This makes finding replacement parts down the line very difficult, but the speaker sells for $150US. I’m not purchasing diamond coated XLR cables kissed by the Pope or anything, but I do have standards. They’re not amazing, but they’re a few cuts above what you’ll find near the front of your local big box retailer. For others, the speaker appears to be a very long inverted trapezoid with very steep sides and slightly convex top and bottom surfaces when viewed from the front. That front is dominated by a dark grill with a small rubber gasket surrounding it. If you squeeze the grills, they’ll flex a bit, but you can pick this thing up, and it won’t have a problem.
The right side of the Mini features the USB type C charging port and a 3.5mm headphone jack. The bottom is dominated by a rubber pad that grips the surface it rests on and prevents the thing from rattling.
In typical Costco fashion, the speaker is only offered in black, and the real box was locked away in a plastic clamshell sealed shut with a comically gargantuan cardboard surround. The Mini ships with a partial charge, but you’ll need to plug it into power in order to activate the unit. Don’t worry, I’m not here to rag on how Bose is a stupid company and all of its customers are sheep, or whatever most audiophiles do. This is thanks in part to the dual passive radiators; this is a feature common to many portable speakers nowadays.
That means Human voices will sound rich and full, guitars and pianos will sparkle, and you’ll get the impression of a much bigger speaker. Music and voices sound good for the size, though the latter tends to be a little boomy, and watching a video with both will really show the weaknesses of the speaker.
Background music can get lost, and people with particularly deep voices or a lot of chest resonance can be a little uncomfortable. Even if I didn’t the fact that this thing has actual honest-to-goodness accessibility baked in is enough of a selling point.
I didn’t know speakers could even have such a thing, but here is Bose giving us voice prompts for identifying devices, callers, and the battery level. Holding the power button will visually and audibly indicate the battery level.
Talkback users won’t encounter issues unless they connect multiple devices, and Windows users… well, I’ll get to that in the next section. It called my friend’s OnePlus 8t “pecan” instead of “beacon”, and it doesn’t handle names with all caps gracefully either.
Using this device on iOS with Voiceover is fine, but connect it to a Windows machine running NVDA, and be prepared to very quickly disconnect it.
It’ll be no surprise that it handles high speed speech synthesis about as well as a bald eagle piloting a blimp. While it was still subject to silence from Talkback if another device was playing through the Mini (it didn’t stick to the phone like on iOS), there was no speech clipping at all. One quirk that is mildly annoying is the fact that the SoundLink gives no audible indication that it turned off.
Here’s a tip for you; hold the Bluetooth button down for 10 seconds to clear the pairing list. The Bose SoundLink Mini 2 Se has proven to be an excellent speaker with stellar build quality, good sound, excellent battery life, actual proper accessibility, and a beautiful design. It takes the fantastic design of the SoundLink Mini 2 and brings it up to modern spec.
Bose SoundLink Mini II review
The Bose SoundLink Mini II is showing its age with its average battery life and lack of features like NFC and waterproofing. The Bose SoundLink Mini II is showing its age with its average battery life and lack of features like NFC and waterproofing. While the lack of features may turn off some buyers, it would be a mistake to write off the SoundLink Mini II entirely because it remains one of the best sounding wireless speakers on the market.
On the left side of the speaker you’ll find the microUSB charging port and a 3.5mm headphone jack for using legacy devices.
Although light on features, the Bose SoundLink MIni II remains one of the best-sounding wireless speakers we’ve ever heard. While most compact wireless speakers struggle to output bass, the SoundLink Mini II has it in spades while still maintaining a lovely balanced sound.
The similarly sized Razer Leviathan Mini sounded wooden compared to the Bose and failed to retrieve as many micro details. We’re also impressed by the speaker’s ability to retrieve details like a musician’s breath and the clinking of glasses from the audience in live jazz tracks.
This diminutive speaker punches way above what its size would suggest, producing deep bass, sparkling highs and a lush midrange.
