Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Bose SoundLink Max Bluetooth Speaker Review: Big Sound, Big Price”.
Hey there folks, this is the sound link Max Bo’s, new flagship, portable Bluetooth, speaker, not surprisingly, it sounds excellent for its size, but here’s the thing it cost $ 399 that ain’t cheap. So, let’s Dive Right In the review to help you figure out whether it’s worth its high price tag or not and stick around for a fun little sound test. I did with a few of my CNET colleagues here in our New York office. Okay, so truth be told, when I first heard of about the sound link Max, I was a little surprised to hear that Bose was putting out a $ 399 Bluetooth speaker after it had done so well with its earlier sound link Flex. The reason the flex was so successful was that, because it not only sounded great for its compact size, but it didn’t cost that much at least not for Bose’s product, the flex lists for $ 149, but regularly goes on sale for $ to $ 30.
Less now, at first glance, you might think the max is only about twice as big as the flex, but it’s actually more like three to four times its size. The max weighs in at 4.89 lb or 2.22 kg by comparison, the S link Flex, weighs 1.3 lb or .59 kg, so the sound link Max is considerably bigger and heftier yeah. It’S definitely easy enough to carry around, but it’s uh certainly got some heft to it. Does feel like it’s uh close to 5 lb nice powder finish, got some grip to the uh.
The finish here and the handle has some nice grip to it. Uh definitely has some heft to it. Like the flex. The max does have a premium, looking feel with a powdercoated silicon, wrapped steel body.
It’S got a little bit of a purse vibe to it, or at least that’s what some of my colleagues in this office thought and it’s designed to withstand bumps and drops. I think it would survive a drop of 3 to 4 feet and maybe higher just fine, but I’d avoid Dropping It On Pavement because it looks so nice you wouldn’t want it to get dinged up. Bose says its finish: won’t peel or flake, and the speaker is resistant to corrosion and UV light.
Max has an IP67 rating which makes it dust proof and fully waterproof. That’S said: if the speaker does get too wet the battery life, will blink Amber and white and you’re supposed to dry the speaker off and make sure there’s no water in the USBC Port before charging it, and it does come with a 15 wat power, adapter um At least in most countries the US it does and it takes about 5 hours to fully charge the speaker with that adapter and Battery is rated up to 20 hours at 65 % volume, which is good, but the number drops to only 3 hours. If you crank the volume up to max levels, the USBC Port is both charge in and charge out.
So you can use the speaker to charge your smartphone or another device. However, you can’t plug in a device and listen to audio through the USBC connector that you have to do via the auxiliary inport. If you want to connect an audio device like a CD player or an MP3 player with a 3.5 mm audio cable. Remember those things overall, this is a very well-designed portable speaker, this essentially a mini boom box, thanks to its rope, handle what’s kind of cool. Is that if you’re willing to Shell out another $ 25, you can swap in one of four optional color handle accessories a rope shoulder strap is also available for $ 45. The speaker isn’t exactly loaded with features, for instance, there’s no built-in microphone, so you can’t use it as a speaker phone which would have been good also at launch.
You can’t wirelessly link two of these speakers together to make a stereo pair or party up with a flex speaker. However, Bose reps did tell me, the linking feature is coming later this year with a firmware upgrade. Some people didn’t like that. The flex was equipped with the older Bluetooth 4.2, but Bose has avoided any controversy here. By going with Bluetooth 5.3 for the max, like Bose’s latest headphones and earbuds, the speaker supports the SBC and AAC audio codex, along with with qualcomm’s Apex adaptive codec. That works with some Android devices, okay, so on to the sound quality which is ultimately what makes this speaker special.
I didn’t crack open the speaker, but Bose says it has an articulated array with three transducers across the front of the speaker that delivers a quote: unquote: spacious, stereo experience. There are also two passive radiators to enhance Bass, Performance and some fancy digital processing to reduce Distortion. I can’t say it totally eliminates distortion, particularly at high volumes with less well recorded tracks, but the speaker mostly holds up together quite well.
There are some equalizer settings in the app to tweak the base, mid-range and treble, but I’m mostly stuck with the default setting like. I said the speaker sounds quite impressive for its size. It’S always tricky to get any sort of decent stereo separation from a very compact Bluetooth speaker, because the drivers are so close together, but Bose has done a good job, creating a wider, Sound Stage than you’d expect.
