Overview LG xboom 360 lite

Overview LG xboom 360 lite

Inside the box you get the XBOOM 360 XO3 speaker itself, a USB-C charging cable, a small strap and a quick start guide. 

This doesn’t look like your standard Bluetooth speaker. It has an attractive vase design with a fabric finish and feels well made. It is a sizable speaker and weighs 3.2 kg, but with its upright design it doesn’t take up much space and should blend nicely into most home interiors. You can see its dimensions on screen.

Without attaching the included strap, there’s no obvious way to pick it up, but I tend to carry it around from the top lighting section. To attach the fabric strap you need to remove the rubber plug concealing the strap hole, unscrew the strap button and then feed the strap through the hole before screwing the button back on. Thoughtfully the rubber bung can be stowed in a recess underneath the speaker.

The speaker has an IP54 water and dust resistance rating, an upgrade on its predecessor the RP54, which was far larger too. It’s only splash proof, but it does mean it can be used outside.

Around the base there’s a rubberised power button, and next to it behind a rubber flap the USB-C charging port and a 3.5mm audio in port for a wired connection. Unfortunately this USB-C port is only one-way – for charging the unit, so you can’t use it to charge your tech which would have been useful.

The top of the unit has touch controls. These controls light up when you tap them but unfortunately the lighting turns off shortly afterwards which makes them hard to locate in low light.

There’s a battery indicator, the mood lighting button, volume controls and the play pause button activated with a single tap. To skip forward or back a track use a double and triple tap respectively. Finally there’s the Bluetooth button and status LED.

The touch buttons look very smart and minimalist but I do prefer tactile buttons. Perhaps my hands are a little dry, but it sometimes takes a couple of attempts for a successful tap. 

The top of the speaker has a 1” silk dome tweeter just visible through the speaker grille.

Underneath is the lamp and below that a 2” mid-range glass fibre woofer.

At the bottom there’s the 4” bass woofer. Hidden behind the fabric covered enclosure are dual passive radiators.

Charging the integrated 28.9 Wh battery with the supplied USB-A to USB-C cable is meant to take up to 5 hours at just under 10W, but I found it a little quicker than that.

When you first turn on the speaker with a short press of the power button, there’s an audible prompt and the Bluetooth status LED will flash ready for pairing. If you want to pair to a second device, just tap and hold this Bluetooth button until it starts flashing. By default you can play from the second device if you pause playback on the device currently active. There is a multi-mode setting you can enable in the free accompanying Xboom smartphone app that lets you play from both devices without having to pause one of them. Just enable Party mode under More product settings | Multi play mode.

You can cycle through various lighting modes and effects by tapping the bulb icon. From Ambient to Nature to Party mode and the final press will turn off lighting. There’s far more control over the lighting in the XBOOM app. In the default Ambient mode you can turn on Candle Effect to flicker the light which my daughter particularly liked. And in each of the modes you can select various presets or choose your own colours from a colour wheel or hue and saturation sliders. Any custom settings you select will remain applied even when using the speaker’s button.

In the app you can also set a sleep timer which will enable the Good Night Mode. This dims the lighting gradually as the timer counts down and chooses colours that are meant to aid sleep. This is a nice feature if you’re using it on a bedside table.

If you have multiple speakers you can also link them together using Wireless Party Link in the app. You can either link 2 identical speakers in a stereo pair or several speakers in Multi mode (supports LG XG9Q/XG7Q/XG5Q/XO3Q speakers). I only have the LG XBOOM Go PL range that do have a Multi mode but unfortunately aren’t compatible with this speaker. 

In the app you can also see the speaker’s battery level, disable the auto power-off and update the firmware.

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