Bose SoundLink Micro - Review 2022

Every bit the name implies, the Bose SoundLink Micro Bluetooth speaker is quite modest. Its $109.95 price might therefore come as a surprise—the comparably sized JBL Clip ii, for case, costs less than one-half that corporeality. Meanwhile, several speakers in the $100 to $150 range deliver more power and improve sound quality—admitting in a larger course factor. It'south a common conundrum with Bose—we love the speaker, but not the price. Regardless of how much it costs, though, the SoundLink Micro sounds bang-up and is surprisingly powerful for its size.

Design

Measuring three.9 by iii.9 past 1.iv inches (HWD) and weighing in at about ten.2 ounces, the SoundLink Micro is pretty tiny. The speaker is bachelor in blackness, blue, or orange, and its rounded contour is covered in matte, water-resistant silicone safe. Its IPX7 rating means it can be immersed in h2o upwards to one meter deep for upwards to thirty minutes, making it a solid poolside companion and a good option for the outdoors in the general.

The speaker is designed to sit flat, projecting sound upwardly through its perforated grille. Behind the grille, there's a single mono transducer side by side to a passive radiator, with some other passive radiator firing out the opposite panel. Bose was wise to opt for more bass response rather than calculation in a second driver for left/right channels—yous're not going to get stereo separation with a speaker this small.

The front panel holds iii buttons, located above the perforated grill. The volume upward/down buttons piece of work in conjunction with your phone's master book levels, while a fundamental multifunction push button controls playback, call management, and rail navigation, depending on how many times yous tap it. The panel also houses the microphone for the speakerphone office, which offers ameliorate-than-average intelligibility. Using an iPhone 6s, transmissions were piece of cake to understand, without any real hints of baloney or fuzziness.

The top of the speaker holds a ability push and a Bluetooth pairing push, separated by a prophylactic, flexible band. The band snaps open up and closed at the bottom, and so you lot tin fasten the speaker to a variety of objects. The tiptop of the ring is melded to the body of the speaker and houses an LED readout that displays battery life. There'southward no aux input, which is a slight bummer.

Bose SoundLink Micro inline The Bose Connect mobile app (for Android and iOS) is non essential, just it offers you a few extra features when using the Micro. If y'all have other speakers in the SoundLink family unit, you can group them together in Party Manner using the app. You lot can as well set an auto-off timer to preserve battery life, with choices ranging from five minutes to three hours (or never). The app aso lets y'all adjust the volume and control playback, equally well equally check battery life, but those features can all be done using your telephone'south congenital-in controls and the bombardment indicator on the Micro'southward top panel.

The speaker ships with a micro USB charging cable and nothing in the way accessories. Bose rates the battery life at up to 6 hours, but your results will vary with your volume levels.

Performance

On tracks with intense sub-bass content, like The Knife's "Silent Shout," the SoundLink Micro gives solid bass response for its size. It thins out considerably when yous pump the volume up to maximum—nothing distorts every bit a result, but there'due south audibly enough of DSP (digital signal processing) at play. Much of the new Grizzly Bear record produced similar results: The audio dips at loud moments, and rises when the mix gets less intense and more spare. This isn't the worst possible scenario—no one wants distorted bass—but purists looking for a speaker that doesn't do to much to the dynamics probably won't enjoy it.

Bill Callahan'due south "Drover," a rail with far less deep bass in the mix, gives us a amend sense of the SoundLink Micro's sound signature. On this track, the drums tin can sound overwhelmingly heavy on heavily bass-boosted systems, and brittle and thin on speakers that don't push button out enough low frequency response. The Micro delivers a natural-sounding response here at pocket-sized-to-loftier volumes. The drums aren't thin, simply they're never going to sound huge on a speaker this size. Callahan's baritone vocals are rich and have a generous low-mid presence, and at that place's likewise a solid dose of high-mid and loftier frequency, giving the guitars a crisp edge and the percussive attacks some nice, bright presence. Information technology's a sculpted sound, but one that ends up far bigger and richer than you might expect from a such a small-scale frame.

On Jay-Z and Kanye West's "No Church in the Wild," the kicking drum loop receives a solid amount of high-mid presence, allowing its attack to stay sharp and cut through the layers of the beat. The Micro as well beefs up the drum loop's sustain a bit, while the sub-bass synth hits that punctuate the trounce lack the deep bass you'd hear on a larger organization. The high-mid and high frequency sculpting benefits the vocal performances on this runway, providing clarity without added sibilance or harshness. This is a bass-leaning sound, with the emphasis on the lows and depression-mids, and enough brightness to proceed things reasonably balanced.

Orchestral tracks, similar the opening scene in John Adams' The Gospel According to the Other Mary, audio nifty through the SoundLink Micro. There's some boosting of the lower register instrumentation, but it's subtle, and lends the orchestra some added body, which is always welcome when listening to a speaker this size. The higher register strings, brass, and vocals never lose their bright, well-defined presence. It's a counterbalanced, articulate sound.

Conclusions

The Bose SoundLink Micro is certainly one of the better-sounding speakers we've tested in its size category. At $110, though, information technology definitely faces strong contest. The hardest thing for us to reconcile is that the SoundLink Micro is basically twice equally expensive equally the JBL Clip 2, but offers similar operation. It sounds a piddling fuller and more powerful, only there are speakers in its toll range that produce a notably bigger, impressive sound field, similar the Sony SRS-XB3. We're also fans of the Sony SRS-XB10 and EcoXGear EcoCarbon, every bit far every bit compact, durable, portable Bluetooth speakers go. The SoundLink Micro gets just almost everything right for a speaker this size, just it seems a tad pricier than information technology should exist.