Bose SoundLink Max review: Sounds like sticker shock

Bose’s SoundLink Max is an expensive, stylish, portable Bluetooth speaker. In a way, that’s all you need to know about it — no cutting-edge features or extravagant bells and whistles are hiding under the surface here.

The Max does offer good audio quality, reassuring durability, and long battery life, all of which make it a very good Bluetooth speaker. However, whether that all adds up to a package worth its staggering $400 price tag is subjective.

Price, availability, and specs

The Bose SoundLink Max is available from Bose and retailers like Amazon and Best Buy for a very premium $400. It comes in black or blue. Bose sells handles for the SoundLink Max in various colors for $25, and you can grab a longer carrying strap in black or blue for $45.

What’s good about the Bose SoundLink Max?

Nice hardware, good sound quality

The Bose SoundLink Max makes a good first impression with its curvy, modern look, especially in the Blue Dusk color pictured in this review. It’s about 10 inches long and weighs just under five pounds, which gives it a reassuring, dense feeling.

The speaker is IP67 rated (it even floats in water) and wrapped in silicone, so you’re not likely to damage it outdoors, even if it gets wet or dirty. Some other reviews I’ve seen of the SoundLink Max note that the exposed metal grilles are easily scuffed; I haven’t noticed that issue myself yet, but it’s something to keep in mind if cosmetic wear bugs you.

The speaker’s thick, silicone-wrapped carrying handle is comfortable and feels durable. You can order handles in a handful of colors from Bose, but that’d be a fashion-oriented purchase; I can’t see ever needing to replace the one the speaker comes with. A longer strap-style handle is available, too, should you want to sling the speaker over your shoulder like a bag.

Sound quality is very good in the SoundLink Max. It gets loud and stays clear, with plenty of low-end response at medium volume. Bass falls off a bit as you crank the volume, but that’s inevitable at the Max’s compact size.

Despite that relatively small footprint, though, the Bose SoundLink Max does manage to sound large. The speaker offers a pretty wide soundstage for its size thanks to stereo front-facing drivers paired with passive radiators at either end. At medium volume, the Max fills my small backyard with sound, though bass can sound a little muted in open areas, especially as you get farther from the speaker.

Battery life is also solid and rated at about 20 hours of listening time per charge. The speaker’s USB-C port can charge the speaker itself or smaller devices like phones or tablets. There’s even a 3.5-millimeter headphone jack if you want to hook up a turntable or other wired music source.

What’s bad about the Bose SoundLink Max?

It’s a $400 portable Bluetooth speaker

Far and away, my biggest issue with the Bose SoundLink Max is its price. It costs $400. Even if I were committed to investing in a high-quality portable speaker, that’s not an amount I’d realistically consider spending on one this size.

In this price range, the SoundLink Max is competing with options like the Sonos Move 2, which has been on sale for as low as $336 this year and, unlike the SoundLink Max, offers Wi-Fi connectivity — the Max is Bluetooth only. For such a pricey speaker that’d look perfectly at home living full-time on a bookshelf or end table, that feels like a miss.

If you can afford to go a little higher and Wi-Fi connectivity isn’t a priority, the Bluetooth-only Sony Ult Field 7 is several times the size of the SoundLink Max and offers much more powerful audio for $500.

Neither of those speakers offers the same aesthetic or travel-friendly form factor as the Bose SoundLink Ultra, but you’re definitely paying for style and the Bose brand here. The SoundLink Max is a good speaker, but it’s not competitively priced.

Bose says you’ll eventually be able to pair two SoundLink Max speakers together for a bigger stereo setup, but that feature isn’t available yet, and Bose has been known to take a while to roll out post-launch feature updates. There’s also no microphone on the SoundLink Max, so you can’t use it to take calls or talk to your phone’s assistant app.

Should you buy it?

It all depends on your budget

If you’re open to spending $400 on a midsize, Bluetooth-only portable speaker, the Bose SoundLink Ultra won’t let you down. It sounds great for its size and lasts a long time on a charge. Its thick handle and IP67 rating make it easy to lug around, too, and at just under five pounds, it’s light enough to tuck in your backpack or luggage without breaking your back. It’s really a very good Bluetooth speaker.

But it is just a Bluetooth speaker. There’s no Wi-Fi connectivity, limiting the ways the Max can be incorporated into your home audio setup. That kind of simplicity might be appealing in a grab-and-go speaker you rarely use in your home, but again, $400 really feels like a lot to spend on a speaker you only listen to at the park or in your backyard — even one as chic as the Bose SoundLink Max.