The 10 Best Shower Radios
Special Honors
Best Buy This bricks-and-mortar giant offers a wide selection of bathroom-ready waterproof speakers, through their website. Many are priced quite reasonably, and offered from some top brand names like JBL and Bose. bestbuy.com
Sonos If you want to elevate your bathroom sound quality, and possibly pick up a unit that can be tethered to additional speakers throughout your home, then you're going to want to check out Sonos. Among their fans, the convenience and sound quality offered by this company's lineup is legendary, and it includes everything from the small, portable Roam, to permanently installed architectural models that integrate seamlessly with your finished ceiling. sonos.com
Editor's Notes
March 23, 2021:
Most of our existing choices for this category still made sense, so we left our list relatively untouched, although we did decide on doing away with the Treblab HD55 and Shower-Mate Wireless, with neither appearing to be available at the time of this writing.
We added the Hott HD Sound to our list, as we were impressed by its two-year warranty, 10-hour battery life and accommodations for SD Cards. In spite of all these features, it remains a reasonably priced option, and sports quite an attractive design. Its integrated microphone means you can take that call while you let your conditioner marinate during the last half of your shower.
We also added the HB Illumination, even though it offers 40% less battery life than the HD Sound. We liked that this one was built with a durable housing and an IPX7 rating that means it can be safely submerged beneath a meter of water for up to half an hour without any difficulties. It’s also available in a few fun colorways, and even if you want to stick with the black style, you can still choose between 10 accent colors by adjusting its LED settings.
With traditional media limping its way through palliative care these days, we realize that there’s less and less room in people’s lives for radios, but believing that many users still have a special relationship with their local morning show, we went out of our way to make sure that all the options on this list are equipped with an FM radio (many can tune into AM stations, as well). However, if radio isn’t really your thing, but you’d still like to add some more music into your morning routine, then you might be better off browsing through our list of outdoor Bluetooth speakers.
March 09, 2020:
For this update, we removed the Lerdy IPX5, but made sure to replace it with another model capable of hands-free phone calls, the VicTsing SoundHot. This powerful little device is small enough to cut down on bathroom clutter, but also durable enough to be clipped onto a backpack and taken out of the house.
We also replaced the Hydro-Beat Illumination with the BassPal Portable, a similar-looking radio but with an additional 2 hours of battery runtime and a lower price tag.
We also added another model from the Sangean company, the Sanjean H205. This radio might look a little basic, and it doesn’t have Bluetooth capabilities, but it’s packed with all the radio features you could want. An interesting aspect of this model is its backlit LCD screen, which - unlike a lot of fancier screenless options - allows you to keep an eye on the time while you shower.
Though all these radios are designed to handle the low-pressure water output from a standard shower, some are able to withstand much more. An International Protection (IP) code will indicate precisely how much water each product can withstand. Full descriptions of these codes are simple to find online, but essentially, the higher the IP code, the higher the water intensity the radio can handle.
For example, the Treblab HD55 is rated IPX4, which means it is “protected against splashing water at any angle.” The Hydro-Beat Illumination, on the other hand, is rated IPX7, indicating that it is “protected against immersion in water up to one meter at normal pressure for 30 minutes.”
Once you know what you’ll be doing with your radio, these codes will come in very handy. Keep in mind though, some products may have variations in the type of code, (Japanese products may use JIS codes instead), so be sure to research exactly what each one means.
Ideas Set To Music
If you're looking to unwind, you can fire up your favorite classical radio station or connect your devices via Bluetooth for a more controlled experience.
I don't know about you, but my best ideas come to me when I'm in the shower. There's something about the privacy and serenity of that space that facilitates thinking like little else on earth. Maybe it's because I don't have any clothes on.
Whatever the exact cause, having the right music playing in there with me does nothing but elevate the quality of those ideas and my ability to remember them. Any time a song comes on that was playing when an idea struck, I am reminded of the figurative light bulb that switched on in my head.
It's possible that you don't care too much for critical thinking in the shower, though, that you just want to take that time by yourself to relax or to wake yourself up in preparation for the busy day ahead. Those are equally important uses of the space and they are equally bolstered by the proper music.
If you're looking to unwind, you can fire up your favorite classical radio station or connect your devices via Bluetooth for a more controlled experience. On the other hand, if you want to get pumped up, you can tune into a wild dance station or pop on your favorite Daft Punk record. Since manufacturers build these radios to hang pretty much anywhere in your shower, you can get that speaker right up to your face and belt out the lyrics where no one can hear you.
Make sure you stock up on batteries, though. There's nothing worse than getting halfway through a shower only to have your radio conk out on you while you're covered in soap.
Features To Divide The Waters
At first, you might not think that your choice of radio shower is all that important. It's true that a lot of them look pretty similar at first glance, and it's a real possibility that getting to know the ins and outs of a product can activate the risk of perpetual dissatisfaction, no matter what you take home.
One could argue, however, that there are enough meaningful differences among these radios that you can find the one best-suited for your shower with minimal effort and fantastic results.
At first, you might not think that your choice of radio shower is all that important.
Take, for example, the radios with anti-fog mirrors built in. Here's a very distinct feature that's only available to you on a couple of the radios we've listed. If you don't need to shave your face in the shower, you probably don't need that mirror and you can get yourself a much smaller unit without sacrificing any other great features. If you do shave in the shower, or if you're a manic narcissist who needs to look at yourself as often as possible, then you know the mirror models are right for you.
Then, of course, there's Bluetooth connectivity, which is a phenomenal feature to have if you're going to use it. But perhaps you want to listen to NPR in the shower every morning so you can start your day more informed than your neighbors at work. It sounds like you might not need to connect your smartphone to your shower, which can save you a little money. That said, if the prices aren't too dissimilar, I'd recommend grabbing a shower radio with Bluetooth, just in case you ever desperately need it.
Radio, It's Cleaning Up The Nation
The history of the radio itself is long, storied, and the developments in both science and technology leading to its advent reach back hundreds of years. The first transmission of sound over the airwaves took place in the late 1800's, and by 1894, the first wireless telegraphy machine came to market.
The history of the radio itself is long, storied, and the developments in both science and technology leading to its advent reach back hundreds of years.
Fast forward nearly one hundred years and you will have witnessed the introduction of the radio into households across America, through F.D.R.'s fireside chats, observed the revolution of the television into the digital age, and you come upon the first shower radio.
It's hard to believe that radio transmission existed for a solid century before being waterproofed for the consumer and installed in the shower, but it wasn't until 1985 that Salton Inc. picked up a patent by an inventor named Andrew Mark and developed the first mass-produced shower radio. It had the unfortunate sultry name Wet Tunes, which I assume meant that it was only sold in adult video stores.
More recently, these units have incorporated anti-fog mirrors, CD players (now defunct), Bluetooth connectivity to your mobile devices, and even a little mood lighting should you have some company joining you for a clean-up.
Ideally, the showers of the future will have decent sound systems built into their bathrooms, with Bluetooth technology that can be upgraded through the years. It would be a fairly simple installation process and it's nowhere near as expensive as it once was to realize.
In the meantime, these portable shower radios will serve your needs under the steady stream of water, and you can take them out into the world with you if you ever need to rock out in the rain.