Have a cigar. There’s a brand new child within the Bose sensible speaker line. The Bose Home Speaker 300 is the littlest and least expensive of 4 fashions in a quickly increasing talk-to-me speaker household first introduced in August 2018.
The 300’s kinship to its siblings is unmistakable in each industrial design and efficiency. If you relish Bose’s signature sound, you’ll be blissful to convey this new child residence—particularly should you’ve already purchased one thing else within the lineup and also you’re seeking to construct out a Bose-based multi-room audio system.
Be forewarned: Leading a product line with a small, inexpensive, affable performer is usually a maker’s finest technique to lure you into investing in the remainder of its product line. If at first it does succeed, you’ll store, store once more—maybe for a bigger-voiced, barely brighter-sounding Home Speaker 500. Or for certainly one of Bose’s well-received sensible soundbars—the Bose Soundbar 500 or the bigger Bose Soundbar 700—to cumulatively fill your home with synchronized (or disparate) sound.
The child Bose Home Speaker 300 (left) doesn’t fall removed from the bush that gave us the Home Speaker 500 (proper.)
That customer-nurturing technique has labored effectively for Sonos, who makes use of its smallest and least-expensive Sonos One because the preliminary lure. And that’s clearly the rival that Bose is gunning for with the equally sized Home Speaker 300. Both audio system provide the selection of both Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant for calling out music and station requests, asking for the information, checking the climate, and ordering merchandise, in addition to casting such smart-home charms as dimming the lights, adjusting the thermostat, and shutting the storage door (supplied you’ve the requisite gear, in fact).
Bose’s providing is priced $60 larger than the Sonos One, nevertheless it provides a number of options Sonos doesn’t: Most notably six station/album/podcast/playlist preset buttons, and Bluetooth connectivity. Those goodies virtually justify the value bump. (Apple customers will wish to know that each audio system can even function in Apple’s AirPlay 2 ecosystem.)
The earlier Bose SoundTouch streaming speaker line additionally has six preset buttons. But when you have a number of fashions sitting on your house Wi-Fi community, they’ll all share the identical preset content material; in different phrases, should you program a SoundTouch’s preset quantity three to tune to BBC6, preset quantity three on all the opposite SoundTouch radios in your home will additionally tune to BBC6. With the brand new Home Speaker line, you possibly can set presets individually on every field, after which share the alternatives by way of speaker grouping should you so select.
Filling the invoice
Bose touts “360 sound” dispersion within the Home Speaker 300; in its bigger stablemate, the $399.95 Home Speaker 500; and within the aforementioned Soundbar 500. But the 2 tabletop audio system strategy the mission in a different way. The equally oval-shaped Home Speaker 500 packs stereo audio system that fireplace left and proper to boost a way of spaciousness. The smaller Home Speaker 300 makes use of a single, full vary transducer—roughly 2.25 inches in dimension, I’m informed—that fires down into an acoustic deflector, radiating sound in each route by way of the enclosure’s perforated steel grill work.
Jonathan Takiff / IDGThe Bose Home Speaker 300 (left) takes up roughly the identical shelf house because the Sonos One (proper).
I received out my trusty Radio Shack sound stress degree meter and in contrast dispersion patterns and ranges on each a first-gen Sonos One and the Bose Home Speaker 300. With its discrete front-firing mid-range/woofer and tweeter, the Class D-amplified Sonos One registered louder on the meter—as much as 102dB, with some audible distortion noticeable above 98dB—when the meter was pointed useless heart on the speaker. The Bose registered 98dB max, however with no audible distortion at that degree. But these readings have been taken off axis, left and proper, which signifies the Bose HS 300 creates a bigger sound area.
Screen saving, ear pleasing
Jonathan Takiff / iDGDoes it actually matter that the Bose Home Speaker 300 doesn’t have a show?
One of the methods Bose shrunk this speaker’s price ticket and dimensions (it measures 6.3 x 5.6 x 4 inches, H x W x D, and weighs 2.1 kilos) was to eradicate the colour show that on the Home Speaker 500 exhibits album artwork, music titles, and station data whereas the speaker is enjoying. It exhibits the present time when the speaker shouldn’t be enjoying.
