LG Xboom Go PL5 – Review 2020

The LG Xboom Go PL5 is part of a new lineup of portable, outdoor-friendly speakers. At $129.99, its water-resistant build and color-changing LED rings are both strong points in the design department, but when it comes to audio, the PL5 delivers a less compelling performance than other speakers in this price range. Tracks with deep bass can distort through the modest drivers, which seems at odds with the otherwise party-friendly design. Ultimately, you can get better sound for the price, and you don’t even have to sacrifice the cool LED lighting.

Design

Measuring 3.1 by 7.9 by 3.1 inches (HWD), the 1.4-pound Xboom Go PL5 is available in black, with LED rings that change colors on either end of the speaker’s oblong, rubberized contour. When bass vibrates the resonators, the rings vibrate as well, creating a cool effect on top of the color changes. It has a water-resistance rating of IPX5, which means it should be fine near the pool or shower—the speaker can handle light splashing and rain, but it shouldn’t be submerged.

The back panel houses a covered connections panel, with a USB-C port for the included charging cable and a 3.5mm aux input (no cable is included for this). There are also buttons here for enabling multi-speaker modes and controlling the LED lights, as well as a pinhole Reset button.

Behind the front-facing grille, there are dual 1.75-inch drivers, aided by dual passive radiators positioned at either end of the speaker. In total, the PL5 outputs 20 watts. It’s compatible with Bluetooth 5.0, and supports AAC and SBC Bluetooth codecs, but not AptX.

The LG Xboom app for Android and iOS allows you to connect to multiple LG wireless speakers in Party Link mode—you can also adjust the setting for this mode to have speakers operate as a stereo pair, or as multiple stereo speakers. The app misses an opportunity to include user-adjustable EQ, instead providing an effect called Sound Boost, which we’ll tackle in the next section. You can toggle between this mode and default standard listening mode. You can also access your phone’s music library inside the app, though this is a somewhat redundant feature—you can just as easily access this music on your phone’s native music app.

But the app has other useful functions. You can adjust the LED lighting effect (or turn it off), and there are various options in the settings menu that can be adjusted, including an auto-power-down function. The app also offers firmware upgrades—ours was quick and easy to download and install with the press of a button.

LG estimates battery life to be roughly 18 hours, but your results will vary with your volume levels.

Performance 

On tracks with intense sub-bass content, like The Knife’s “Silent Shout,” the Xboom Go PL5 delivers an interesting experience. At top volumes, the speaker’s drivers and radiators can’t handle the bass depth and the track is riddled with distortion with Sound Boost mode on or off. However, the passive radiators, which have the LEDs rings on them, vibrate wildly, which looks pretty cool. Unfortunately, the speaker struggled with the bass on this track even at moderate levels, though the distortion at these volumes was significantly decreased.

How We Test Speakers

Bill Callahan’s “Drover,” a track with far less deep bass in the mix, gives us a better sense of the Xboom Go PL5’s  general sound signature. The drums on this track tend to sound overly thunderous on bass-forward speakers, but here, they sound fairly modest—it’s Callahan’s baritone vocals that receive the bulk of the low-frequency boosting. The mix also receives plenty of boosting in the highs, but with Sound Boost mode on, the sound signature changes radically—the high-mids and highs get far more sculpting and boosting, and the bass response takes a slight step forward. Neither sound signature is all that accurate, but those seeking crisper audio will want to opt for turning Sound Boost on.

The same is true on Jay-Z and Kanye West’s “No Church in the Wild”—the kick drum loop receives more high-mid presence and retains its punchiness to a higher degree with Sound Boost enabled. The sub-bass synth hits that punctuate the beat are more implied than delivered, regardless of the mode you’re listening in. The vocals receive a brighter, clearer response with Sound Boost enabled, however—toggling between the two, the default mode sounds almost muffled.

Orchestral tracks, like the opening scene from John Adams’ The Gospel According to the Other Mary, sound rich and balanced in standard listening mode, with the lower-register instrumentation playing a solid anchoring role. With Sound Boost on, the vocals and higher-register brass and strings on this track sound almost too bright, but depending on your listening environment, it might be ideal.

The speakerphone’s mic offers solid intelligibility. Using the Voice Memos app on an iPhone 8, we could understand every word we recorded relatively clearly, with very little Bluetooth distortion in the mix. The mic even seemed to pick up a little bit of low-frequency response, and delivered a relatively strong signal, even from a couple feet away.

Conclusions

For $130, the LG Xboom Go PL5 fails to stand out. Both the cheaper $100 Sony SRS-XB23 and the slightly more expensive $150 Sony SRS-XB33 deliver better audio by far, and the latter offers some LED theatrics similar to the PL5’s. The $150 JBL Charge 4 also brings a far more powerful audio experience, albeit without the lights. If the Xboom Go PL5 were priced under $100, more would be forgiven, but for $130, there are too many options that sound better and don’t distort for the speaker to stand out.

LG Xboom Go PL5 Specs

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Further Reading