Sony SRS-XB23 vs JBL Charge 4: Which to Buy?

Sony SRS-XB23 vs JBL Charge 4

This is the review of the comparison between two speakers from two different brands such as Sony and JBL. The comparison here is between the Sony SRS-XB23 and the JBL Charge 4. To know which one is good for you to buy, go to the detailed review.

Sony SRS-XB23JBL Charge 4
Sony SRS-XB23JBL Charge 4
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PROSPROS
Powerful bass depth and crisp highs in a compact design.
Stereo pairing and Party Mode.
Very portable and well-built design.
Waterproof and dustproof.
Powerful audio performance with rich bass.
Gets quite loud for its size. Waterproof.
Long battery life.
Can charge your portable devices.
USB-C charging.
CONSCONS
Weaker without Extra Bass option on.
Doesn’t get very loud.
Unclear battery level alerts.
No 3.5mm port, only Bluetooth.
No speakerphone function. Basically the same sound as the Charge 3.
The buttons that aren’t lit up are hard to see in the dark.

SPECIFICATIONS:

HEADERSONY SRS-XB23JBL CHARGE 4
BrandSonyJBL
ModelSRS XB23Charge 4
GENERALSONY SRS-XB23JBL CHARGE 4
ManufacturerSonyHarman
Design Features
SPEAKER SYSYTEMSONY SRS-XB23JBL CHARGE 4
Amplification Typeactiveactive
Frequency Response20 – 20000 Hz60 – 20000 Hz
Output Level (SPL)80 db
Audio Amplifierintegratedintegrated
Connectivity TechnologyWirelessWired, Wireless
BATTERYSONY SRS-XB23JBL CHARGE 4
Rechargeable Batteryrechargeablerechargeable
Run Time (Up To)12 hour(s)20 hour(s)
POWER DEVICESONY SRS-XB23JBL CHARGE 4
Power SourceBatteryUSB
OptionsUSB charging, USB charging (powerbank function)
NETWORK AND INTERNET MULTIMEDIASONY SRS-XB23JBL CHARGE 4
Connectivity InterfacesBluetooth 5.0 Bluetooth 4.2
SPEAKER SYSTEM DETAILSSONY SRS-XB23JBL CHARGE 4
Speaker TypeBluetooth SpeakerPortable
Speaker Channel Qty2
Speaker Channel TypeStereo
DRIVER DETAILSSONY SRS-XB23JBL CHARGE 4
Driver Typefull-range driver, passive radiatorfull-range driver, passive radiator
Driver Qty1,2
Driver Diameter50*90 mm
DIMENSIONS & WEIGHTSONY SRS-XB23JBL CHARGE 4
Width8.7 in
Depth3.7 in
Height8.6 in3.7 in
Weight20.46 oz34.04 oz
FEATURESSONY SRS-XB23JBL CHARGE 4
FeaturesPlay it loud with EXTRA BASS sound.

Waterproof, rustproof, dustproof and shockproof IP67 design for worry-free usage.

Power through any playlist with up to 12 hours of battery life.

Compact, lightweight, highly portable design.

Get things booming with Party Connect and sync up to 100 speakers.

X-Balanced Speaker Unit enhances sound quality and power.
Wirelessly connect up to two smartphones or tablets.

Built-in rechargeable Li-ion 7500mAH battery supports up to 20 hours.

Connect more than 100 JBL Connect+ enabled speakers.

Dual passive radiators deliver powerful, ear-catching JBL sound that resonates loud and clear.

Detail Review:

INTRODUCTION:

Sony SRS-XB23

The Sony SRS-XB23 is the updated version speaker of the SRS-XB22. Even though it is an updated version there are not many upgrades compared to its predecessor. This speaker is retailing for around ninety-eighty dollars currently on Amazon.

JBL Charge 4

If you like to throw house parties at all then you’re probably aware of the JBL Charge speaker because not only is it pretty easy to carry around but it also can get super loud and sounds great with music. This speaker is retailing for around a hundred and eighty dollars currently on Amazon.

Sony SRS-XB23

DESIGN:

Sony SRS-XB23

When it comes to the look and feel of the speaker, the speaker is very simple looking, nothing too flashy. It’s all really simple, you got the little mesh all the way across there, then you have your little ports right there so that your bass can escape, unlike the other side. As you can see there’s no port, so you got a little part right here for your bass to escape. You do have a little wire right there, so you can you know hang it off of something and whatnot, and or it may be called a little string. Then it is also pretty light out of surprise because it is a very long speaker. I think the JBL Charge 5 is smaller than this one. It’s really compact because it is slim, so it took up less space in my work bag.