But honestly, figuring out the global-cool piano, cello and voice tune I’m listening to proper now—courtesy of the “New Sounds” music stream on TuneIn—is simply as simply tracked on the Bose Music App that’s obtainable for Android and iOS. Ah-ha, it’s a monitor off Michael Harrison’s From Ancient Worlds (For Harmonic Piano).
Even-tempered and comfy are one of the best phrases to explain the sound beaming from the Bose Home Speaker 300. Its high-end copy isn’t as vibrant, and its backside bass notes aren’t as pronounced as what the Sonos One offers when tone controls for each audio system are app-set at flat. But the Bose delivers a extra unified and pure sonic presentation. And now it’s shifting gears and driving me towards bliss with Radiohead entrance man Thom Yorke’s thumping new electronica-pop outing Anima. With the Home Speaker 300’s bass EQ bumped up a bit, I’m relishing the set’s heady synthesizer buzz, piercing melancholy vocals, and chest-reverberating percussion punch. (Check out the 15-minute video chunk of Anima, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson of Boogie Nights fame, on Netflix, too.)
Next, I segue into acquainted territory with the newly remastered ZZ Top Goin’ 50 hits assortment, Texas boogie rock that requires no bass boosting on this field, although I’ll push the treble management as much as 30 for extra snake chunk. And, given the set’s 50 tracks celebrating the band’s 50th anniversary (!), I’ll save the gathering as a preset for enjoying later. That’s simply accomplished both on the app or by urgent and holding one of many six numbered buttons on the highest of the speaker.
Fine tunings
Tapping a rendering of the speaker throughout the app summons the assistance part to manage energy, choose and customise your chosen digital assistant (as with Sonos sensible audio system, just one or the opposite can be utilized at a time), shift the bass and treble settings (there’s no singular “loudness” possibility as discovered on the Sonos app), and add or take away audio system in your assortment to create a gaggle. Thereafter, making an app-based choice or a verbal play request to only one speaker mechanically will get the collective bunch buzzing.
With Amazon Alexa in cost, it’s also possible to verbally change from single- to multi-room play with a specifically coded request. You first create the group within the Alexa app—by merging all of your first-floor audio system, for instance, and naming the collective “Downstairs.” You can then simply say “Alexa, play NPR (or whatever) downstairs,” and that content material will play in sync on all of the Bose Home 300, Bose Home 500, Bose Soundbar 500, and Bose Soundbar 700 audio system you’ve downstairs.
Jonathan Takiff / IDGThe management panel atop the Home Speaker 300 provides six content material presets, play/pause transport management, quantity degree, Bluetooth and Aux-input, plus an off change. And for the sake of privateness, there’s additionally a mic mute button that glows crimson when activated.
You can’t combine older Bose SoundTouch audio system into these teams, however you can ask Alexa to play music on a SoundTouch speaker. Bose doesn’t but provide this multi-room performance with Google Assistant, nor are you able to ask Google Assistant to play music on Bose SoundTouch audio system. That’s too dangerous. I’ve discovered that Google’s digital assistant typically listens higher and provides deeper solutions. But each digital helpers work effectively with Bose’s multi-microphone system.
Should you purchase a Bose Home Speaker 300?
Bose is working exhausting to compete within the sensible speaker market, and I’d wager the corporate will add much more fashions to this line—maybe a top-of-the-line Home Speaker 700—in addition to extra residence theater merchandise. It’s unlucky, nonetheless, that the corporate declines to permit non-Bose audio system into its multi-room teams (Polk enables you to mix its Polk Command Bar with Amazon Echo sensible audio system, nevertheless it’s additionally value noting that Sonos does not enable its sensible audio system to cooperate with opponents).
Bose followers and smart-home denizens will just like the Bose Home Speaker 300 for its musical performances, its ease of use, and its potential place in a Bose-anchored whole-home audio system. You may also wish to examine this speaker to the less-expensive Sonos One, nonetheless; particularly should you’re not already dedicated to the Bose ecosystem.