Wow just saw this today and picked one up at Costco.

I was in the market for one of these and I literally bought one at Best Buy without the mic for $349 on Sunday. Then yesterday I saw Woot for $279 and ordered it and returned Best Buy. Now casually strolling Costco I see this deal and picked it up. Successfully cancelled my Woot order in transit without shipping or restocking fees.

Hey all! I'm in charge of organizing my company's participation in our local pride parade. Music is a huge part so speakers are important.

Last year, I picked up two of the ION Total PA 650W speakers from Costco and powered them with a little generator. It wasn't loud enough. This year I picked up two more of the current generation, they tweaked them slightly but basically the same planning to run all 4. After buying them I started researching here and it seems like people highly recommend the JBL PartyBox 310 for outdoor events.

My question is - do you think I should continue with the current plan of using 4 of the Costco ION Total PA 650W speakers (one facing towards the front of the truck, two facing diagonally out the bed of the truck to the rear for the people on the sidelines viewing the parade, and one on the tailgate facing the people walking directly behind the truck) or do you think I'd have better luck purchasing 2 PartyBox 310s? Or even 2 PartyBox 710 speakers?

I don't want complaints about it not being loud enough again this year - my budget is around $1,500 if I need to purchase something new. I don't require battery power as I'll have the generator.

Thanks for your help!!

I work in the Majors department of my Costco and I love it! Really the only annoyance I have is with members is when someone connects to our biggest and loudest Bluetooth speaker (the aforementioned JBL Partybox 1000), crank the volume to max, set it to play something explicit, and walk away.

We're right next to Optical and Hearing so it's disruptive for a ton of departments, not to mention distressingly loud and landing US in trouble for not keeping closer watch.

I'm gonna try and orchestrate a move so that the Partybox is always within sight of our main base of operations on one of our phone tables, but I know that'll be tricky since JBL is often paying for an end cap space. Currently, the way we deal with it is to listen very closely to if the music drops out for the confirmed connection chime. If that happens, we just go turn the speaker off entirely for about 10-20 minutes, and then reset the Bluetooth connections by holding down the Bluetooth connection button until it does its confirmation chime.

Still, we can't always get to the speaker in time to shut it off, especially if we're actively assisting another member with questions/MPU slips/etc. More than once, someone has messed with the speaker and I excuse myself to go turn it off, but the volume has already driven the members away.

Management always wants us to have the volume at 60 or higher to attract members to the area, but I've been here since April and I've never seen one of these things sell. It also makes it extremely difficult to hear/understand members nearby and assist them, especially when the speaker is closer to the jewellery case. I've asked management about it but not got any clear solutions yet.

And it's always, always teenagers/young adults. Grown men love to mess with the DJ buttons and it sounds godawful when they sit and do it for 3 minutes and we can't even move the thing out of reach.

Really not sure what else we can do. Possibly a set playlist on a USB but that is going to get so old so fast, especially when we usually change our set lists based on the time of day/traffic demographic.

Stories, advice, solutions?