Hi I’m Gidon from thetechnologyman.com. The LG PK7W XBOOM Go Bluetooth speaker is
a fair bit larger than your typical portable speaker, but has 40W of output with aptX and
aptX HD support, up to 22 hours of battery life, an IPX5 weather resistance rating and
integrated lighting. LG have partnered with Meridian Audio: a British company with over
60 years of experience in HiFi audio to attempt to deliver the best sound possible.
It retails at £200 or $230 but it’s often heavily discounted to less than half that
- check the links below for the current prices. I’ll run through its features and then compare
it to the Anker Soundcore Motion+ I reviewed recently, a smaller Bluetooth speaker, but
I was impressed with its sound; the Sonos One with a similar RRP but mains powered,
and for good measure the Sonos Play:3 which is similar in size to the XBOOM and although
also mains powered, a useful benchmark for what a speaker this size can deliver.
So let’s take a look. Overview
The speaker comes well packaged, with a getting started guide, a figure of eight power cable
and a 19V 1.7A AC adapter. Unfortunately this speaker can’t be powered via USB-C like
its smaller siblings, the PK5 and PK3, although with those you’d need your own wall charger.
There’s no 3.5mm audio cable or case supplied The first thing you’ll notice is its size.
This is a big portable speaker at 320mm x 167mm, standing 152mm tall and weighing in
at 3kg. It has distinctive carry handles on the front of the unit, which despite its size
and weight actually makes it quite portable, but it’s not ideally suited for travel.
This newer model comes in white, but there’s also a slightly older black model with some
subtle differences. The branding has slightly changed on the white speaker, and it loses
the LED lighting that runs horizontally. The firmware can be updated on both the white
and black speakers to make them a little louder and basically bring them in line from a sound
perspective. I’ll come back to that shortly. The build quality is very good. It’s built
from a rugged white plastic which has very little flex, with a metal grille covering
the drivers. It has an IPX5 splash and dustproof rating like the smaller PK5, not the IPX7
waterproof rating of the smallest PK3. Removing the flap around the back reveals
the ports. There’s the DC-in port, a 3.5mm audio-in port, a reset button, the Dual Play
button to pair with a second speaker for wireless stereo and an associated Dual Play status
LED. The flap also acts as a seal against the elements
so you’ll need to make sure it’s fully seated again after removing it.
Disappointingly on a speaker this size there’s no USB port to charge your gadgets.
Around the sides are the passive radiators, perhaps the speakers’ most vulnerable elements
but I’ve not had any cause for concern in my testing.
The top of the XBOOM houses the rubberised buttons. There’s the battery LED, power
button with power LED, Bluetooth pairing button with Bluetooth LED, volume controls and the
pause | play button. A double press skips forward a track and a triple press skips back.
The button also answers and ends phone calls. Then there’s the voice command button. A
single press activates your voice assistant. Holding down this button for two seconds cycles
the “mood” lighting mode from the default multi coloured “Party” mode to various
other modes with the last setting turning the lighting off. I’ll discuss the mood
lighting further when we look at the accompanying Music Flow app. Finally there’s the Meridian
Audio tuned, self explanatory Clear Vocal and Enhanced Bass buttons with their accompanying
LEDs which are on by default. And there’s the microphone for voice commands and phone
calls. The bottom of the speaker has four rubber
feet to dampen any vibrations. Charging the speaker’s 5200mAh lithium ion
battery takes around 3.5 hours from flat, although it will take longer if you’re playing
music at the same time. The battery LED lights red whilst charging and turns green for 15
seconds when fully charged and then turns off. The LED also indicates the battery status
for 3 seconds when the speaker is turned on and not charging. It lights green if the battery
has more than 70% charge remaining, amber if the battery is between 10 and 70% and flashes
red continuously when there’s less than 10% of charge remaining. You can check the
battery level any time by pressing the power button for 2 seconds with the speaker on.
You can also check the battery level on Android devices in the Music Flow app I’ll come
to shortly, but unusually the battery level isn’t displayed on iOS devices.
When you turn the speaker on with a single press of the power button for the first time
the Bluetooth LED will flash. Connect to LG-PK7(XX) in your Bluetooth device settings. The Bluetooth
LED goes steady. Sound accompanies turning the speaker on and off, Bluetooth pairing
and reaching maximum and minimum volume. You can disable the sounds in the Music Flow app
which again I’ll come to shortly. A single press of the button turns the speaker
off or it turns off automatically after 15 minutes if not in use. You can’t disable
the auto power off, even using the app. It’s a simple process but there’s no NFC
support for even easier pairing on supported Android devices.
There’s a free app to configure the speaker and update the firmware. Unfortunately this
is only available on Android. Connect to an Android device and download
the Music Flow Bluetooth app from LG. There’s also a Music Flow Player app from LG for configuring
their WiFi speakers. So make sure you select the right one!
I’ll be coming back to app as I discuss updating the firmware and some of the speaker’s
features. The speaker supports multi-pairing with two
devices at the same time. Press and hold the Bluetooth button for two seconds until its
LED starts flashing and connect your second device. If you try and connect a third device,
one of your devices will be disconnected. It’s dependant on device and application,
but you should be able to pause music on one device and start playing on the second paired
device. If you turn on turn on Party mode under Settings | Multi-play mode, you don’t
need to pause playback to play music on another device, allowing two people to control the
speaker at the same time, a feature I wish more speakers had.
