Ultimate Ears Miniroll review: Reliable remix

There was a time when buying a cheap, small or portable speaker meant settling for hardware that might only be a minor improvement on what a modern smartphone might be able to do. By comparison, the Ultimate Ears Miniroll is a reminder of how things have come.

If you're in the market for a new portable speaker on a budget, the Ultimate Ears Miniroll ticks a lot of the right boxes and it doesn't cost an arm and a leg. It's a pint-sized speaker that swings above its weight with a price-point that's hard to beat and a design that's easy to like. That formula might sound like a familiar tune but it's typically a crowd-pleaser.

In Australia, the Ultimate Ears Miniroll is available at a recommended retail price of $99. That's more than the cheapest portable speaker might cost you but not that far out of line relative to what you can expect from rival audio brands like JBL and Sony.

As usual, though, you might be able to find it for less if you look around. Check out the table below for the best deals for the Ultimate Ears Miniroll speaker in Australia.

Priced at $99, Ultimate Ears' latest portable speaker remixes the design language of the older UE Roll and UE Roll 2 speakers with more sustainable material design. To cut to the chase, the compact form factor found here is a fresh take on the familiar. All told, the UE Miniroll weighs just 279g and while it is (mostly) made of recycled materials that choice doesn't come at the cost of durability or versatility. The speaker comes with an IP67 rating for water and dust resistance and is thick enough to avoid falling into the bass-related pitfalls of its predecessors.

Like that first impression, the controls here are an echo of what you've likely seen before. There's a pair of buttons used to pause and play music (as well as handle functions like turning the speakers on or setting them into pairing mode) on the left-most edge. As is the style for the brand involved, the volume keys are built into the front of the speaker.

Even if it's nothing new, Ultimate Ears' tendency to blur of the lines between functionality and flair when it comes to design is still a winner with me. Miniroll also features a built-in strap plus a single USB-C port used for charging.

Aside from the material choices, the strap is probably the most novel element of the Miniroll's design. It isn't complicated but it does give you a little more flexibility when it comes to how you use the hardware. The ease with which you can strapping or hanging the speaker onto something adds versatility that its rivals lack.  That said, I do wish the strap itself had a bit more stretchability or length to it as I sometimes found it fell short of what I needed to make it work in a given situation.

In terms of colors, those who mean to pick up the UE Miniroll at launch have three options to choose from. The speaker comes in black, blue and grey. If you hold off, there will also be a a pink model available through Ultimate Ears directly at a later date.

When it comes to sound quality and everyday performance, I was mostly satisfied with what the Ultimate Ears Miniroll had to offer. Under the hood, the oval-shaped enclosure seen here incorporates a 45.6mm custom driver, a set of bass radiators and a tuned EQ. The results that those components deliver mostly met the moment. The speaker might be lightweight but the volume goes all the way up to 87 decibels.

Music played through the Ultimate Ears Miniroll sounded clear, loud and surprisingly bassy. That said, your mileage here is going to be dependent on how well you can angle the speaker in a given environmental. If the Miniroll is lying flat on a surface or pointing at the roof above you, you're not going to get as good an soundscape you would if you can point it directly towards you. Naturally, the built-in strap helps with this but the lack of a kickstand has its drawbacks.

Despite its size, the Ultimate Ears Miniroll offers a respectable 12 hours of battery life on a single charge. That's not the longest battery life you can find a speaker of this weight class, but it's more than enough for the thrifty price. The main catch to this is that there's not much in the way of fast charging.

Another shortcoming here is the iffy integration with Ultimate Ears PartyUp. While you can pair multiple Miniroll speakers up using this feature, you can’t do the same using other speakers available from the brand. This isn't exactly a cardinal sin but it a little annoying as you're much more likely to already own one of the former than you are the latter.

In terms of range, the Miniroll will play nice with anything that's got Bluetooth and is within around 40 meters of it. The speaker also comes with limited multipoint support, which means you can connect up to two sources at once. This isn't exactly revolutionary but it is still nice to have in a sub-$100 speaker.