The Best Bluetooth Speakers Under $100 for 2025

PCMag editors select and review products independently. If you buy through affiliate links, we may earn commissions, which help support our testing.

Bluetooth speakers have made great strides over the years. You still need to spend a bit of money to get a high-quality listening experience, but plenty of sub-$100 entries pack a powerful audio punch. PCMag has been reviewing speakers for over two decades, so you can trust that our recommendations will fit your needs and budget, whether you want something for the outdoors, something that can handle your computer audio, or something that can also control your smart home devices. Our current Editors' Choice winners are the Anker Soundcore Motion 300, the Amazon Echo (4th Gen), and the Creative Pebble Pro, respectively, for their Alexa features, rugged design, and stereo separation—and they all sound excellent. But you should still check out the rest of our picks to see if one fits your specific needs better, and scroll down past the list for some helpful buying advice.

Do Cheap Speakers Have Good Bass?

Affordable portable speakers once relied only on the strength of tiny, powered drivers to produce sound. Thankfully, passive radiators are now the norm—they don't receive direct power like the drivers but vibrate in concert with them to create a greater sense of bass. Although they won't make you think there's a subwoofer inside, passive radiators handle the lows quite well. You might notice that some speakers have tiny rubber feet on the bottom; those prevent the passive radiators from propelling the speaker across flat surfaces.

What's the Difference Between Mono and Stereo Speakers?

It seems like mono (single-driver) speakers are more popular than in the past, thanks to how effective passive radiators are compared with a second driver. We don't think this is too big a deal because you can't get much stereo separation a few feet away from a small speaker, even if it does have two drivers.

Manufacturers, of course, want to sell you multiple speakers, however, so they often offer the option to wirelessly set up a stereo pair with a second unit. The advantage here is obvious: If you connect two speakers to your phone (usually via an app), with each handling either the left or right channel, you suddenly get a wide stereo field. Of course, most of these speakers cost more than $50, so you might have to stretch your budget past $100 to do this. Alternatively, the Creative Pebble Pro satellites connect to each other via a physical wire for a wider soundstage.

Do Cheap Speakers Have Good Battery Life?

The battery range for most portable speakers typically falls between 8 and 12 hours per charge. It's always good to keep in mind that whatever number the manufacturer lists is the best you should expect. If you play your music loudly, revise your expectations downward.

Several speakers also have a built-in USB port for charging mobile devices on the go. This is useful if you're away from home and your phone or tablet runs low on juice. Remember that charging other devices takes away power from the speaker itself. The batteries in these speakers are also usually much smaller than those in dedicated battery packs, which you should consider instead if you have frequent battery life worries.

Some indoor speakers require you to plug them into an outlet via an adapter for power. These models avoid the battery issue altogether, so they are ideal as stationary fixtures throughout your home.

The Best Waterproof Speakers Under $100

The terms waterproof and water-resistant seem interchangeable, but they're poor descriptors of very precise measurements. Not every speaker we test in the below-$100 range can resist liquid ingress, but it's a far more common trait than in the past. Thus, it's becoming standard practice for manufacturers to provide a speaker's IP rating.

It's important to understand what a rating means rather than just assume a speaker that is, say, merely splash-resistant is fine to submerge underwater. There are several levels of IP ratings, so memorizing them all is trickier than it seems. IPX7, for instance, means a device can handle immersion in up to one meter of water for 30 minutes or less, while IPX5 means it can handle the splash of low-pressure water jets from any direction for at least three minutes.

If you see two numbers in the IP rating, as in IP67, the first number refers to protection against solids (often dust), and the second refers to protection against liquids. A 0 means it has no protection against solids, but an X means the manufacturer did not test the product against solids. In reality, most speakers likely have some level of protection against solids, but you can't be sure to what extent without an official rating.