Bose SoundLink Home Review: Big Sound From a Sleek Little Bluetooth Speaker

Pros

• Sleek design
• Plays loud and sounds very good for its compact size
• You can link two together to create a stereo pair
• Speakerphone capabilities
• USB-C audio

Cons

• Doesn't link with Bose app
• No water resistance rating
• Somewhat expensive

The best way to describe Bose's new SoundLink Home ($219) 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.

Read more: Best Bluetooth speakers

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 ($150). 

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.  

The SoundLink Home in light silver. It also comes in cool gray.

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Note that this is a mono speaker that uses some digital processing trickery to widen the soundstage and make the sound come across as more expansive. That's all fine, but pairing two of these speakers together as a stereo pair does produce significantly better sound. Also, you can link the speaker directly to a computer, smartphone or tablet with a USB-C cable for wired sound. As you might expect, the SoundLink Home does sound slightly cleaner and more detailed in wired USB-C mode. 

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.

The back of the speaker.

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Bose SoundLink Home vs. SoundLink Flex

The big question for a lot of people will be whether to go with Bose's less expensive SoundLink Flex speaker or this model. Bose recently released a 2nd-generation Flex that adds a few new features, including a new shortcut button, Bose app compatibility (you can now tweak the sound profile with an equalizer and create a SimpleSync connection with another compatible Bose product) and support for the AAC and AptX audio codecs. While those aren't major upgrades, they do make an excellent portable Bluetooth speaker slightly better.

The SoundLink Home does sound better than the SoundLink Flex 2nd Generation (right), but the Flex is fully waterproof and has better battery life.

David Carnoy/CNET

The choice ultimately comes down to how you plan to use these mini wireless speakers, and whether you want a speaker with a more rugged design -- the Flex -- that delivers very good sound for its size (and is rated for 3 hours more of battery life) or a less rugged speaker that offers about a 30% bump up in sound quality. You do notice the sound quality improvement in some tracks more than others. For instance, if you're playing a simple ballad or acoustic track that isn't pushing a lot of bass, the gap is less noticeable. All these compact speakers tend to have varying sound quality, depending on the quality of the recordings and the type of tracks you are playing.  

Note that the SoundLink Home currently supports the SBC and AAC audio codecs but not AptX. That omission isn't a big deal, particularly considering you get that USB-C audio with the SoundLink Home. 

Listening to the speaker in wired USB-C audio mode does improve the sound a bit. 

David Carnoy/CNET

I wish I could tell you to get one speaker over the other, but it's not quite as simple as that. However, if you expect to mainly use the speaker indoors in, say, a home office, bedroom or kitchen, with some occasional trips out to the patio, the SoundLink Home is probably the better choice -- so long as you're willing to shell out the extra dough for it. Of course, in an ideal world, you'd be able to link a SoundLink Home to a SoundLink Flex, but that option currently isn't available and who knows if it ever will be.

As far as other competing products go, there are obviously a lot of compact Bluetooth speakers out there. JBL, Klipsch and Marshall have tabletop wireless speakers (Marshall Acton 3 and Kilburn 2, for example) that are billed as home Bluetooth speakers (some also offer Wi-Fi streaming), but they tend to be bigger than this speaker, and not all of them are portable. I like the JBL Authentics 300, but it's much larger than this Bose speaker and also costs significantly more. You also have the Sonos Roam 2, which is a little smaller than the Bose but is designed to hook into your home Sonos Wi-Fi system as well as being a portable Bluetooth speaker. However, the Bose Soundlink Home does sound better than the Roam 2.    

In the end, both Bose's SoundLink Flex and SoundLink Home are excellent little Bluetooth speakers. But if sound is your priority, the SoundLink Home is the winner.

Bose SoundLink Home key specs

• Dimensions: 4.33 x 8.50 x 2.34 inches
• Weight: 2.046 pounds
• Bluetooth 5.3 (30-feet range)
• Battery life: Up to 9 hours at moderate volume levels
• USB-C charging (4 hours to fully charge, no charger included)
• USB-C audio wired mode
• Built-in microphone for speakerphone capabilities
• Stereo mode (2nd Soundlink Home  speaker required)
• Light silver and cool gray colors
• Price: $219