Best portable Bluetooth speakers (Oluv's personal favorites 2014)

With this list I want to show you my personal favorite portable speakers that I use on a regular basis including some explanation why I have chosen them over some others and when I use this instead of that. It's been quite a long time I wanted to prepare a kind of best-of list of all portable speakers I know or that I have heard. But after having heard so many, I thought that a real best-of is simply not doable as each speaker has its own strengths or weaknesses. After all those years it seemed I would still not be able to find a single speaker which would satisfy all my needs not until I have heard the new Denon Envaya Mini, which mixed up my whole perspective and made my whole list until now pretty useless. The Denon Envaya Mini finally persuaded me to sell all other speakers I currently own, including JBL Charge 2, Fugoo, Sony SRS-X3 etc. Therefore I would like to present *drum roll* the Denon Envaya Mini as my current favorite portable speaker.

IK Multimedia iLoud - the best portable speaker?

IK Multimedia had already announced both iLoud speakers more than half a year ago. Finally the speakers seem to have become available.
There is a big version with 40 Watts of power as well as a smaller more portable mini version.
The big one already seems to be in stock at the US amazon store, the german amazon store lists both, but only with an availabilty of 1-2 months.

IK Multimedia talks big to have produced the best sounding portable speaker so far. They claim to have bought all portable speakers available with the goal to produce one better and louder sounding. They market the speaker as music monitors for serious listening that should also please real audiophiles. There is a Mic/Guitar Input at the back, so that you can gig around on the go and use the iLoud as a monitor.

IK Multimedia also posted some interesting comparison videos on youtube, where you can see how the bigger iLoud fares against the UE Wireless Boombox, the BIG Jambox and the Bose Soundlink. I have no idea how real the videos are, but they seem rather authentic, as I recognize the sound signatures of the other speakers quite well (especially the muffled Bose Soundlink). Have a look:


There is already a review of the bigger version available on iLounge, and they liked it quite a lot.