F
SMARTER SOUNDS
Loads of speakers now possess
some sort of smart features,
but how do you pick the right
performer at the right price?
BOSE PORTABLE
SMART SPEAKER
Key specs
O 1 driver, 3 passive radiators
O Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, USB-C
O Up to 12hrs
O 191x119x104mm, 1.06kgSTUFF SAYS Feature-packed and portable, Bose’s speaker makes multi-platform streaming easy ++++,
£330 / stuff.tv/BosePSS
AUDIO GUIDE
ew wireless speakers
sound quite as
good as Apple’s
HomePod or Huawei’s
Devialet-engineered
Sound X. The only problem
is, neither of those options is
particularly versatile or smart
in the voice assistant stakes.
Luckily, Bose’s Portable Smart
Speaker features room-filling
360 ° sound to put it on a par
with Apple and Huawei’s best
efforts, only here you can pick
it up and take it with you – and
it’s a proper smartie.
If you want to treat the
water-resistant PSS as a
simple Bluetooth, AirPlay 2 or
Spotify Connect speaker, you
can. Just pair it up in settings
for the former, or look for the
indicator in the Apple Music or
Spotify app, and you’re off. To
get the full range of features,
though, you’ll need to set it
up as a new device in the Bose
Music app.
It’s here that you can
choose your voice assistant
(Alexa and Google Assistant
are both built in), share the
speaker on your home Wi-Fi
network, and add services for
radio and podcasts. Choose
Alexa and you can search forsongs and albums on Amazon
Music hands-free.
The Bose Music app lets
you pair the PSS with other
Bose smart speakers and
soundbars, so if you need to
let the cat out halfway through
the indoor bowls you can take
the TV’s audio with you. For
the things you’re likely going
to use it for – a soundtrack
to your cooking, something
to blast while you get ready
for a night out, a bit of morning
radio, background music for
a dinner party – the PSS is
a totally solid all-round mono
performer. The proprietarydeflector does a good job
of pinging sound in every
direction, and both the low
and high end are handled with
a similar level of finesse. Most
of the time in our testing we
used it as a bedroom speaker,
but it has enough power to
comfortably fill much larger
rooms and satisfy just about
all musical appetites.Day gripper
Bose says its speaker
will play for 12 hours
wirelessly between
charges. This will vary
based on usage but it’s
quite accurate.