Sonos Move (2019) vs JBL Pulse 4

The Sonos Move is an exemplary product and one of the very best Smart Speakers at the $350 budget.

The JBL Pulse 4, however, doesn't seem to have enough data available for us to be able to draw any meaningful conclusions. If you're considering Smart Speakers in the $190 range, you might want to check out some other options.

The Sonos Move was loved by reviewers from numerous highly trusted sources that perform in-depth objective testing, including Tom's Guide, TechGearLab, Consumer Reports, Rtings, PCmag, and SoundGuys. It did great in their roundups - it was dubbed "The best Bluetooth speaker for outdoors" by Tom's Guide, "Best for Indoor/Outdoor Use" by TechGearLab, and "Best Samsung-Compatible Smart Speaker" by Consumer Reports. That's high praise coming from sources of such caliber.

Moving on to the JBL Pulse 4: it was loved by Popular Mechanics and iMore - two reliable sources that conduct their own in-depth testing. In fact, it was named "Best for Parties" and "Ranked 3 out of 9" in their respective roundups, which points to it being a product worthy of consideration.

To get a better idea of how they fare when compared directly to each other, we analyzed review scores of sources that tested both. Techradar and Rtings, for example, preferred the Sonos Move, while PCmag rated both of them the same.

We also took a look at which sources had the best things to say about them. We learned that the Sonos Move got reviewed the highest by TechGearLab - it gave it a rating of 10, while the JBL Pulse 4 most impressed reviewers at PCmag, which gave it a score of 8.

Lastly, we averaged out all of their review ratings and observed that the Sonos Move, with its 8.6 average, performed considerably better than most Smart Speakers - the mean score for the product category being 7.4 out of 10 - while the JBL Pulse 4 managed an average of 7.2.

There's one caveat here - it might not be entirely justifiable to do a direct Sonos Move vs. JBL Pulse 4 review average comparison since they aren't priced the same and more expensive products tend to get higher review scores from some sources.