Bose SoundLink Mini review

You know portable Bluetooth speakers have become mainstream when big names such as Bose get in on the action. The Bose SoundLink Mini is about half the size of a brick, and surprisingly weighty. Its brushed aluminium finish looks brilliant and even feels great when you run your fingers across it. At the top of the speaker is a bank of controls: power, mute, volume, Bluetooth pairing mode and an auxiliary input switch. The 3.5mm stereo input is on the right-hand side of the speaker, just above a power connector. At the bottom of the Bluetooth speaker is a USB port, but this is just for firmware updates.

As well as a charging port, the SoundLink Mini also has a charging cradle. Drop the speaker into place on the cradle, and it’ll be charged through the contacts on its base. This means that you can just pick the speaker up and take it around the house without having to worry about unplugging anything. We were surprised to find that this relatively expensive speaker supports neither NFC pairing nor the high-quality aptX Bluetooth audio codec.

The SoundLink Mini’s speaker configuration is similar to that of most compact stereo Bluetooth speakers; there are two speaker drivers and a passive bass radiator that helps to round out the sound’s low end. The SoundLink Mini has by far the most powerful bass we’ve heard from a portable speaker.

Its lower mid-range sounds smooth and well rounded, too, but although its audio characteristics lend themselves to hip-hop, dance and even some metal, the speaker is not the all-rounder one might hope for. High-frequency sounds, particularly the upper registers of strings, brass and woodwind in chamber and orchestral music, sound a little harsh and become uncomfortable to listen to for an extended period. The emphatic bass also sounded artificially loud in these test tracks and is the first thing to distort when you push the volume up past the 80 per cent mark. Despite these complaints, the SoundLink Mini is perfectly fine for most forms of music, goes up to satisfyingly loud volumes and really lends itself to some musical genres in particular.

However, the speaker’s performance in our battery life test was among the worst we’ve seen. Bose only quotes a seven-hour battery life, but at the same volume levels we use to test other portable Bluetooth speakers, the SoundLink Mini lasted for just five hours and 20 minutes. It produces a rich, room-filling sound while it lasts, but that kind of battery life is only suitable for a speaker you want to move around the house, rather than take out and about with you. Between this and the absence of convenient features such as NFC, the SoundLink Mini seems distinctly overpriced, despite its beautiful styling.