"You're going to love this," says Lucy Monkman, as she taps her tablet and the opening glissando of the Chemical Brothers' Galvanize roars for the seventh time. This is the "control" song that Lucy – or Monki, as she is professionally known – has chosen as the benchmark against which to measure each of the seven entrants.

With more and more music being ferried around in phones and tablets, it has become obvious how inadequate these devices still are when it comes to playing that music out loud. Portable speakers are therefore an increasingly attractive auxiliary gadget: prices and sizes have been shrinking as connectivity and battery life improves. But how do you choose the right one, or is one speaker much like another?

"I think even people who know nothing about sound quality would really notice a difference between the quality of these," says Monki. At 22, she is one of the youngest DJs ever to have her own show on Radio 1, and she's been behind the decks in worldwide superclubs since her late teens. "When you DJ in a club, your ears just adapt, and you can tell if the highs are too high or there's not enough low-end. Me and my friends can talk about sound equipment for days on end. It's really boring for everyone else!"

So what would she look for? "With older music, it's less likely to matter if something's a bit unclear, but modern production is a lot cleaner, especially dance music. Everything's pitch-perfect, everything's quantised, so What you need is balance between low, high and midrange at different volumes. If you turn it all the way up, there still shouldn't be too much of one thing and too little of another."

Taking an interest in sound quality seems to be a professional necessity, even with little speakers like these. "There are listeners out there who know loads about the technical side, even people listening on a car stereo. Some producers will make a track on big Genelecs, but once it's mixed they'll listen to it on a laptop, to make sure it all still comes through. If you can make a tune sound good on one of these, you're probably doing something right."

JAWBONE MINI JAMBOX

eustore.jawbone.com, 255g, £149.95

"It's relatively quiet but one of the clearest here, well-balanced and it's easily the best for portability. It's so small, about the size and shape of an old NES controller. Linking two of them together is a cool idea as well, to make a mini soundsystem, as it were. Maybe that's why they don't make them too loud, so you end up buying two! It feels really sturdy, the design is appealing. I'm not surprised it's popular."

Verdict Price for sound quality is really great. It's not loud, though.

VOOMBOX OUTDOOR

divoom.com, 699g, £64.99

"It's really, really loud, and the clarity is really good, but it has no lower end. I'm torn: if it had a bit more bass I'd think this is a really good speaker. Perhaps they took the bass out so that they could get the volume really high without it sounding muddy – you need it loud if it's designed to be used outdoors. It's heavy too, which you'd expect from a rugged speaker. I can imagine it in a skatepark; when you're being active you won't be paying much attention to the levels. In fact, for an outdoors person, it's sort of perfect – it's loud and it doesn't distort – but I'd be disappointed to own a speaker that had no bass."

Verdict I can totally see it working for the outdoors type. Really bloody loud.

HARMAN KARDON ESQUIRE

harmankardon.co.uk, 1.01kg, £169.99

"It's called the Esquire and it does look like it should have a moustache. It struggles a bit at higher volume with Galvanize, but with a less heavy song it sounds really good, so maybe it's designed for listening to more gentle music. I doubt the Chemical Brothers imagined their music being played through a leather, brandy-drinker's speaker. Overall though, I feel like you're paying for the design."

Verdict Good sound quality, but less good at high volume. Quite expensive.

BOSE SOUNDLINK III

bose.co.uk 1.37kg, £259.95

"There's a little bit of white noise at the high volume, but not so much, and even though it's not super-loud it fills the room a lot better than most of the others. I think it's a really good speaker but I wouldn't call it portable. I mean, it's technically portable, you could fit it in your hand luggage, but it's not one for the beach, and you might not want to pay that much for a portable speaker anyway. The quality's great."

Verdict I like it very much, but if you want portable I doubt you'd go for it.

JABRA SOLEMATE

jabra.co.uk 610g, £79.99

"When it came on, I could already hear white noise, which is not good, but the main problem is there's too much low-end. Speakers that are directed more towards younger kids are often more bass-driven, but it's super unnecessary. For some reason people often think that if there's more bass, the track's always going to sound better. I had friends when I was about 17 who had massive subs in their cars, but no eight-by-nines in the sides, so it was just "Brrrr". There's too much bass, it drowns out the rest of the song. Also it's not as loud as I expected, you couldn't have a party with it, and I don't really like the shoe idea."

Verdict A lads-on-tour speaker, but not loud enough.

NIXON BLASTER

nixon.com, 525g, £130

"This is loud and colourful, like their headphones, but it starts to get muffled when the volume goes up. When people make a speaker as loud as this I often think 'what's the point though, if it sounds awful?' If you're just taking this on holiday, for your hotel room, it's fine. It's very light, and I thought that might be a good thing at first, but even at lower volumes the clarity of the output isn't great. I think I've heard enough from this one."

Verdict Easily portable, but best if you're not too arsed about sound quality.

DENON ENVAYA

denon.co.uk, 1.28kg, £169

"This has really good low-end, and it's not muffled. I think it's decent, but for me it's not very aesthetically pleasing. It looks like a bug's eye. I think they could have made it look nicer, because if you don't have a clue, and you're looking through a catalogue, you're either going to go for the brand you know or the one that looks good. It's the ugliest and one of the heaviest, but it's also one of the best-sounding."

Verdict Good for bass, ugly.