Bose SoundLink Plus review: Hard-wearing and with plenty of positive qualities

1 / 7

Bose is on a mission to fill in the gaps in its well-regarded range of SoundLink Bluetooth speakers. I’m taking a look at the Bose SoundLink Plus here, but we’re also getting the SoundLink Micro later in the year.

The SoundLink Plus sits between the smaller SoundLink Flex and the larger Max models, and is priced to compete against some very well-regarded alternatives. It has an impressive specification, some well-implemented control options and is robust, hard-wearing and ready to survive even quite serious rough-and-tumble.

And it delivers sound quality that is, in many ways, typically Bose: punchy and substantial, but with enough attention to detail to prevent it from sounding like a blunt instrument. There are some sonic issues, but when you balance these against the ways the SoundLink Plus sounds enjoyable and accomplished, its go-anywhere credentials and the pride of ownership that comes with Bose products, you might well think it’s a compromise worth making.  

What do you get for the money?

The SoundLink Plus has a price tag of £250, an outlay that could get you a wide variety of looks, specifications and performance within the Bluetooth speaker space. Spend that money with Bose and you get a 231 x 86 x 99mm (WDH) speaker that weighs 1.45kg and is made of tactile silicone with a powder-coated stainless steel grille across its front. 

You can choose from three finishes: the established Bose SoundLink options of black or ‘dusk’ blue, along with a rather sudden new finish of ‘citrus’ yellow. No matter which you go for, it will include a colour-coded and hard-wearing nylon rope loop at one end of the chassis for ease of transportation.

2 / 7

Your money also buys you a couple of control options. Physical buttons cover off the headline playback and power controls, and there’s a ‘Shortcut’ button that’s rather limited in its abilities. The Bose control app, meanwhile, adds in some EQ functionality, the ability to search for firmware updates, and the option of pairing another SoundLink Plus (for true stereo sound) or engaging ‘Party Mode’ in order to share content with other appropriately specified Bose speakers.

It also gets you a speaker driver array that consists of a mid/bass driver, a tweeter and no fewer than four passive radiators. Because it’s Bose we’re dealing with, no details of frequency response, driver size or composition, or amplification power are forthcoming.

What did we like about it?

If you want a speaker that will, within reason, go anywhere with you, the Bose SoundLink Plus fits the bill. Its finish is robust to the point of being shockproof. Its IP67 rating means it’s resistant to even large amounts of dust or moisture for a very long time; Bose suggests the speaker can survive being submerged in up to a metre of water for as much as half an hour without any harm coming to it. And it floats, too, so it will happily accompany you into the pool.

Wireless connectivity is via Bluetooth 5.4, with both the aptX Adaptive codec and multipoint pairing supported. Battery life is a very respectable 20 hours as long as you don’t get carried away where volume levels are concerned, and the USB-C on the rear of the SoundLink Plus can be used as a power source (for charging a smartphone, for example) as well as to recharge its own battery. This battery, incidentally, can be replaced by Bose should the need ever arise.

3 / 7

Two SoundLink Plus speakers can form a stereo pair, and any Bose speaker (including soundbars) with a Shortcut button can share content with the SoundLink Plus and easily form a rudimentary multiroom system. The function of the Shortcut button can be defined in the stable, logical control app – it’s also where you can investigate EQ options, check for firmware updates, set up Party Mode and so on. 

Once charged and receiving a TIDAL-derived FLAC file of James Holden’s Imagine This is a High Dimensional Space of All Possibilities via the aptX Adaptive codec, there’s plenty to enjoy about the sound of the SoundLink Plus.

It’s quite startlingly punchy for a speaker of its size, and can summon a fair degree of low-end substance that carries a reasonable amount of detail regarding timbre and texture. The entirety of the frequency range is nicely detailed, in fact, and the SoundLink Plus keeps a close eye on the more minor or transient stuff as well as it does the broad strokes of a recording.

6 / 7

The amount of power that’s on tap here is a secret, of course, but it’s more than sufficient to provide considerable dynamic headroom for when a recording ramps up the volume or intensity. The overall tonal balance is on the fractional warm side of neutral, but in the context of the type of product, it’s hardly the end of the world. Frequency response, as it relates to the sort of emphasis each area of the frequency range enjoys, is balanced and even.

Soundstaging is quite impressive, given that this is a single enclosure with a quite obvious point-source of sound. There’s a fair sensation of spaciousness to the way the Bose presents even a complex recording like Sergio Mendes’ Mas Que Nada, and as a consequence, it’s easy to understand and not at all difficult to isolate individual elements. And except for the lower frequencies (which I’ll get to soon enough), every recording sounds unified.     

What could be improved?

20 hours of battery life looks good – because it is – but if you decide to listen at big volumes, then the SoundLink Plus will last for less than five hours between charges. And to add mild insult to minor injury, charging the battery from empty takes five hours, which can feel like an eternity. 

The Shortcut button on the speaker is less useful than it might be, given that your in-app options consist of ‘Spotify’ or ‘Speaker link’. Given that Spotify Tap is available (along with Google Fast Pair), it seems a gratuitous function and an opportunity that hasn’t been exploited as fully as it might be.

5 / 7

Maybe it’s the quantity of passive radiators that have been shoehorned into the cabinet, but the SoundLink Plus doesn’t integrate its bass frequencies as well as it might, and it doesn’t control them with absolute authority either.

The upshot is a presentation that, while pleasantly weighty, doesn’t express rhythms with all that much positivity. Low-frequency information, while of similar tonality to everything happening above it, also sounds a little remote from the remainder of the frequency range.

Should you buy the Bose SoundLink Plus?

This very much depends on what you want from a Bluetooth speaker. If you need something that can come with you on every adventure, is hardy enough to stand up to The Great Outdoors, and able to fill quite large spaces with sound that’s as substantial as the speaker itself, the SoundLink Plus is certainly worth considering.  

If you’re after as faithful a rendition of your music as this sort of money will buy, though, there are better options available. They may not have the hard-wearing can-do attitude of the Bose SoundLink Plus, mind you…

Written By

Simon Lucas

Simon Lucas is a freelance technology journalist with over 20 years of experience writing about the audio and video aspects of home entertainment. He was the editor of What Hi-Fi? Magazine before going freelance and has since contributed to a huge range of titles, including Wired, Metro and GQ. He’s also acted as an audio consultant for some of the world’s highest-profile consumer electronics brands and has been to IFA and CES more times than he’d care to remember.

More about