The Ultimate Ears BLAST and MEGABLAST are good speakers overall, but there were two main areas in which we felt that they weren't quite up to snuff: pricing and features. The pricing concern has largely been alleviated, with some seriously good deals being offered on both models in the past few weeks, but we hadn't heard much on the feature front. Ultimate Ears has just announced that the BLAST and MEGABLAST will be getting Spotify Connect support, as well as some features it should have shipped with.

In total, Ultimate Ears lists four new features. The first is enhanced controls from the Ultimate Ears companion app; this includes controlling volume remotely from the app (which I've already been able to do for some time, so I'm not sure why it's listed), checking battery status by pressing the +/- buttons on the speaker simultaneously (it's live and works quite well), and starting in May, custom EQs for specific artists/genres will be made available.

The aforementioned +/- buttons.

Spotify gets two mentions here. You'll soon be able to say something like "Alexa, play my Discover Weekly," or any other music from Spotify; this was previously available on services like Amazon Music, Pandora, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and more, but not Spotify. More interestingly, Spotify Connect support is being added soon; this will make the BLAST and MEGABLAST the first UE speakers to have this integration. This way, when you're connected to Wi-Fi, you'll be able to play music directly to your speaker(s) without having to connect via Bluetooth. That's pretty neat.

Lastly, you'll soon be able to group up to eight BLAST/MEGABLASTs via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. Stereo mode will engage when two of these speakers are connected. Ultimate Ears says that this linking-up will allow for greater range and improved connection reliability due to its use of Wi-Fi.

In summation, basically everything that the UE BLAST and MEGABLAST should have been launched with, some of which were on the previous UE BOOM 2 and MEGABOOM, will soon arrive. If UE had just taken some more time to implement these things prior to launch, perhaps it wouldn't have had to discount its speakers by 50% and more just months after launch.

PRESS RELEASE