#BOSE SOUNDLINK REVOLVE PLUS REVIEW BLUETOOTH#

READ NEXT: The best Bluetooth speakers of 2020 Bose SoundLink Revolve review: What you need to knowįirst, the key facts: the Bose SoundLink Revolve is a battery-powered, rechargeable Bluetooth speaker. The SoundLink Revolve has been built with the same care and attention to detail that made the Bose SoundLink Mini 2 one of our favourite Bluetooth speakers back in 2015, and it sounds wonderful, too. That’s not such a bad thing, though, especially when it’s a speaker this good. It’s a Bluetooth speaker, no more, no less. It isn’t a digital voice assistant and can’t do the shopping for you. It doesn’t do anything particularly clever.

#BOSE SOUNDLINK REVOLVE PLUS REVIEW PORTABLE#

As I said at the beginning, if you're looking for a portable Bluetooth speaker, the Bose SoundLink Flex should definitely be on your radar if not at the top of your list.The Bose SoundLink Revolve is Bose’s latest wireless speaker, but it isn’t a trendsetter, it’s a follower. So even though $150 might sound like a lot to some people, it's a decent price for a top Bluetooth speaker these days and quite reasonable for Bose. And by weird, I mean that prices only seem to be going up and not much is on sale. I'll finish by saying that pricing for Bluetooth speakers has been a little weird these days, with all the supply chain issues and chip shortages. I should also note that you can link up the Flex with other Bose speakers in party mode - in other words, you can mix and match - but to get stereo you'll need another Flex. As a pair, they sound like real speakers and indeed can fill a decent-size living room with sound. You just get real stereo separation and both the soundstage and bass seem so much bigger. I felt the same way about the Sonos Roam. That's because while the speaker sounds good as a single speaker, you get a big increase in sound quality when you pair two Flexes together in stereo mode. The speaker charges via USB-C and includes a cable but no power adapter. The larger Revolve Plus ($329) has the Flex beat, but that speaker costs more than twice as much - you could buy two Flexes for the same price. That model is a bit more expensive and produces a bit more sound but it doesn't really sound any better, and I prefer the Flex's design. Some people have asked me how it sounds compared with Bose's canister-style Revolve ($219), which was marginally updated last year. The Flex does not appear to have that feature, although you can pair it with multiple devices and manually switch back and forth between them. But the A1 does offer multipoint Bluetooth pairing so you can pair it simultaneously with your phone and a computer. The Bose beats that more expensive model as well, offering more full-bodied sound.

I also like Bang & Olufsen's Beosound A1 2nd generation. The Bose's sound also has more body and depth to it than that of the UE Wonderboom 2, an older model that costs $100 and also manages to deliver good sound for its compact size. The Bose is more straightforward to use because it's Bluetooth-only. I thought it compared pretty favorably with the $179 Sonos Roam, which is also an excellent wireless speaker that has Wi-Fi as well as Bluetooth and connects to your Sonos system at home. The speaker is fully waterproof and floats. That's fine by me, but a lot of people like having some sort of EQ settings to play around with. Both speakers lack EQ settings in their apps, so you have to go with their signature sound. The Bose has a better overall tonal balance and the bass has more definition. Its bass is bigger but arguably boomier and more forward so the mids, where vocals live, can sound a little recessed. The Charge 5 is a bit bulkier and puts out a little more sound. The one that it seems to get compared to the most is the JBL Charge 5, which costs $180 and is also fully waterproof with an IP67 rating. I compared the SoundLink Flex with several other compact portable speakers. To avoid distortion, certain frequencies get ratcheted back, particularly at higher volumes. The soundstage only gets so wide and it can sound a little constrained with more complicated music tracks that have a lot of instruments playing at the same time. But it can't totally escape being a small speaker. You're going to be immediately impressed by how much sound it throws off, and decent sound at that.

Bose soundlink revolve plus review