The speaker will only connect back to one device when you turn it back on. You’ll
need to connect to the second device manually. The Music Flow Bluetooth app
Most of the options available in the app can be set on the speaker itself, but there are
a few additional features that can only be configured using the app, which means if you’re
on iOS you may want to find someone with an Android device.
Battery life is shown in the centre of the screen. Under Settings turn off “Beep Sound”
to disable the speaker sounds. I’d recommend checking your speaker has
the latest firmware. Even my new speaker had a fairly significant update to apply. Go to
Settings | Device version info and see if any update is available by tapping the Info
icon. Apply the update tapping the icon to the right.
It takes a few minutes to download the update and send it across. The speaker will turn
off when the update is complete. You can turn it back on and check you now have the latest
firmware. With this latest update there’s a new Sound
Boost toggle when you have Enhanced Bass turned on. Tap the Sound Effects icon to enable this.
You can also switch Clear Vocal and Enhanced Bass on and off. The speaker needs to be turned
off and on to apply Sound Boost. The speaker was noticeably louder after updating the firmware
and turning the Sound Boost effect on. Unfortunately, apart from these preconfigured
profiles, you can’t define any custom EQ settings.
If you have another PK7 speaker or the PK5, you can set them both up as a stereo pair
using the Dual Play feature. Unfortunately I don’t have another speaker to try out
this feature. Lighting effects lets you switch between the
Mood Lighting modes, or turn the lights off. There’s a My Style option to choose your
own colour and speed. And you can turn Beat Lighting off if you don’t want the lights
to be synchronised to the music’s beat. Tapping the screen in the various lighting
modes makes the speakers’ lights perform a unique lighting action.
You can also use the app to play music stored locally on the device.
Sound quality & performance The two mid-range drivers, two tweeters and
passive radiators around the sides deliver a very well balanced sound that also manages
a decent amount of separation even without pairing with another speaker.
Vocals and bass come through clearly even at higher volumes and there’s little distortion.
With Sound Boost on I found treble sounded a bit harsh at over 80% volume, and overall
I preferred the sound with the Sound Boost off, but with Clear Vocal and Enhanced Bass
on. It sounds a bit flat without these to my ear.
Before the firmware update, my one slight criticism was that considering the size of
the speaker it wasn’t that loud. But after the latest update and with Sound Boost on
I don’t think this is an issue. It would fill a large room and could be used outside,
especially with its IPX5 rating. Although its output does drop when running
without AC power. According to LG its output decreases from 40W to 30W which doesn’t
really mean a lot. But I measured a drop of around 3dB running on battery at around 1m
away from the speaker. Sound Boost adds around 3dB to the output,
again measuring 1m from the speaker with a calibrated sound level meter.
There are louder speakers available, but this is one of the best sounding portable speakers
I’ve listened to. The collaboration with Meridian Audio seems to have paid off.
You can listen to a comparison between the LG PK7 XBOOM Go with the EQ presets on and
off, a Soundcore Motion+, a Sonos One and a Sonos Play:3. I’ve recorded the following
sound test with binaural microphones that capture stereo sound, to try and provide the
closest representation of what I’m hearing. Please listen with headphones for the best
experience. Use the timestamps below to skip ahead if you like.
Audio sync was good, even with YouTube on iOS which is usually troublesome.
Battery life is quoted as 22 hours but this is at 50% volume and with lighting modes,
clear vocal and enhanced bass off. In general use at around 70-80% volume, with the default
lighting mode and both EQ profiles on, I still got at least 12 hours of use.
The speaker uses Bluetooth version 4.2, not the latest 5.0. Range was ok making it to
the next room of my 50s brick built house, but not further.
Receiving phone calls sounded clear but you’ll need to get close to the mic for the recipient
to hear you clearly, around a forearm’s length away.
The speaker supports a wide range of audio formats including the higher quality aptX
and aptX HD. Neither of the Samsung devices I tested support aptX HD but I confirmed they
were streaming via aptX. You’d need to be using a premium streaming service like Tidal
to really notice any difference. Apple doesn’t support aptX or aptX HD but
I did confirm that my MacBook at least was streaming via the higher quality AAC codec.
There’s no way of checking but I imagine my iPhone and iPad were too.
Conclusions There’s a lot to like about the LG PK7 XBOOM
Go, most notably the sound quality which is impressive. It’s well built with an IPX5
splash and dustproof rating, battery life is good and the lights, which can be turned
off are quite novel. I would have liked USB-C charging and limiting
the app to Android only is not going to endear Apple users. It’d be nice to have the ability
to define custom EQ profiles in the app, although I found the Clear Vocal and Enhanced Bass
presets sounded pretty good for most of what I listened to.
At its RRP it’s a good buy, but if you can get it for less than half the price as it
often is, I don’t think there are many speakers that would come close, if you’re after a
speaker this size. But what do you think of it? Do you like the
design with its carry handles? Is there something better in this category of speaker I should
take a look at? Let me know down below. And as always, if you have any questions,
please ask - I read every comment and will do my best to respond.
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