How to Charge a Bluetooth Speaker: 8 Reliable Ways (With a Power Tip)

In this post, I’ll take you through how to charge a Bluetooth speaker.

Charging a Bluetooth Speaker

The USB charging cable supplied with your speaker is key to how you do so.

With it, you can connect to any power source to provide the charge.

How To Charge a Bluetooth Speaker

Let’s first look at how most folks charge their Bluetooth speaker. And that’s by way of an AC outlet at home or in the office.

1 How to Charge a Bluetooth Speaker with an AC Adaptor

A USB AC adaptor may or may not come with the speaker. If not, I usually have one lying around, but it’s a small expense at your local store.

How to Charge a Bluetooth Speaker with an AC Adaptor

Here’s how to do it:

  • You can turn off the speaker power button, but it’s unnecessary as you can use your Bluetooth speaker while charging it.
  • Connect the USB end of the cable to the USB AC adaptor.
  • Connect the other end of the cable to the speaker charger port.
  • Plug the USB AC adaptor into an AC power outlet.
  • Turn on the power outlet.

Sometimes though, you may not have access to an AC outlet.

Fortunately, you are not limited to one method of charging a Bluetooth speaker without a charger.

As long as you have a working micro USB port on your speaker, there are several ways.

So let’s get right in and explain each method.

2 Charge Your Bluetooth Speaker with a Smartphone

How to charge a Bluetooth speaker with a phone? It’s simple. Use the supplied USB cable to connect the phone to the speaker USB port.

The amount of charge the phone can give your speaker is limited to the phone’s storage capacity.

In all honesty, this is probably only a temporary solution because it will drain your smartphone battery. You don’t want it to be connected so long that your phone battery dies, and you then need to charge your phone!

3 Use a Power Bank to Charge Your Speaker

Using a power bank to charge your Bluetooth speaker is better than using your smartphone as you won’t be draining your phone battery, so you’ll get to use your phone as long as you usually would.

Power Bank

Power banks are built for purpose with built-in batteries storing power ready to be used to top up your Bluetooth speaker’s built-in battery. And depending on their capacity, a power bank could top up your speaker more than once without itself needing recharging.

Again, like with the smartphone, you connect the power bank to your speaker with a USB cable.

Power banks are an extra expense and need recharging like your speaker, but they offer peace of mind when you’re away from AC power. In addition, it’ll mean you won’t run out of sound for the all-night party or all-day outdoors.

4 Charge by Using a Solar Charger

Charge By Using a Solar Charger

How to charge your Bluetooth speaker using a solar charger is no different from using a power bank.

You connect the solar charger with the speaker using a USB cable.

Essentially a solar charger is the same as a power bank except that a solar charger is recharged by the sun via solar panels.

Some solar chargers have dual flexibility. They can be charged by the sun or via an AC power outlet.

Some solar chargers provide straight-through power and don’t have storage capacity, so these are reliant on available sunlight and not the best option.

If the charger stores power entirely by sunlight, there is the downside of having enough sunny days to recharge the solar power bank completely. It takes a little discipline to expose the charger to regular sunlight to help keep the battery charged topped up.

5 Using a Laptop to Charge Your Bluetooth Speaker

How to charge a Bluetooth speaker using your laptop is much the same as with your smartphone, except that the laptop will have a greater battery capacity to recharge your speaker.

So it is less likely to run out of battery, and you’ll be able to keep using your laptop on the battery for a longer duration than you would the smartphone.

As with the smartphone and power banks, the connection is via a USB cable.

6 Use a Car Charger for Your Bluetooth Speaker

Use a Car Charger for Your Bluetooth Speaker

You can use the battery in your car or vehicle as a means to charge your Bluetooth speaker.

If your car is pre-2006, you could use the cigarette lighter combined with the proper adaptor and cable to connect and charge your speaker.

By 2006, USB slots started appearing in cars. So, now all cars have USB ports built into the in-dash sound systems. So as with all previous options, you can connect your speaker using a cable.

With car charging, the power supply usually is weaker than regular chargers, which means it’ll probably take longer to charge your Bluetooth speaker.

But it is worthwhile as a standby option if you have no other option available.

7 Using Wireless Charging for Your Speaker

Wireless charging your Bluetooth speaker is different from all the previous options in that you don’t need to use a cable. Using this option means you avoid the hassle of plugging in and out of both your devices.

Wireless charging (also known as Inductive Charging) uses a charger, usually as a mat, a puck, or a stand that connects to a power outlet.

Using Wireless Charging for Your Speaker

Your speaker needs to be compatible with the wireless charger before you even consider wireless charging as an option.

8 Charge Your Bluetooth Speaker with Your Own Wireless Charger

If you’re tech-savvy, you may like to consider creating your wireless charger to charge your speaker.

You’ll need a soldering tool, jack solder, an inductive charging set, a 9v charger, and a Bluetooth speaker with space inside to insert your coil. In addition, you need to know all the steps required and, last but not least, the skill and confidence to create the charger.

