The best way to describe Bose’s new SoundLink Home wireless speaker is as the spiritual successor to the company’s SoundLink Mini 2 speaker, which was quietly discontinued in late 2018. Available in two color options, the SoundLink Home is a portable Bluetooth speaker with up to 9 hours of battery life, but it has more of an indoor design, with an aluminum chassis and no water resistance. In other words, you can move it around, but it’s probably not a speaker you’d take to the beach or on a camping trip.
Aside from its attractive design, the SoundLink Home’s big strength is its sound quality. Equipped with Bluetooth 5.3 and weighing slightly more than 2 pounds, it produces an impressive amount of bass for its compact size and also offers decent clarity. Overall, it sounds excellent for a mini Bluetooth speaker and has a bigger and somewhat richer sound than the SoundLink Flex.
However, like any small speaker, it does have its sound limitations. If you push the volume up with more complicated tracks, it can sound a bit restrained in certain frequencies as its digital processing seeks to prevent distortion. Also, it’s more suited to small- to medium-sized rooms. It filled my bedroom and home office with sound, but it felt a little too small for my living room, though it was fine for creating background music.
There aren’t any extra features apart from a built-in microphone that allows you to use the speaker as a personal speakerphone. And it works well in that capacity. Callers said my voice sounded clear, and background noise reduction was good.
On a more critical note, the SoundLink Home is somewhat expensive and doesn’t link to Bose’s companion app for headphones and other Bluetooth speakers. That’s a little weird and leaves you with no way to tweak the sound profile with some equalizer settings. While I didn’t feel a big urge to adjust the sound profile, I’m just pointing it out for folks who like to play around with their speaker’s sound settings.
