Sometimes you need simplicity in your life. You want a portable Bluetooth speaker that does what it says on the tin? You got it: the Bose SoundLink Flex is portable, easy to use, and plays any music through Bluetooth within seconds. Job done. 

Sure it has other features (speakerphone, party mode) and it comes with an app. Instead of getting overwhelmed with features, though, Bose just wants you to listen to music, anywhere you can carry the speaker to.

Price

You can buy the Bose SoundLink for £149.95 / $149 / AU$249.95, which places it slap bang in between two five-star JBL speakers: the Award-winning JBL Charge 5 (£160 / $180) and the newer JBL Flip 6 (£130 / $130 / AU$200). 

We expect to see some good deals down the line for this Bose speaker, which will surely be welcome to those wanting to save some pennies without sacrificing enjoyment. 

Build

The Bose cuts a slim profile, and its 600g weight makes it light enough to carry with one hand or slip into a bag. The fabric loop can be attached to a carabiner or you can hook it around your finger. It’s a portable design in every sense, although we find a cylindrical design like the JBL Flip 6 – which is also 50g lighter – easier to carry and fit into small spaces.

The speaker has a soft-touch silicone exterior and a powder-coated steel grille on the front, and it’s available in four finishes: Black, White Smoke, Stone Blue and our review sample’s limited edition Carmine Red. It’s designed to be tough enough to withstand knocks and tumbles in the great outdoors, and Bose says the speaker’s finish won’t peel or flake, and is resistant to rust and UV light. 

You can also place the Bose speaker anywhere indoors and it won’t look out of place: we used it in the kitchen, home office and even the bath. With its IP67 rating, the SoundLink Flex is fully waterproof and dustproof, so we don’t mind getting splashes of water on it and the finish is wipeable too. It’ll even play when dunked in water – we submerged our sample underwater and it carried on playing, albeit in a muffled way. It also floats, and the speaker performs perfectly well after it’s dried out too.

The Flex looks and feels more sophisticated than the JBL and Ultimate Ears Wonderboom 2 speakers, which are very much designed to get dirty. When the soft-touch finish of the Bose picks up a lot of dirt, debris and grass from being placed in the garden, we feel like we’ve done something wrong. We quickly scrub it off, but some stains remain and we feel like we’ve tarnished it. Conversely, we have no such qualms about getting the more rugged exteriors of the JBL or UE speakers dirty or keeping them clean. But we’d think twice about taking the Bose to a music festival.

On a happier note: the speaker sounds good wherever you place it and in whichever position. This is thanks to Bose’s PositionIQ Technology, which uses built-in sensors to detect the orientation the speaker is in – lying flat on its back, standing up, propped against a wall in portrait mode – and adjusts its EQ and optimises the sound accordingly. We find this works really well – the sound comes through evenly however we place the speaker.