Top six best cheap speakers for 2020

This is our best-scoring portable speaker since 2015 – and it’s at a great price too. This Bluetooth speaker is fully waterproof, and you have the option of a 3.5mm wired connection to connect to your devices. It’s easy to use with a choice of using the buttons on the speaker or the accompanying smartphone app. Music is engaging and detailed, and you can connect two together for stereo sound.

With a durable cylindrical design, this portable and waterproof Bluetooth and wi-fi speaker produces well-balanced, powerful and clear sound, with crystal-clear speech. It performs strongly across genres from classical to pop, and has a high maximum volume. It also has Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant integrated so you can control the unit hands-free, and the 12.4-hour battery life will see you through the day.

If you’re looking for a low-cost simple Bluetooth speaker on a budget, this speaker is ideal. It’s rare to find a small portable speaker with great sound, but this speaker excels, impressing our expert panel with its great energy and drive, and a surprisingly large sound for its size. It’s very easy to set up, with a ten-and-a-half hour battery life, and is even splash-proof as well.

This wireless speaker offers exceptional quality sound at a great price. It’s nicely compact, well build and easy to use too via its app on your smartphone. A plethora of music-streaming services are supported (may require subscriptions). Our professional listening panel praised its balanced, warm and engaging sound, packed full of detail and depth.

Among the very best-sounding smart speakers, this Bluetooth and wi-fi wireless speaker has internet radio and voice control with Google Assistant, which allows you to control the speaker hands-free plus perform tasks like setting calendar reminders. There’s also multi-room support to connect other speakers, and the beautifully warm, well-balanced sound will do justice to whatever you listen to. See how easy it is to use and what music services are supported in our expert review.

If you’re just looking for a simple, great-sounding speaker, this very attractively-priced Bluetooth speaker is just the ticket. In fact, it’s so good it’s almost a Best Buy. The rotary dials are easy to use, there’s a 3.5mm input socket and even a useful USB port for charging your portable devices. It offers plenty of bass and it does a good job with vocals, too, offering a lovely amount of warmth.

A speaker being small is no excuse for bad sound and that’s why this one is a Don’t Buy. The sound is woeful and, incredibly, you can’t use it while it’s charging. Although, in fairness, that could be a blessing in disguise.

This brand is capable of making an excellent speaker, but this one is way wide of the mark. Its battery life is a paltry four-and –a-half hours and the sound has virtually no bass, which leaves music sounding flat and dull.

This brand makes some of the best multi-room speakers, which is why we were so surprised that the same brand managed to produce our worst-rated Bluetooth speaker. The battery life is excellent at 30 hours, but that’s 30 hours of harsh, unpleasant music. Hopefully the company’s multi-room team will share some of their wisdom and make future iterations of this speaker sound better. This model is beyond saving.