If I’m not mistaken, this is unlikely to be a viable option for most of us. Certainly not me!

9 Bonus Charging Tip: Invest In A Micro USB Cable

As you’ve seen, most of the options to charge your Bluetooth speaker require a cable to connect between the charger and the speaker.

A great move you can make is to buy a micro-USB cable to carry with you. These don’t cost much and are small enough to fit into a purse or bag.

Micro USB Cable

Not only will you always have it to hand to use with the above cable options, but you’ll have the added flexibility of being able to use it wherever there is a publicly available micro USB port—places like cafes, restaurants, and airports.

So with the USB cable, you have several ways to charge your Bluetooth speaker.

But the success of your charging is dependent on the quality of your speaker battery.

Let’s consider some ways in which you can maintain that quality.

Tips to Increase Battery Life

If you can increase the life span of your Bluetooth battery, you’re on a winner—a longer speaker life enjoying the sounds you love and delayed expense buying a new speaker.

Let’s look at how you might do this. First, it benefits both lengthening the time between battery charges and, ultimately, battery life.

  • Keep Your Speaker on Charge Whenever Possible – this is a balancing act. You don’t want to have your speaker battery hooked in at 100% for long, but you should take every opportunity to charge your battery to capacity. 
  • Not Using Your Speaker? Turn It Off – no surprises here. There’s no point leaving your speaker turned on when you’re not using it. Did you hit pause or the off button the last time you listened to your favorite music or podcast?
  • Keep Your Speaker Cool – too much heat over time can degrade the quality of your battery. So it pays to keep the speaker out of the sun or a hot trunk as much as possible. But not at the expense of a day at the beach! No point in having a speaker that you don’t use for the ideal times.
  • Use Airline Mode – it’s possible to use the speaker for some things still but turning on airline mode, where you can, reduces power usage by stopping notifications of text messages, emails, push notifications, etc.

Despite all your efforts, though, and inevitably over time, the battery may no longer charge.

Replace Your Battery If It’s No Longer Charging

With your Bluetooth speaker, you may get to the point where charging is not working because the battery is dead or the battery is the source of your charging issues.

Empty Battery Indicator

The obvious solution to this is to replace the battery with a new one.

But there could be a couple of issues that arise:

  • Not too many speakers have easy to replace user-replaceable batteries. With most Bluetooth speakers, you’ll have to send your speakers to an authorized service center or the factory for replacement. The cost of doing so may mean that it’s cheaper to upgrade and buy a new set of speakers.
  • Many Bluetooth speakers don’t have replaceable batteries. Unfortunately, in this case, you’ll have to stretch to buying new speakers. 

Frequently Asked Questions

How to Charge a Bluetooth Speaker without a Charger

Earlier, we covered how you can charge a Bluetooth speaker without a charger:

  • Charge with your phone
  • Charge with a power bank
  • Charge with a solar charger
  • Charge with your laptop
  • Use a car charger
  • Use wireless charging

How to Charge Bluetooth Speaker with AUX Cable

Unfortunately, you cannot charge a Bluetooth speaker with an AUX cable.

The AUX cable only sends audio to the speaker and not power.

How to Charge Bluetooth Speakers with USB Port

All of the ways I’ve discussed earlier can charge Bluetooth speakers with a USB port because you can connect to the speaker using the USB cable supplied with the speaker.

You can use a USB AC adaptor to charge using an AC outlet and use the USB port in the speaker to connect to your phone with the phone USB cable.

And you can charge with the USB port in your laptop, power bank, solar charger, or car charger.

How Long Does it Take to Charge a Bluetooth Speaker?

How long it takes to charge a Bluetooth speaker mostly depends on a combination of the battery capacity of the battery installed in your speaker and the output rate of your charger.

You can calculate a rough estimate by dividing the capacity by the output rate. For example, if your Bluetooth speaker has a 2000 mA capacity and your charger has a 2100 mAh output, charging it will take around an hour. But this timing can be affected by cable quality, charger quality, and battery age.

It will take longer for batteries to charge from an empty state and less time after the first charge unless you let it run down entirely.

Most speakers in the mid-range take 3-4 hours to fully charge, while a decent-sized speaker could take 5-6 hours. But this is no more than a very rough guide.

You may find an estimate of the time it takes to charge in your product documentation.

Charge a Bluetooth Speaker Summary

In this post, I’ve presented many ways on how to charge a Bluetooth speaker.

I’ve answered in the affirmative to the question, “can you charge a speaker with an AC adaptor?”. Then I examined how to change a Bluetooth speaker without a charger using a cable, i.e., with a phone, power bank, solar charger, laptop, and car charger.

In addition, I’ve discussed how to charge with a wireless charger.

I’ve given some tips on how to extend the life of your speaker battery.

And finally, what to do if the battery is not charging.