Bose has just thrown its hat into the smart speaker arena, announcing three speakers that will be available in October with Amazon Alexa support. There is a Bluetooth speaker – which is named the Home Speaker 500 – that has a display on the front for showing album art. Then there are two sound bars that are named the Soundbar 500 and Soundbar 700. The soundbars will be priced at $550 and $800 respectively. While the Home Speaker 500 will be priced at $400, competing directly with Google’s Home Max and Sonos’ own One speaker.
The Bose Home Speaker 500 looks pretty similar to its SoundLink line of speakers but it’s a bit taller and also has that screen on the front. It actually looks like Bose just stuck a smartphone screen on the front. It’s tall and rectangular. It has fairly significant bezels and a Bose logo as well. It’s only purpose is to show album art. The buttons on the top sport the usual array of features, including volume controls, play/pause and such. But Bose has also included six buttons on the front, which are numbered one through six. These are for presets. For things like your favorite playlists, or internet radio stations. Similar to what you’d have in your car.
Now the Bose Soundbar 700 is one of the more expensive sound bars out there, and comes in a bit steeper than Sonos’ own offerings. Bose says that this is the best sounding sound bar on the market right now. It’s two inches high, four inches deep and 38 inches wide, which is going to be long enough for most larger TVs, and offer some great sound. It sports a metal grille all around it, and then a tempered glass plate on the top. Which gives it a rather elegant look, without distorting the sound coming out of this sound bar. Then there is the Soundbar 500, which is slightly smaller than the Soundbar 700 but still sports the same design language. Bose does say that both of these can be wall mounted, and also paired with other Bose speakers for a 5.1 surround sound system. As mentioned, these also come with Alexa built-in, so you can ask Alexa to play music on these sound bars and much more.
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