Bose Soundlink Revolve+

Bose has had a strong portfolio in the portable Bluetooth speaker market for a while now, but with the recent popularity of cylindrical 360-degrees Bluetooth speakers, Bose has clearly been looking to get in on that omnidirectional-audio action. The result is the SoundLink Revolve+.

Coming from Bose, it’s no surprise that Bose has nailed the styling, with a perforated aluminium enclose that wraps around the speaker array, mildly tapering towards the top. With the carrying handle, the Revolve+ looks like a modern day audio lantern that’s easy to carry around the house, though with the splash- and shock-resistant design, you can take it pretty much anywhere. Battery life is a generous 16-18 hours of playback at moderate volumes.

Controlling the Revolve+ is via the free Bose Connect app, and you can change volume, Bluetooth pairing and control playback from within the app. If the phone isn’t around, buttons on top of the speaker let you perform the same functions, and even activate voice assistants (like Siri and Google Assistant) from your paired smartphone. What’s interesting is that you can pair two Revolve+ speakers via the appropriately named “party mode”, and the included USB cable can also be used to play music digitally from a computer, which is a neat albeit fairly uncommon feature.

Where the Bose excels is sonic performance, and no matter where I set the speaker down in the room, I was able to enjoy clean, distortion-free sound. Volume levels go much higher than its size would indicate, loud enough to fill a mid- to large-sized room. The sound is rich and detailed, and the lows are powerful, and no matter how you like your music, you’ll love the sound of this speaker (unless, you’re an audiophile who can’t stand anything but the most accurately reproduced audio). It works well as a speakerphone as well, and calls piped from my Samsung S8+ sounded way better than the handset’s single speaker could manage. Bonus: the folks on the other end could hear me loud and clear as I walked around the room.