All your buttons are on the back of the speaker. So, you have your power button and then you have like your Bluetooth connect button, your pause and play which you also know double-tap to skip a song or triple-tap to go back to a song, then your volume buttons, and then you have the battery button right there and then you have the party button and then the stereo pair button. This is like a lot of different speakers and then this is just two of the same speakers. So this thing does connect to multiple speakers and you can have a whole thing going and you connect to that through the app which is the Sony media center app. You do have a USB Type-C port for charging this and there is no aux port that’s one thing I did notice.

JBL Charge 4

This speaker is made of really sturdy material, this is really beautiful. JBL made it top-notch stuff, everything is completely waterproof, you can submerge this underneath the water and nothing’s going to go wrong with it, as long as you keep that flap closed you’re good to go. Underneath the flap will be your all connections, your USB-C charging, so you are getting fast charging, you have the 3.5-millimeter jack, and you also have a regular USB out for you that gives you the ability to reverse charge your phone, if your phone’s low battery.

All the buttons are on the top, the JBL connect button on the leftover there which lets you connect up to a hundred speakers all together wirelessly to get surround sound. Then next to it, you have the volume down button, then your power button and Bluetooth pair button with the LED, then the Volume up button, and lastly the play and pause button. I love that passive radiator over there on the right side and another radiator on the left to give you that bass and the speaker is solid.

JBL Charge 4

FEATURES:

Sony SRS-XB23

It is an extra bass speaker that’s what they really promote on this. It comes in five different colors, it comes in this blue, coral red, black, olive green, and one more color. This speaker is supposed to be a whole bunch of different proofs it’s waterproof, it’s dustproof, it’s shockproof, and it’s rustproof. So I think they’re trying to cover a whole bunch of bases, so it’s really good to take it to the beach. It is really light can fit in your little bag on the way to the beach, you don’t have to worry about the water or the sand or the dust. Any people that work out there where a lot of dust gets kicked up, this might be the speaker for you because you won’t have to worry about that since it is dustproof, so that’s really good that’s another thing about the speaker than with the dustproof the shockproof and all that is really nice.

When it comes to the battery life of the speaker, they promote 12 hours on the box on the site. I think I got eight and a half to nine hours, it was in between there somewhere at 75 max volume. As far as the app, on the app, it’ll update your speaker so definitely want to do that and get an update right away. In the app, you can easily just have the sound how you want the bass them is and the highs to get the perfect fit to get that speaker sound you want. I think it’s really important for this speaker.

Another important thing about the app is when you go into there, you can switch the speaker from mono into stereo whichever one you prefer. But when I opened the app, it was already in mono to start off. So I switched that to stereo because I prefer a stereo sound, so definitely that’s a really important thing when it comes to the app, so you definitely have to get the app in and connect it to your Bluetooth, which is a bit annoying. I wish it was just like perfect stereo, the perfect sound right away but it does need the app to boost a little bit on this because I was not impressed with what I heard before I connected it to the app.

There is a mic on this speaker for call quality because I think I’ve seen on the site as well as like they made it because it stands up it’s a stand-up speaker, you can use it as a conference call. I use these products when I’m at work testing them in the working environment and when I had it at work, people couldn’t really hear me too clearly they’re like I hear you but you seem kind of far and stuff. So I wonder if the call quality and the mic will be better like in a room or something like they’re promoting like a conference call type thing. So it didn’t really do well outside for me when it came to the call quality on this speaker.

JBL Charge 4

It’s really nice box, very sturdy, they make it really high quality. This does the reverse wireless charging, a wired charging, so you can plug your phone into it and charge it if you need to or if you have anything else you can plug into it. When we open up the box, we get a really nice artwork there, and the presentation is top-notch. Inside the box, you get the speaker itself, some documentation such as a quick start-up guide, manuals, booklets giving technical specs and then you get the charging cable that is USB Type-C, unfortunately, this doesn’t come with a charging brick.

Right off the bat, the biggest difference between the Charge 3 and the Charge 4 is that the 4 charges via a USB-C connector as opposed to a micro USB, and then the other big difference is that the Charge 4 is actually slightly bigger than the Charge 3. They both have really similar looks, so there’s still this sort of durable cloth weave coating over there, there’s sort of this rubberized material it’s totally waterproof for the IPX7 waterproofing. It still has the reverse charging for your phone or tablet, so there’s a little USB slot right there you can charge your phone or your tablet while you’re listening. There’s also the aux connector right there, so if you want to listen to this wired, you can do so.

