As a warning, not everything on this list is cheap (we're looking at you, Klipsch), but some, like the UE Wonderboom are much cheaper, with a street price of around $70. Find all that and more (plus those headphone picks we mentioned) in our complete guide.
UE's Blast and Megablast join the Alexa smart speaker family
These days, the launch of yet more speakers with Alexa onboard isn't the most exciting announcement. However, these aren't stout smart home speakers or a mere software update, but an entirely new line for Ultimate Ears -- a long-standing favorite for its speakers' audio output and resilience. Today, the company introduces the Blast and Megablast, the network-capable and Alexa-enabled siblings of UE's Boom 2 and Megaboom. This new line was built explicitly for the Amazon Alexa ecosystem of apps and features, and along with the Power Up charging base, offers always-on functionality to cater to your verbal demands. Unlike many other options though, this one also includes an on-board battery for portability.
Ultimate Ears' cheapest Boom speaker looks like a colorful barrel
When the design teams at Ultimate Ears got together to create the Boom and Roll, the end result was a set of vibrant bluetooth speakers that took cues from a can of Pringles and a flying saucer. It should come as no surprise, then, to learn that UE's new entry-level model, the $100/£80 Wonderboom, also shies away from the conventional portable form factor. You could say it looks like a small barrel, or resembles a watermelon with hundreds of rubber bands tied around it, but it's colorful, strangely cute and -- most importantly -- affordable.