With the max giving the sound more depth and openness, it does offer more of a stereo experience than many Bluetooth speakers that claim to be stereo speakers. However, it’s still not quite the same as listening to a pair of separate speakers as far as how its sound compares to the flexus sound, the max is in another League, both in terms of volume and Bass Performance. I don’t know if it sounds three to four times as good as the flex, but it certainly sounds twice as good and probably a bit more than that. The max would make for a good beach or pool speaker, but it would also fill a small to mediumsized room with sound while taking up very little space.
I imagine it’ll find a spot in a lot of dorm rooms. I compared the max to a few other speakers, including the UI epic boom, which retails for $ 2.99 and the sound core by anchor boom 2, which cost around $ 130. I, like both those speakers, but the max did sound Superior compared to the UI epic Boom. The max sounded a little clearer and more natural with better bass definition.
The Max’s Sound Stage was also wider than that of the much cheaper soundcore boom 2, and the max was also more accurate and natural sounding that said, the boom 2 sound quality is very impressive. For the price, the base may not be quite as well defined as the Bose’s, but it’s got similar kick to it, and the boom 2 is clearly the better value, even if the speaker itself isn’t as Sleek looking as the Bose, and it does have some letting Effects for those who appreciate that sort of thing I’ve talked about how a speaker like this and even the smaller sound link Flex sound a lot bigger than their size would indicate. With that in mind, I thought it would be fun to see if some of my colleagues could guess how big the speaker was and a blind sound test, and I also wanted to ask them about the price. Is this all one speaker yeah um? So did you did you get a sense of what like what we feeling on like how big a speaker this would be.
I wouldn’t say it’s like surround sound, but it sounded really really loud um. So maybe like this big, I feel like the speaker that I just heard is like, like kind of like maybe like in that sort of size. It just feels like it had too much base to be just like a a a simple like uh portable speaker. I think um like like the size of a cantaloupe like a 9 in Cube thing, it sounded like a big speaker, but then I don’t know how close it was to me.
So maybe maybe something about this size, maybe something like a UI Mega boom size. It’S got to be smallish like maybe this feels, like you know the type of speaker you bring to the beach right. So it’s probably like I don’t know ball sized.
That’S what I would. I would say. Oh that’s a lot smaller than I was expecting that holy crap yeah know.
I thought it was much bigger! No, and it doesn’t surprise me that that’s the brand that sounds like that. So that’s fine C. All right! That’S the that’s the speaker. That’S the cantaloup size! Speaker yeah, oh okay, not round a Bose, a Bose, okay and and if it’s Bose it’s definitely like 300, it does cost $ 399.
Would you based on what you heard and what you now see? Does that seem overpriced if I did listen to music a lot like on the beach or something I might invest in that um, but I would have to like that would have to be a part of my regular life. I can already tell the $ 200 uh is way off and I can’t wait for you to tell me how much it actually is $ 3.99. Of course it is. How much is it 3.99? Ah I’ll wait for it to go on sale. Yes, it’s $ 3.99! Oh wow, okay! Well, I don’t know if I would spend that much on this, so there you have it not all, but most of my colleagues thought they were listening to a significantly larger speaker. They did think it was a little expensive at $ 3.99. However, they weren’t so shocked by the price when they saw it was a bow speaker in the final analysis, aside from its high price, there isn’t too much to complain about yeah I’d like it to have speaker phone functionality. I also wish that at launch you could stereo pair it with another Max or link it to a flex in party mode.
Bigger speakers like Sony’s alt, field 7 and jbl’s boom box 3. That cost $ 4 to $ 500 can produce bigger, sound with bigger bass. But they’re much larger speakers that can’t fit into a backpack if you can’t afford the sound link Max the slightly larger sound core by Anor. Boom 2 is a good option for a lot less money, and the flex is still an excellent little speaker that many people will prefer simply because it’s smaller and lighter and still manages to produce good sound. Alternatively, you could wait for the max to go on sale.
Like the flex, I do think we’ll see it discounted later in the year by 15 to 20 %, bring its price down to maybe 3.49 or even 329. But let me know what you think about the sound link Max in the comment section below and if you found this video informative at all hit the like button and subscribe to this website. If you haven’t already I’m David car for cnet.com, thanks for watching .