Bose Announces AirPlay 2-Equipped Portable Home Speaker

Thursday August 22, 2019 1:59 pm PDT by Juli Clover

Bose today announced the launch of a new speaker, the Bose Portable Home Speaker, which is designed to work with Apple's AirPlay 2 protocol.

The Bluetooth-enabled Portable Home Speaker is designed to be compact, and it's got a rather HomePod-like design with a cylindrical body that features speaker mesh at the bottom and an aluminum shell at the top to deliver 360 degree sound. It measures in at 7.5 inches high and 4 inches across.

bose1
The Portable Home Speaker has a handle so you can move it from room to room, and it weighs just 2.3 pounds. There's also a built-in battery with 12 hours of battery life, so it can go where you go. It has an IPX4 water resistance rating, so it can survive minor spills and splashes of rain.

Bose says that the Portable Home Speaker delivers deeper bass than any other portable speaker in its size. With Bluetooth, you can stream music from your phone or tablet while on the go, and while at home, you can use ‌AirPlay‌ 2, Google Assistant, and Amazon Alexa.

With ‌AirPlay‌ 2 support, you can play any music you like from an iOS device, and it can be paired up with other ‌AirPlay‌ 2-enabled speakers for a whole home audio experience. You can also pair it up with other Bose products using the Bose Music app.

Buttons on the top of the Portable Home Speaker allow manual control over power, volume, play/pause, and skipping tracks, plus there is a proprietary privacy-focused "mic-off" feature that disables power to the microphone so you can make sure you're not being recorded.

Inside, the speaker features three passive radiators, a high-excursion driver, and what Bose says is a proprietary deflector to distribute "clear, lifelike sound evenly in every direction."

Bose's new Portable Home Speaker is priced at $349, which is what Apple used to charge for the HomePod before dropping the price down to $299 earlier this year. It will be available for purchase starting on September 19.

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Top Rated Comments

Will.O.Bie

92 months ago

Yeah, they really thought about this when they designed this. Someone's gonna come up to the speaker and try to pour out some coffee only to find out that it's playing music instead. Brilliant!!

Score: 26 Votes (Like | Disagree)

LiveM

92 months ago

Just because it’s small (portable) doesn’t mean it has to have a handle. It looks like a bucket! :rolleyes:

Jony Ive would sack these designers.

Ive would’ve put the handle on the bottom.

Score: 14 Votes (Like | Disagree)

69Mustang

92 months ago

@jclo
Juli you kinda sorta skipped over the key features of this speaker. This is a WiFi portable speaker that happens to have BT capabilities. This quote is only partially right:

With Bluetooth, you can stream music from your phone or tablet while on the go, and while at home, you can use AirPlay 2, Google Assistant, and Amazon Alexa.

The ability to use Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa are a function of the speaker's WiFi capabilities, not BT. The WiFi capabilities also allow users to stream music without the use of a phone or tablet.

Bose even describes the speaker as their first ever WiFi portable(rechargeable) speaker. BT is an ancillary function, not the primary.

Score: 10 Votes (Like | Disagree)