Bose SoundLink Mini II Special Edition Speaker Review

The Bose SoundLink Mini 2 is a small, rectangular speaker that's designed to sit horizontally. Its sleek design and small form factor mean that it'll easily blend into your home decor. It comes in two color variants: 'Triple Black' and 'Luxe Silver'.

This speaker is exceptionally portable. It's very small and lightweight and can easily be carried around in one hand or in a small bag. It's also battery-powered, so it can be used on the go without access to an outlet.

This speaker has decent build quality. Its housing is constructed from one solid piece of aluminum, with a rubber surface on the bottom that's designed to provide a stable foundation on the surface it's placed on. The solid aluminum construction adds a nice heft to the speaker, considering its diminutive size, which makes it feel sturdy and solid. There are metal grilles on both the front and the back that house the drivers and bass radiators, respectively, and the rubber buttons on the top feel nice and responsive. Overall, this speaker indicates Bose's usual commitment to good build quality. Unfortunately, it's not rated for any level of protection against dust or water damage.

This speaker has excellent controls. The simple button layout is intuitive and user-friendly, with some buttons that have multiple functions. There's a power button, buttons for adjusting the volume, a multi-function button, and a Bluetooth button (which glows when a device is connected). The buttons are tactile and responsive, and there's even voice assistant functionality through your smartphone. You can hold the multi-function button to activate your smartphone's voice assistant, and you can also use it to switch between two calls, turn off speakerphone, and transfer the call to the phone it was connected to.

There are also clear voice prompts that indicate that you're pairing with the speaker via Bluetooth and which device you're connected to, as well as when the auto-off function is enabled or disabled. It tells you the battery level when the speaker's turned on, but you can also hold the power button for this information. Additionally, there are visual indicators for when the speaker is connected via Bluetooth or the AUX input, as well as for the battery level. Unfortunately, there's no audible feedback for lowering or raising the volume.

• Bose SoundLink Mini II Special Edition speaker
• USB-A to USB-C cable (length: 3.3 ft / 1 m)
• User Manual

This speaker has okay frequency response accuracy. Like many smaller speakers, it struggles to reproduce low-bass frequencies, so your audio lacks boom and rumble. However, the high bass is quite prominent, so kicks and bass instruments still have enough punch to cut through a mix. The mid-range is balanced and accurate, so vocal-centric content, like podcasts, sounds smooth and detailed. Unfortunately, there are no sound customization features, so you can't tailor the sound profile to your liking.

The soundstage performance is reasonable. It can play stereo content without downmixing to mono, but its directivity is disappointing, so you won't get a consistent sound when listening at different angles around the speaker. There's also a lot of overemphasis in the treble range, so the sound might seem brighter from different angles.

This speaker has adequate dynamics. Though it can get reasonably loud for a small speaker, there are quite a few compression artifacts present at a max volume that create a pumping effect in audio playback. If you're looking for a Bose speaker that can get louder with less compression, it's worth checking out the slightly larger Bose SoundLink Max.

This speaker has an alright battery life performance. The manufacturer advertises twelve hours of continuous playback, but we tested a little under seven hours. However, it's worth noting that battery life tends to vary according to usage. It takes around 4 hours to fully charge, and you can enable a convenient power-saving auto-off feature that turns the speaker off after 30 minutes of inactivity.

It has a sub-par voice assistant performance. There's no built-in voice assistant functionality to the speaker, and it relies instead on your smartphone's Siri or Google Assistant features. It's also not compatible with Alexa. It does a great job of picking up on your voice even when you're on the other side of the room, but there's no option to mute the speaker's microphone for voice assistant-related features. That said, the speaker could pick up on speech cues in noisy environments slightly more easily with Google Assistant than with Siri.

This speaker isn't compatible with the Bose Connect app, unlike other speakers from the same manufacturer, like the Bose SoundLink Color II or the Bose SoundLink Revolve+ II.

This speaker has a 3.5mm AUX port to play audio via a wired connection.

This speaker has great Bluetooth connectivity. It supports multi-device pairing, so you can connect up to two devices simultaneously. It also has an amazing Bluetooth range, so you can stay connected even if you're in another room. The AV synchronization error with Android devices is not bad, but you'll experience sync issues between the audio and visuals if you use it to watch videos. AV synchronization error with iOS devices is lower, but you'll still experience lip-syncing issues. However, apps compensate for this differently, so your experience may differ.