Key Takeaways
- The Bose SoundLink Home delivers top-notch audio quality in an aesthetically pleasing package.
- Simple and elegant aluminum buttons on the speaker that are self-explanatory and have LED indicators.
- The speaker excels in delivering rich bass, but lacks customization options that could have elevated its performance.
People expect great sound quality and build quality from Bose’s premium-priced products. The Bose SoundLink Home—a bass-forward Bluetooth 5.3 speaker—meets these expectations, although the lack of a companion app prevents it from reaching pitch perfection.
Bose SoundLink Home
$199 $219 Save
$20
A wireless Bluetooth speaker with well-defined bass and a sleek design, plus the ability to pair two units together for stereo sound.
- Great audio quality
- Striking modern design
- Can take phone calls
- Optional wired audio over USB-C
- Bass can be overpowering
- Cannot connect to Bose mobile app
- No power adapter
Price and Availability
The Bose SoundLink Home retails for $219 and comes in silver or black colorways. It’s sold exclusively through the Bose web store at the time of publication. A USB-C to USB-A cable is included in the box, though no power adapter is included, so you’ll need to supply your own.
A Real Looker
Bose has a lot of visually pleasing speakers, but few match the artistic flair of the SoundLink Home. The company is flexing its industrial design muscles here with an aluminum band that doubles as a stand and an eye-catching concave semicircle on the speaker’s fabric-wrapped visage. It’s a style that has the bold-but-minimalist pop of modern art while simultaneously blending in with just about any home environment. For my money, it’s even more of a looker than Bose’s higher-end speakers.
The bottom of the aluminum band has padding that doesn’t stop the speaker from slipping, though it does prevent scratching on tables and other surfaces. I’d actually argue the lack of friction is a boon for this product as it makes it easier to pick up. This is helped by the overall lightness of the device and a concave bar on the backside that makes for a perfect grip. Plus, nothing about this speaker feels delicate, so I never felt in danger of damaging it while handling it. However, caution is required around water and dust as it’s resistant to neither.
I also must praise how Bose designed the charging cord to complement the speaker. It’s color-coded, and the USB-C connector that plugs into the unit’s left side is molded into a rectangular shape to ensure the cable flows behind the unit. It’s a particular boon for anyone who obsesses over hiding wires, or just wants a clean aesthetic on whatever mantle the SoundLink Home sits upon. This attention to detail helps justify the premium price tag.
One Button, Many Uses
The simple design translates to the five aluminum buttons adorning the top of the band: power, Bluetooth, volume up and down, and the multi-function button. These are largely self-explanatory and have a satisfying low-profile click to them, with LED indicators for the power and Bluetooth buttons. You’ve got to love it when a company keeps things simple with poise.
The odd one out among this group is the multi-function button. Combinations of pressing (sometimes multiple times) and holding gives you wide control over your media. This includes playback-related functions like play and pause, bringing up a digital assistant (like Siri) on a connected device, and controlling calls. It’s pretty similar to controls on other wireless headphones and speakers, though I felt it was less prone to errors than the multi-function buttons on other devices.
My only gripe is that I had to look up inputs online as there isn’t a manual that lays it out in the box. Some of these aren’t intuitive without having them spelled out. At least Bose’s web page on the multi-function button lays it out well.
Quality Sound, Depending on How Much Bass You Like
Enough talking about looks; they’re nothing without the sound to back them up. Luckily, the Bose SoundLink Home delivers in this singular area critical to any speaker, provided you love your bass.
The clarity and depth of this speaker is pretty astounding considering its size. It feels weird to say a $219 mono speaker punches above its weight, but it does. Every layer of music comes through with clarity. Blasting the volume at levels that are frankly unsafe for both your ears and the speaker will cause distortion, but on the flip side, it’s impressive how dynamic the speaker sounded at very low volumes.
The caveat is that this speaker plays favorites with its frequencies, putting bass on a pedestal above all. Expect this to be the prominent sound profile of any music you listen to on it. If you’re all bass all the time, then you’re in for a treat, but if your preferences change based on artist and genre, this uniformity could prove disappointing. It also tends to overemphasize deep voices in podcasts and other spoken content.
This could have been easily fixed by giving the Bose SoundLink Home access to the Bose Connect app, the company’s mobile phone hub for tweaking equalizers and other features of their speakers and headphones. Providing listeners with the ability to personalize their sound is always a good call and for a high-end product with Bluetooth connectivity, it’s somewhat jarring that this was left out. Including this feature could elevate this speaker to best-in-class, but instead, it simply excels at its one built-in sound profile. As impactful as that profile may be, I felt the lack of options pretty quickly.
One feature Bose pushes with the SoundLink Home is the ability for two units to link up for stereo sound. The company even sells a two-speaker bundle for this purpose. Unfortunately, I only had a single unit on-hand for this review, so I can’t speak to the stereo functionality. If it works well, I can only imagine it making this speaker even more immersive, though I was pretty happy with what a single unit offered me.
Have a Talk Through Your Speaker
Multipoint pairing works well for having multiple devices connected to the speaker, and it does a good job of prioritizing which to connect to at any given time. This includes hands-free calling thanks to the speaker’s built-in microphones.
My understanding of this speaker’s call quality is anecdotal to the people I talked with on calls. Whether I had the speaker in an open or enclosed space, I was told that the sound was cavernous, but nobody I spoke to had any issues understanding me (provided I remained relatively close to the unit).
As for the experience on my end, controlling calls with the multi-function button was easy, and I had no issues understanding the people I talked to. It’s not how I’d typically opt to take calls—especially considering that it requires me to remain relatively immobile to stay within the microphone’s range—but it’s nonetheless nifty.
The Battery Has an Announcer
If you regularly use the Bose SoundLink Home, expect to charge it every few days. Bose’s claim of “up to nine hours” feels pretty much in line with my experience, though notably, the speaker does a good job maintaining its battery life when shut down. A voice announces the remaining battery every time you power it on, which meant I never ran into a scenario where it unexpectedly died on me.
Unfortunately, SoundLink Home doesn’t come with a power adapter. The good news is that virtually any adapter will work just fine, as the speaker charges at a modest 7.5 watts (and only takes four hours to reach a full charge). Though, to editorialize for a moment, I wish I didn’t need to put this spiel in virtually every review. Just pack in a power adapter, tech companies!
Should You Buy the Bose SoundLink Home?
Bose put together a great-sounding, sharp-looking speaker here with the Bose SoundLink Home, even if it’s limited by its inability to utilize Bose Connect’s suite of equalizers and other personalization features. If that’s not a deal-breaker for you, you’ll probably enjoy the mix of audiovisual beauty of this little music box that can.
Bose SoundLink Home
$199 $219 Save
$20
A wireless Bluetooth speaker with well-defined bass and a sleek design, plus the ability to pair two units together for stereo sound.