A couple of other little small differences between the Charge 4 and the Charge 3 is that they both have a 20-hour battery life but the Charge 4 actually charges a little bit faster, so charges in about 4 hours as opposed to four and a half. Additionally, the Charge 4 connects via Bluetooth 4.2 still yields a lot of similar qualities as the Charge 3, about 30 feet range. And then one other sort of cool feature of this is that’s via the JBL Connect Plus app, you can actually connect multiple of these together so that you need to have a bunch of speakers all sort of playing in sync with each other the same song. If you know anything about JBL speakers and just sort of there’s a relative sound signature in general, they usually have a pretty bumping bass and with the passive radiators, you can feel it.

To me that actually makes the speaker really nice for parties because as you notice if this speaker had more of a high mid presence, it might get kind of annoying because that’s right where the vocals sit in the frequency spectrum anyway, so it’s a little bit harder to hear each other talk. With this, you can still sort of maintaining a sense of being able to hear each other while still feeling the music a lot. Overall, the JBL charge four is a great option for those looking for a Bluetooth speaker that not only can sort of fill up a room with sound but also just be super light and portable. You can really just sort of stick this in a corner out of the way and it’ll still get the room sort of bumping with music.

Sony SRS-XB23

SOUND QUALITY:

Sony SRS-XB23

When it comes to the bass, I honestly was not that impressed. It’s supposed to be extra bass, it’s so small. I don’t feel like there’s enough to give it that little boom that a lot of people are gonna buy this speaker for because they see in big words on the package extra bass. Even when you use the app to put the bass all the way up to 10 it sounds kind of crappy. When it comes to loudness, it gets fairly loud I have no complaints about that and definitely have the app, so you can boost a little bit of the mids and the highs and you’ll really get it loud and really nice. Fresh out of the pack for me, the settings I didn’t like and this thing is really low and then I finally got the app and I boosted those things up and it can get really loud. If you boost the right parts up that you want especially, the mids you give a little boost to the mids this thing will start screaming.

JBL Charge 4

As far as sound quality goes, I feel like for the money you cannot go wrong with it, and you cannot get a better speaker with better bass and more clarity. I love the highs and I love how the bass is in this. The bass is just enough, it could have been a little bit more but I’m okay with it because honestly, it’s good enough for the amount of money you’re spending on it. Overall, the low frequencies, the low mids really the things that carry kick drums bass guitars, big bass cents. On the JBL Charge 4, there’s actually a lot more clarity in these areas of the frequency spectrum. So you really cut it kind of comes through with more impact while just overall sounding less cloudy.

JBL Charge 4

WHICH TO BUY?

If you’re looking to get a speaker for yourself or for someone that normally uses their phone and doesn’t have a speaker or has this little small cheap one, at under hundred dollars then the Sony SRS-XB23 is good for you to buy. IF you want a huge sound experience and you are ready to afford the price of the JBL Charge 4 then it will be really good for you to buy, it will be a huge upgrade for you if you already own one small speaker.

Expert Reviews of Sony SRS-XB23:

By PCMag
Sony’s $100 SRS-XB23 speaker delivers solid audio for its size and price in an outdoor-friendly, waterproof design.

By Tech Radar
The entry-level Sony SRS-XB23 boasts a new design that moves the passive radiators to the top and bottom of the speaker…

By rtings.com
The Sony XB23 is decent for outdoor use. It has a great build quality with an IP67 rating for dust and water resistance, although…

By techguide.com.au
The Sony Extra Bass XB23 ticks all the boxes for durability, design, value, and audio quality and should be the first thing in your bag…

Expert Reviews of JBL Charge 4:

By Expert Reviews
Despite cutting a couple of handy features, the Charge 4 is an impressive fourth entry into JBL’s mid-range Bluetooth speaker series…

By What Hi-Fi?
Great sound plus rugged design and handy features equal a top Bluetooth speaker…

By TheStreamingBlog
JBL’s Charge series just gets better with every new release. With Charge 4, we’ve seen that its audio quality has highly improved…

By Tech Radar
For the money, the JBL Charge 4 is a definite no-brainer. For just $150 (£160, AU$200), you get a speaker that lasts all day, sounds great, can put…

By PC Mag
The JBL Charge 4 is an excellent option for those who want a waterproof, powerful-sounding portable Bluetooth speaker in a moderately sized frame.