The JBL Pulse 3 is a stunning Bluetooth speaker, both in terms of its sonic response and its visuals. Sitting somewhere between a portable Bluetooth speaker and a digital lava lamp, the Pulse 3 is holistically intended as a party machine: a small speaker you can take to the pool in the summer or use at campfire gatherings. With app connectivity, a customizable RGB light show that syncs with your music, and a surprisingly decent battery life, it might just be the most striking option in the portable speaker world.

Okay, it's a bit of a gimmick and I was preparing myself to make fun of the Pulse 3, but from the moment I turned it on, throughout the following week of real-world testing, I was continually impressed with what it could do.

There’s no way around it: the most unique part of the Pulse 3 is the LED light show the speaker puts on. We’ve all seen lights that sync to music, from the psychedelic concerts of the ‘70s to the standard Windows Media Player “visualizer” of the early 2000s. Light shows that sync to your music aren’t new, and yet JBL has managed to do something here that feels fresh.

Taking up about two-thirds of the Pulse 3’s chassis is a glossy cylindrical light diffuser housing. When the speaker is off, it looks like an opaque, dark gray slab of glass. But when you power up, this speaker really comes to life. Because the diffuser cover is so thick, the columns of RGB LED lights underneath aren’t obvious—they’re more like soft spheres that blend into one another. This allows JBL to create some amazing patterns through the “screen,” ranging from gentle rainbow gradients that ebb and flow with your music to cool EQ visualizations that feel like mini EDM shows.