Bose SoundLink Mini II review: A great Bluetooth speaker gets even better
The new 1.5-pound (0.67kg) model looks nearly identical to its predecessor — a good thing, since it’s one of the sharpest-looking small speakers out there — but it now has a built-in microphone for speakerphone capabilities. Rounding out the improvements: the speaker now charges via a standard USB cable rather than a proprietary AC adapter, which is an important change. Bose also says it’s streamlined the pairing process with new voice prompts and the speaker identifies your devices by name using text-to-speech. Soft covers, sold separately for $25, £21 or AU$30 each, will be available in deep red, “energy green,” navy blue, charcoal black and gray. For what they are, they’re both very good speakers, with the Sony being at its best when it’s plugged in (it plays a little louder on AC power rather than working off the unit’s internal rechargeable battery). The Bose casts a slightly larger sound stage and excels with acoustic material, flattering it a bit more than the Sony.
For example, Amy Winehouse’s “Valerie – Live,” Laura Marling’s “Strange” and Queensryche’s “Silent Lucidity” all sounded really good on the Bose. On a positive note, the Bose did a better job with Bleachers’ “Wild Heart” than a lot of Bluetooth speakers we’ve tested.
It’s one of the best compact wireless speakers overall, with an excellent design, strong sound, an improved feature set and solid battery life.
Bose SoundLink Mini 2 review: A sound all-rounder now a tad cheaper
UPDATE: Since our original review, which was based on the £150 price tag, the Bose SoundLink Mini 2 can now be found for £130 – making it a more tempting offer for those who love a good-looking, powerful sounding Bluetooth speaker. That’s no bad thing, though, as the first SoundLink Mini had superb build quality, which returns here, and was a brilliant premium Bluetooth speaker. That holds true for its successor, too, as its aluminium finish remains as sleek and robust as ever, and provides a fine set-piece to add to your living room. I wouldn’t recommend taking it outside, though, as it’s not ruggedised in any way whatsoever, so you’re likely to end up scratching the outer casing if you show a lack of care.
An improvement over the original SoundLink Mini is that the DC jack has been swapped out for a more ubiquitous micro USB connection. Battery life has improved over the original and is rated at around 10 hours of medium volume listening, which felt about right.
Inside the SoundLink Mini 2 is a two speaker array with a passive bass radiator to flesh out the low range. This is due in part to some digital signal processing that helps to bring out much of the detail and increase the perceived separation between the different sound frequencies.
It meant the SoundLink Mini 2 sounded universally excellent with the test tracks I threw its way.
Bose SoundLink Mini II Special Edition review
4. weather-sealed (splashproof) ✖ Bose SoundLink Mini II Special Edition The device is protected with extra seals to prevent failures caused by dust, raindrops, and water splashes. A lower weight is also an advantage for home appliances, as it makes transportation easier, and for many other types of products.
Bose Soundlink Mini 1 vs Mini 2 [Special Edition]
However, one area where I think most people agree that Bose do really well in is the portable Bluetooth speaker market. One of the more popular Bluetooth speakers on the market, it has had relative success in recent years.
The Bose Soundlink Mini 2 has an improved battery life over the previous model.
Although there isn’t a great deal of difference between the two speakers, the Soundlink Mini II definitely has a better audio quality than the former generation. The Bose Soundlink Mini 2 is probably best known for its sound quality, which is surprisingly good for the small size of a completely wireless speaker. At the time, the Soundlink Revolve was Bose’s main Bluetooth speaker they were trying to push.
So, they intended to completely abandon the Mini line for a while, as they focussed on other wireless speakers instead. This prompted Bose to release their Special Edition version of the Soundlink Mini 2.
So, this is something that Bose decided not to change with the Soundlink, even though they’ve updated some other aspects of the speaker.
Unlike many other portable speakers out there, the Soundlink Mini 2 wasn’t designed to be waterproof. The Bose Soundlink Mini ii has an improved multifunction button in comparison to the original, but aside from this they’re very similar to one another. The battery life of the Soundlink Mini II is about average when you compare it to other similar speakers.
It’s definitely also worth mentioning that the Mini II doesn’t actually come with a charging cradle. You can easily turn this speaker on with the large power button, and it is simple to connect to it as well.
It’s straightforward if you want to link the Soundlink Mini II up with your Amazon Alexa, and you can easily add the voice assistant feature if you want to use Siri with your speaker too. You can use the volume controls and Bluetooth button on the top of the speaker to set it up quickly and easily.
You won’t need to worry about playing deeper music and it struggling, because it copes very well, although the clarity could be improved. Overall, first of all it’s clear to say that it is pretty obvious the Soundlink Mini 2 is a better updated version of the original in a few different ways.
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