Bose Home Speaker 300

amazon Bose Home Speaker 300 reviews

The Bose Home Speaker 300 offers Alexa and Google Assistant voice control in a small, powerful package.

Standing out against the background of the Home Speaker 500, the $259.95 300 Home Speaker from Bose is smaller and cheaper but still manages to pack a punch. Its modest size seems out of sync with its price, but it delivers some pretty powerful audio outputs. A companion app makes setting and specifying presets easy, and the overall operation is very intuitive. Some of the punchy basses can be a bit excessive for the driver at the highest volumes, accentuating the bass and low mids.

Design

Measuring 6.3 x 5.6 x 4.0 inches (HWD) and weighing 2.1 pounds, the Home Speaker 300 is compact enough for a portable appearance, but it doesn’t have an internal battery. Available in black or white, the speaker’s oval vertical frame has a wraparound speaker grille that extends from the base and beyond the half-point of the front panel.

The front panel has a thin strip of status LEDs, and at the top, there’s a panel full of touch controls, including a central play/pause button surrounded by increase/ decrease for volume. To the left and right of them, there’s an Action button that summons the voice assistant of your choice, a microphone/mute button, an aux button to switch to a 3.5mm wired input on the side panel rear (cable not included), and Bluetooth Button to switch to Bluetooth streaming. There are also six numbered preset buttons on this panel, assigned to different radio feeds within the app.

The default mode for the Home Speaker 300 is Wi-Fi, and the Bose Music app (for Android and iOS) guides you through the quick setup process. Once the speaker is connected to a Wi-Fi network, you can add music services like Amazon, Deezer, Pandora, Spotify, and more. To use Alexa or Google Assistant, the Bose Music app guides you through a quick setup with the assistant of your choice, and then you’re ready to go.

The home screen of this app includes shortcuts to local radio streams, podcasts, and various internet radio stations and feeds. Of course, you can also play your own locally stored music wirelessly, from any compatible computer or device on your Wi-Fi network, or via Bluetooth. The speaker also supports Apple’s AirPlay 2 and has an AirPlay tab in the app, but you can also select tracks on your iOS device and press the AirPlay button to stream to the speaker.

Like most smart speakers, the Home Speaker 300 doesn’t have speakerphone functionality. But we found its built-in microphone to be quite responsive when giving voice commands to Alexa. We noticed a delay of one second or more when playing and pausing music via Alexa. The lag is less obvious when streaming audio over Bluetooth, but it’s still there.

Performance

Internally, the Home Speaker 300 mono speaker uses an active driver that distributes its sound by a reflector. Bose claims that the speaker’s DSP (digital signal processing) uses proprietary logic that helps keep hard-scanned left and right data from disappearing from the mix.

On tracks with intense bass content, such as The Knife’s “Silent Shout,” the Home Speaker 300 can experience some slight distortion at the highest volumes. The DSP did a commendable job of keeping most of the bass distortion-free, even at higher volumes, but some tracks proved too strong for the cabinet itself. Thom Yorke’s new “Runwayaway” also has some bass depth at the end that makes the speakers hum and vibrations audible. Sometimes it’s not clear whether the driver is distorted or the cabinet is squeaky, but the result doesn’t matter – you hear it.

Bill Callahan’s “Drover,” a track with less deep bass in the mix, gives us a better sense of the Home Speaker 300’s overall tonal character. The drums on this track sounded full and well-rounded but not overdone with a deep bass boost. However, at the highest volume, the drums sound more punchy than when using the flat response system, and Callahan’s vocals have an extra layer of richness in the low mids. Most of the depth of the bass is not in the deep basses but the mids and lows. At moderate volumes, the sound is enhanced but pleasant and balanced with the higher frequencies in the mix. At the highest volumes, the pushing bass can feel a bit too strong – there’s no distortion, but it sounds too rich and full of parts of the mix that don’t need it. Thankfully, the mids and highs were also refined, and we heard the assault of the higher register percussion tracks and the clear ranges along with the enhanced lows. That is the kind of music the Home Speaker 300 feels more at home in, as opposed to the deep bass music its drivers weren’t designed.

In Jay-Z and Kanye West’s “No Church in the Wild,” the kick drum ring gets an ideal presence in the mid-highs, along with low-mid, creating a powerful thump and strong. The beat-splitting sub-bass synth hits delivered with respectable thrust but without a subwoofer-like driver to deliver depth. This track has no distortion at the highest volume, and the vocals are delivered clearly, perhaps a little deeper than we’re used to hearing.

Orchestra tracks, such as the opening scene from John Adams’s Other Gospel According to Our Lady, sound vivid and full through the Home Speakers 300. Lower register instruments get added pitch richness and depth, but higher registers than brass, strings, and vocals have a bright presence that keeps things balanced, although impulse and subtlety occur in the lows and highs.

The Home Speaker 300’s most impressive audio feat is its ability to project at high volumes — this compact speaker sounds much louder. It may not pack the bass punch, but it certainly delivers the richness and power of a larger model.

Conclusion

The Bose Home Speaker 300 is a solid, smart speaker and has better value than the larger Home Speaker 500 model. It delivers a powerful mono output and easily fills most rooms with clear sound, surprisingly strong bass.

Advantages

Powerful audio output with rich bass depth and delicate, crisp highs.

Works with Alexa and Google Assistant.

Defect

Sometimes distorts deep bass.

Play/Pause may have a small delay.

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Bose Home Speaker 300: Bluetooth Smart Speaker with Amazon Alexa Built-in, Black: Buy it now