I bought a cheap bluetooth speaker at the drugstore. It worked very well, so I thought I would buy something better, more expensive, higher quality. JBL is a great brand, but, unfortunately, the speaker I bought simply did not work. The sound from it was OK for a minute, and then it would begin to stop, resume, stop. etc. This happened repeatedly. I thought at first that the problem might be with the bluetooth connection, but I checked multiple times and the connection itself was fine. When I used the cheap speaker again--no problem at all. So I packed up the JBL speaker and returned it to Amazon. I then bought another, better, somewhat more expensive speaker at the drugstore. I am listening to it now, and it's very good. Perfect reception and nice sound.

Playtime is only about 4 hours at best. Unless you’re listening at minimum levels, 12 hours of playtime is a pipe dream...

Both of my Flip 5's have broken--one after eight months of use and one after 6 weeks. They sit on my shelf-- I don't haul them around--I don't tax them in any way, they just sit in one spot. They have broken in exactly the same way. First the battery life goes-- I will have just charged it earlier that week and suddenly it's out of batteries where the battery had great life before. Then it starts sputtering or won't find my phone on blue tooth and this last one will only play if it's hovering in a certain position--if it rolls out of that position, it stops. I'm really disgusted. How could two of them break in exactly the same way unless a whole bunch of them were made wrong. When I get in touch with JBL, I'm directed to a robot. I'm either going to have this resolved by Amazon or I will open a dispute with Amex. A product like this should last years not 8 months or six weeks.

If you just need a good sounding portable speaker with heavy bass range and no wires then this might be a good option, but far better sounding units out there at less price if you don’t care about not having a JBL tag. However, they advertise if you buy two, you can configure one for left and the other for right channel operation. Forget it. First it’s not easy as they force you to download a special “JBL connect” App. Which is required to reset the speakers each time as they keep defaulting to mono mode. In addition, the app is next to worthless as it keeps having problems recognizing any speakers are present requiring many many attempts to connect. Finally, in order to actually use this piece of crap software you first have to agree to TWO (2) totally separate licensing agreements, which are about 1000 pages long and describe all the snooping they plan to do regarding when you are using the speakers, the other connected devices, where you are physically when you are using them, and also agree to let them send you all kinds of JBL and third party advertisements to your email address. The most recent Federal Budget had fewer legal terms, conditions, and far less pages than these speakers require! Please explain why a very basic utility program needed only to reset default settings on something you just purchased suddenly requires the same licensing and usage monitoring as purchasing MSWord or Excel?. Save your money, and don’t blame me if you think I’m exaggerating.