SNEAK PEEK: Hands-on with the Bose SoundLink Mobile Speaker

In my eyes, Bose is all about the big, fancy speakers and headphones, the type of things I’ll begin to think about when I’m a proper “grown up” and have money to throw away on pretentious electronics. But up until now they’ve always been put in the “out of my league box”, along with designer shoes and Tom Hardy.

However, the brand’s new speakers, which have been designed to pair up with any mobile device or MP3 player, are pretty special.

We got to have a hands-on session with the brand new SoundLink speakers at a preview event last night and although they do still come with a hefty price tag, the impeccable sound quality, robust casing and slick design means they’re definitely worth saving up (or selling an organ) for.

Being mobile speakers, they’ve been specially designed to give you brilliant sound quality wherever you are and you can connect up any phone or MP3 device via Bluetooth. We tested out the speaker with a range of different tunes and even took it a good ten metres away from our phones and the quality wasn’t compromised.

Another of the SoundLink’s USPs is that it’s SUPER durable. To prove this the crazy kids at Bose threw it around, pressed all the buttons hundreds of thousands of times with a special button pressing robot (who knew, eh?) AND exposed it to some homemade sea fog and it still looked good and worked well.

Now, although sound quality and durability is important, I do like things to look good too and Bose has done a good job at appealing to a few different kinds of people.

There’s a premium version with chrome edging and a range of leather cases, which I don’t doubt look fancy but aren’t really my cup of tea. I was much more interested in the slightly cheaper nylon-covered models in cherry red and deep purple. You can also change your case if you get bored, playing up to our current obsession with personalising things and putting cases on ALL of our gadgets.

Now my only con would be (and I don’t know if this is a testament to my weak arms), that the speaker was a little heavy, particularly if I’m taking it away with all kinds of other bags and things too. But, I’m willing to put that aside (for now) because it does sound amazing, better than my own ears in fact.

The SoundLink speakers come in at £259 for the nylon-covered model, and £299 for the premium LX version. They have different trims, different cases and different coloured speakers inside, but we were assured that the technology is EXACTLY the same.

We’ll bring you a more detailed review in the next week or so.