I'm up on the balcony overlooking Surfers Paradise, ocean right there, and I've just carried a 100-watt party speaker out here with one hand. No trolley, no wheels, no drama. That's the JBL PartyBox Encore Essential 2 — and over the last few weeks it's been everywhere with me: the balcony, down the beach, along the Nerang River and a full karaoke night with friends at home. You might not love my singing, but you're going to love this speaker.

Today's a proper real-world test of the speaker itself — sound, battery, portability, the app and the light show — plus karaoke with the JBL EasySing Mics and the JBL EasySing Mic Mini, singing our own MrYouWho songs. One thing up front: the mics are sold separately (the speaker box is just the speaker, power cord and guides), and the full deep dive on the mics is its own review on the MrYouWho channel. Today, the speaker is the star.

▶Watch the Full Review

01Unboxing: Lighter Than You'd Expect

Lift it out of the box and it feels solid — but a lot lighter than you expect. It's 6.2kg for a 100W party speaker, which is a lot of power for the weight. There's a handle built right into the top and it measures 32 × 34 × 26cm, so it's compact for what it is. I can carry it with one hand, and that's what makes this one different: it's a proper party speaker you can actually pick up and move.

In the box you get the speaker, the power cord and the guides. And here's something I really like — there's no power brick. The power supply is built into the speaker, so it's just a normal cord straight into the wall. It's 100–240V, so wherever you are in the world, it plugs in and works.

02Around the Back: Mic, Guitar, Aux & USB-C

Have a look around the back and you've got a mic input, a guitar input, a 3.5mm aux input and a USB-C port. So this isn't just a Bluetooth speaker — you can plug a wired mic straight in, plug a guitar straight in, and that USB-C port is where the EasySing dongle goes, which I'll get to shortly.

03The Balcony Test: Sound Quality

Out on the balcony with the ocean in front of me, I put our own MrYouWho track on. Pairing is Bluetooth 5.4 straight from my phone, and it's got LE Audio — so on top of the usual SBC and AAC, it supports LC3, the newer Bluetooth codec. That's what makes Auracast work, and I'll come back to that.

Inside there's a 5.25-inch (135mm) woofer and two 20mm dome tweeters. The woofer brings the bass and the tweeters keep the vocals and the top end clear. Signal-to-noise is over 80dB, so when the song goes quiet there's no hiss — it's clean. Then there's JBL's AI Sound Boost, which analyses the music coming in real time and tunes the output to it. What that means in real life: you can turn it up and it doesn't fall apart. More volume, less distortion. Out here on the balcony, it completely fills the space.

And the light show is synced to the music — glowing patterns and strobe. Once it gets dark out here, it looks fantastic. That's when the Encore Essential 2 really comes into its own.

04Karaoke With the JBL EasySing Mics

Because it's a party speaker, we had to do karaoke. One tip before you start: update the speaker in the JBL app first. The mics are brand new, and if the speaker isn't updated, the dongle might not connect. Once it's updated, the EasySing dongle goes into the USB-C port on the back, mics on, and you're singing. You get two mics in the EasySing box, so straight away it's a duet — two mics, one tiny dongle, and that's the whole system. No pairing, no menus.

Pick one up and it feels like a real microphone, not a toy — 195g and about 22cm long. The power button is on the top of the mic, not the front, so it doesn't switch off halfway through a song. Built in you've got pitch support, natural reverb and feedback suppression, plus a shock mount and pop filter inside — so no thump when it changes hands and you're not hearing everyone's breathing.

And the speaker handled all of it at once: the music and two voices, without going muddy. The music sits underneath and the voices sit on top. The mics run up to 10 hours of singing — basically a whole night — charge in under 3.5 hours, and connect over an encrypted 2.4GHz link.

05The JBL EasySing Mic Mini: Hands-Free

The EasySing Mic Mini is the same idea, even easier. Hold the play button on the speaker, plug the Mini's dongle in, hear the tone, and you're singing hands-free. It lives in a charging case — 170g with everything inside — that fits in your pocket. Lift the mic out and it turns on; drop it back in and it turns off. We used both the Mic Mini and the EasySing Mics down on the beach, and the singing came through great.

If you want every setting and every test on the mics, the full JBL EasySing Mic and EasySing Mic Mini review is on the MrYouWho channel — it's embedded further down this post.

06The Beach Test: Main Beach

Then I carried the speaker down to Main Beach from the apartment — one hand, no trolley, no wheels, and it doesn't need them. It's IPX4 splashproof, so a bit of spray or sand isn't a problem. Out there with the waves and all that open space, it still carries. You're not losing the air the way you do with a small speaker, and the bass is still there on the sand — which is exactly where small speakers give up.

We sang along on the beach too, and the speaker picked the mics up fine — had people looking around, which is either a compliment to the speaker or a comment on my singing. This really is a portable PartyBox you can take anywhere.

07The Nerang River & All-Day Battery

Battery is up to 15 hours on a charge, from a 34Wh lithium-ion battery (4,722mAh). So you can bring it down in the morning, play music all day and still be singing when the sun goes down — we had a beautiful sunset to prove it. When you get home, it's about 3.5 hours to charge back up.

I also took it down by the Nerang River — carry it, set it up, and we're going again. This is where the light weight really matters: out of the car, along the bank, set it down, done. It just goes where you go.

08Party at Home, the App & Auracast

We had a heap of friends over and did karaoke with it — it was amazing. I couldn't run it at maximum volume because in an apartment, people get a bit upset. Dance music was fantastic and the bass boost sounds great, though when a really heavy beat comes through I found myself switching it off now and then. Classical sounded great, and with rock you can really hear the definition coming through.

The Encore Essential 2 runs through the JBL PartyBox app: music controls, EQ to bring the bass up or down, and the light show so you can change the colours. It's also got Auracast — that's the LE Audio I mentioned earlier — so with two Encore Essential 2s you can pair them together for true stereo.

⚙Full Specs

$Where to Buy + Giveaway

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▶Watch the JBL EasySing Mic & Mic Mini Full Review

Want the deep dive on the mics themselves — every setting, every test? Here's the full real-world review of the JBL EasySing Mic and EasySing Mic Mini on the MrYouWho channel:

And for more real-world testing, check out the MrYouWho Media Network.

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