Back in 1995, Jerry Harvey was the band Van Halen’s touring monitor engineer — responsible for mixing the sound from the band back through the stage monitors so the musicians could hear what they were playing.

Problem was, the drummer couldn’t hear a darn thing even with louder monitors, so Jerry created a custom earpiece with tiny speakers that delivered the much-needed feedback while simultaneously blocking out all the extra noise.

Pretty soon the rest of the band wanted the same earpieces, then it spread to other bands they were touring with and Jerry had a decent business going, selling the equipment at $3k a pop.

Seeing an opportunity, Jerry and his former wife Mindy created Ultimate Ears and grew the company with customers like The Rolling Stones, Faith Hill, Enrique Iglesias, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers until they were acquired by Logitech in 2008 for $34m.

While their main focus was still in-ear monitors for musicians, the company expanded to wireless consumer speakers with the UE Boom and, since then, they’ve continued to expand their product line with different models.

Needless to say, these guys know their sound and it doesn’t take much to hear what we’re talking about.

The Bluetooth speaker market started out pretty slow overall, but, within the past 5 years, pretty much every electronics company has their own version.

We like the Ultimate Ears WONDERBOOM because it’s affordable, sounds great, and… wait for it, all of their products are waterproof and sandproof. Plus, if you buy more than one, you can easily sync them up and get surround sound.

With a 10 hour battery life and big, can’t-miss buttons to control the volume, the speaker flat out works and you don’t have to keep it in a glass case when you go to the beach, pool, or where ever jams are needed.

Like we said before, there are plenty of options out there. Bose, Beats, Altec Lansing, JBL all have comparable speakers that check the “making sound” box. The biggest setback for all of them; however, are price and durability.

UE works underwater and has different models with different form factors depending on your preference. The WONDERBOOM is more spherical (which we like) but they also have the ROLL 2 which is more of a disc, or the BOOM 2 and MEGABOOM which are cylindrical and vary in price and max volume.

Feel free to browse around the competition but, if you’re like us and hate shelling out hundreds of dollars on broken electronics, you might as well pick a speaker that will survive whatever you throw at it (or drop it in).