Bose Now Makes Smart Speakers and Soundbars With Alexa
- Mehedi Hassan
- Aug 28, 2018
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Bose today announced three new speakers. The company is announcing a new smart speaker and two new soundbars that come with Amazon’s Alexa assistant built-in. They also feature AirPlay 2 support for iOS users, letting them play music from their phone or iPad.
The company’s Home Speaker 500 comes with two custom drivers that are pointed in opposite directions, which are meant to “so sound reflects off surrounding walls, separating instruments to the far left and right, and placing vocals where the artist did..” Yeah. In other words, music sounds good on this thing. The speaker also comes with eight microphones, so Alexa won’t have any trouble listening to your voice commands. The design of the device obviously isn’t anything outstanding, but Bose is purely focusing on the sound quality here so that’s what you will get on the Home Speaker 500 for $400. The inclusion of the playback display is kind of interesting, though — this is the first speaker that actually has a preview display which shows the currently playing track. It’s unfortunately not a touchscreen, though.
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The company’s new soundbars are similar, too. They come with eight microphones and Alexa built-in, and HDMI ARC support. The bigger, $800 Soundbar 700 was apparently “engineered to outperform every other product in its category” while the Soundbar 500 offers a similar experience at a smaller size for $549.95. This thing won’t sound as good as the Soundbar 700, mainly because it’s smaller in size.
Bose’s new smart speakers are going to be quite compelling for people who are looking for a high-end speaker powered by Alexa. Amazon obviously doesn’t make high-end smart speakers powered by Alexa that are capable of competing directly with something like the HomePod or the Google Home Max, and so the new Bose Home Speaker 500 could be a solid alternative.