Bose SoundLink Wireless Mobile speaker Featured

Price : $ 299.00

The first thing you notice about the SoundLink Wireless mobile speaker when you pick it up is that while it may be small, it's got some heft to it, weighing in at 2.78 pounds. It's 5 inches tall, 9.5 inches wide, and a scant 1.9 inches thick.

That depth--or lack thereof--is really the most impressive part of the design. But while the SoundLink Wireless Mobile speaker looks sleek, elegant, perhaps even a bit dainty, and would seem more suited to indoor listening, Bose has made a point of touting how durable and rugged the unit is. The company says it has extensively drop-tested the product, and even put it in a chamber and exposed to simulated salt-air fog. So, yes, this is designed to be a portable, outdoorsy product.

Further boosting its portability is the built-in rechargeable lithium ion battery, which is rated for 3 to 4 hours of use at high volume between charges.

The SoundLink Wireless Mobile has a wireless range of about 30 feet and works with any A2DP Bluetooth-enabled device, which includes nearly all smartphones, as well as the iPad. Around back you'll find a standard 3.5mm audio input for connecting (via an included cable) any other audio devices that don't offer Bluetooth, like an iPod Nano, for instance.

We had no trouble pairing an iPhone, an Android smartphone, and an iPad 2 with the speaker. You simply hold down the Bluetooth button on top of the speaker and it goes into pairing mode. After you select "Bose SoundLink Wireless" from the Bluetooth setup menu on your phone or other device, after a few seconds you should be linked up wirelessly to the speaker and be able to stream audio to it.

At one point, we did get some dropout from the Android phone--just for a couple of seconds. It was an instructive reminder that Bluetooth, like all wireless tech, just doesn't have the 100 percent reliability of a wired connection.

Another note: the SoundLink Wireless Mobile does not offer speakerphone capabilities the way the Jawbone Jambox does, for example. Could it someday offer that feature? Probably not, considering there's no built-in microphone that we're aware of. However, there is a Micro-USB port on the back of the speaker labeled "service," which is for firmware upgrades; Bose says it will offer software upgrades to make sure the speaker is compatible with future phones.

We should also mention that the SoundLink Wireless Mobile speaker doesn't come with a remote. That's because you shouldn't need one since you'll be able to control the volume--and everything else--from your smartphone.