When it comes to audio products like speakers and headphones, Bose is, in fact, the best you can think of. Although expensive, there's a surety that you’ll get a top-of-the-line product. Bose has a range of products, which include speakers, headphones and smart speakers. We recently got to use the Bose Home Speaker 300 and just like the other Bose products that I have reviewed, this one left a lasting impression.
At a price of Rs 26,900, the Bose Home Speaker 300 is the most affordable offering in the company’s smart home speakers line-up. It is also the smaller sibling of the Bose Home Speaker 500 that comes with a similar basic design and a few enhancements. The speaker comes in black and silver colours and has Apple AirPlay 2 as well as Amazon Alexa support. Let’s find out what the speaker offers.
The Bose Home Speaker 300 features a compact and minimalistic design. The lower part is the grille, which is about 60 per cent of the speaker. The upper part has a light bar and the touch-sensitive controls are on the top of the device, which include Bluetooth, Aux, Volume rocker, Play/Pause buttons, mic button, and six preset buttons to set shortcuts of music apps like Amazon Music and Spotify. We’ll talk about these in detail below. There is a 3.5mm jack on the back to play music in the Aux mode, and the power port. If we were to nitpick, there is no internal battery so it cannot be carried along to places where there is no power source.
The compact speaker is VERY LOUD. Frankly speaking, there could have been two or three instances when I played music on the highest level of volume in order to check the quality. Rest of the time, playing music at about 50 per cent volume is more than enough to rock a regular-sized room (which varies from 10x10 ft to 12x16 ft). I even played music in a log cabin of 20ft x 22 ft and didn’t even need to up the volume from 50 per cent.
Another reason to keep the volume low is that the music has much more clarity, surround sound and bass as compared to the songs played at higher volumes. If you raise the volume too much, the music will have a shrill that’ll definitely not please your ears. When listened at an optimal volume, you’ll notice the thump or bass that -- unlike several other speakers -- doesn’t eat up the lyrics or the rest of the music.
Thanks to the 360-degree audio tech, the speaker produces surround sound. Moreover, if you want to pair a speaker and listen to the same song in two different rooms or floors, you can pair two or more Bose Home Speakers together with Bose SimpleSync technology. We couldn’t test that because we had just one review unit.
One of the features of the speaker is that users can control the music via voice. It comes with Amazon’s virtual assistant Alexa and Google Assistant integration that allows users to perform all those tasks that can be done through Amazon’s own Echo lineup, and the Google Home devices. The speaker comes with a custom six microphone array to capture the voice commands. You can control music on Spotify, Amazon Music or Apple Music by voice.
We didn’t feel any problem in controlling music, adjusting volume, or setting alarms. You can turn off an alarm by just tapping on the top of the speaker. In case you don’t want to control the music via voice, you can play anything from a phone or tablet via Bluetooth. There is an option that allows users to completely turn off the mic. Just tap the microphone-disable button on the top, and the voice function is turned off.
To test the speaker, we played songs of multiple genres. We listened to La Calin [Durmus] by Trap Calin (genre: Trap), Opus by Eric Prydz (genre: House), I See You by Kygo (genre: Tropical), Don’t You Know That by Deepjack, Mr. Nu & Barbary (genre: Dance/Electronic) and Freebird by Lynyrd Skynyrd (genre: Rock). The speaker worked well in all cases and we could listen to all the mids and lows.
Bose has always been able to deliver the best of the best. Owning a Bose product is a status symbol. Although the Bose Home Speaker 300 costs a bomb but you have to look beyond price when it comes to the compact yet powerful, innovative solutions and overall listening experience.
Pros: Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa integration; Lightweight and compact
Cons: No internal battery
Price: Rs 26,900
