New Bose Smart Speaker, Due Next Month, Will Have Alexa and Assistant Built-In

Bose introduced the Portable Home Speaker, a $349 Bluetooth smart speaker with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant built in. Previous Bose SoundLink Bluetooth speakers required connection to an Echo or Google Home speaker for voice assistant capability. A proprietary Bose pickup system handles both voice engines, allowing users to access playlists, podcasts and other content, Bose said Thursday. AirPlay 2 allows Apple customers to play music directly from an iPhone to the speaker; Spotify Connect enables direct listening via the Spotify app, it said. The Portable claims 12 hours' battery life per charge via USB-C; a $29 charging cradle is optional. Responding to our question on the extra load “always-listening” puts on battery life, Ben Burns, senior product manager, emailed us that company engineers optimized battery usage “not just for always-listening voice control, but also for the powerful amount of bass the speaker produces, which consumes a lot of energy.” The 12-hour battery life rating is the number of hours consumers will see when the speaker is always listening for voice, Alexa is being engaged throughout the day, and the speaker is playing at a “reasonably loud volume,” he said. If the speaker is on and listening for a wake word but not playing music, it will last over 24 hours before needing to charge. Consumers who decide not to add Alexa or Google Assistant functionality to the speaker will get even more battery life, he said. Top buttons include a mic-off feature that cuts power to the microphones to give users privacy; other buttons control power, volume, play/pause, Bluetooth source and track advances. With the Bose Music app, users can browse content, switch music services and create a multiroom system with other Bose smart speakers and sound bars, said the company. Later this year, Bose will issue a software update enabling voice control of SoundLink speakers via the Portable; a 2020 update will allow pairing of two Portables to create “360-degree” stereo playback, it said. Availability is Sept. 19, said the company.