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
Our review product is a smart two-tone grey – though we think the black alternative is equally slick and covers are available if you fancy something more jazzy. External features are kept to a minimum; there are the usual buttons for power, pairing (you can link two devices at a time and switch between them) and volume. There’s also an almost incognito pair of jacks on the side for USB charging (ten hours maximum claimed life) and auxiliary input. Both nylon-string acoustic guitar and vocal are exceedingly rich, offering the warmth of a winter’s night by an open fire. What the SoundLink Mini II does well – adding greater stability and richness to the mid and treble frequencies in acoustic tracks – is immediately undermined by the fact it loses all that as soon as you add a bass guitar or similar. If not, we’d suggest you compromise on price, size or frequency range, but not overall sonic capability and take a look at the Bose’s closest rivals, such as the Ausio Pro Adddon T3 or the JBL Xtreme.
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.
The fact there wasn’t a speaker on the original felt like a big omission considering its premium price. 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.
Bose SoundLink Mini II Review
The Bose SoundLink Mini II really blew away our testers, providing a level of sound quality we only would have expected from a much larger speaker. The Bose SoundLink Mini II received the top overall score in our testing, making it the clear Editors’ Choice winner.
The Bose SoundLink Mini II was the first runner-up in our sound quality testing, earning a 9 out of 10 in a metric where scores plummeted ranged from 3 to 10.
While it certainly can’t match the refined, encompassing sound of a good home stereo, it far and away exceeded the kind of quality we expected from a small portable speaker.
The Mini’s aluminum casing oozes a sense of quality, but also feels like it would be susceptible to scratches and dents (this can be somewhat mitigated if you buy a rubber cover). That volume is more than enough to handle the vast majority of situations you would likely use the Mini in: hanging out on the patio, relaxed backyard barbeques, and just general music listening around the house. If you’ve got a party going with 20+ people the Mini might struggle a little bit to completely cut through the ambient noise, but would still provide some background music. If you need enough firepower for a large, loud dance party the Harman Kardon Onyx Studio 4 or the JBL Charge 3 would serve you better, though both of these models represent a sacrifice in sound quality.
In our testing the SoundLink Mini II far exceeded its manufacturer stated battery life, lasting a full 17 hours. We did log some impressive battery lives in our testing, so though the SoundLink Mini II performed admirably, it only garnered a score of 7 out of 10.
Top kwaliteit maar wel enigszins gedateerd
Waarom Bose 10 uur aangeeft komt waarschijnlijk door de playback time op 100% volume. (dock) Een ander bekend portable bluetooth speaker merk, Ultimate Ears, biedt wel een dock aan, maar deze moet men los aanschaffen en wordt niet standaard meegeleverd en kost maar liefst €39,99. Het dock is handig omdat je niet steeds in de weer hoeft te zijn met kabeltjes.
Bose SoundLink Mini II Review
And if you haven’t heard one of these small size, big output speakers before, you’ll most certainly be impressed by how good the Bose SoundLink Mini II sounds. Cheaper rivals are available, but if you’re after powerful bass in a tiny box then the Bose SoundLink Mini II is worth its £169 asking price.
It’s a lightly curved brick of aluminium, small enough to grasp easily in one hand, but it’s too long and deep to fit in a pocket.
Rather than using a charging cable – although this is an option – you can place the Bose SoundLink Mini II onto a plastic dock. A slightly robotic-sounding woman reads out the battery level when the Bose SoundLink Mini II is turned on, alongside the names of connected devices. Like most wireless speakers, the Bose SoundLink Mini II has a 3.5mm jack input on the side that lets you plug in anything that doesn’t have Bluetooth.
The Bose SoundLink Mini II still doesn’t support aptX – the higher-quality codec than the Bluetooth standard SBC. The SoundLink Mini II delivers a smooth and well-textured tone, with decent mid-range presence that isn’t only about pounding out bassy beats. There are plenty of competitors in this size and class of speaker, including the Pure Voca, the Denon Envaya Mini and Jam Heavy Metal.
However, the Bose SoundLink Mini II trounces them all when it comes to sound quality with deeper bass, silkier mids and smoother treble. Since Bose has aced this radiator-led style so well, you’ll really need to find a good traditional driver speaker to get much better sound. While the Bose gives the impression of having deep and full bass, it’s capable of bringing out sub-bass frequencies due to the limitations of its small driver/radiator array.
It’s also worth noting that while we’ve been a bit sniffy about Bose’s audio style in the past, the wireless speaker space really makes great use of its tricks. We get a bit suspicious of this tech when it’s used to cut down the size/quality of drivers in “hi-fi” products, but in the necessarily compromised world of Bluetooth speakers, it works wonders. Naturally, you don’t get a proper stereo image here, but we can’t imagine many people would look to the SoundLink Mini to replace a hi-fi.
It’s a total class act that makes meaningful changes to the original, including tweaks to the sound quality.
It also outperforms just about every other wireless speaker in this size and class, delivering deeper, richer bass from a box that has roughly the same-sized drivers as Denon Envaya Mini.
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