Customer Ratings & Reviews

Best sound!!! My husband does construction and speakers get really dirty. It is so easy to clean and it looks like brand new after wiping it off with a damp cloth. It connects fast, the color is beautiful. It is easy to carry. Very stylish!!! It was a great purchase. My husbands does not leave the house without it. It is amazing how a such small thing can sound so loud and clear.

The music on my ASUS computer is not as loud as I would like. This BOSE speaker does an excellent job of amplifying the sound to my liking. It is also small, has a long lasting battery without a lot of wire connections.

The sound quality is exceptional with clear audio and strong bass. Battery life is impressive and easily lasts through long listening sessions. Pairing was quick and easy right out of the box. The build quality feels solid and durable, and the carrying handle is comfortable and ergonomic, making it easy to take on the go. The color looks great as well. Highly recommend this speaker.

This Bluetooth speaker packs a punch and fills the room with music without needing to be very loud indoors. I look forward to using outdoors. It’s small but loud enough to use for a family gathering. I love it. I think it’s on the expensive side but Bose doesn’t disappoint with the sound and toughness of the speaker. I am glad that I purchased this speaker.

Great sound, great size. Love the handle color and volume. Mids are crisp and clear, bass was great after I bumped it up in the app. Tough and great for the pool and beach

Best bluetooth portable speaker that I have ever had. The SoundLink Max offers the full sound that I was looking for an only requires a little bit of space. A full charge battery lasts several full days of use before needing a recharge. Very impressed by this little speaker and highly recommend.

i love that it has such big sound in such small device AND its easy to carry around

Excellent sound and bass. Powerful and portable. Hold its charge for long periods. Highly satisfied with the purchase, will buy again

Bose speaker - of course it sounds fantastic!! Sounds great at ALL volume levels. Crystal clear music that doesn't sound like it is coming out of a speaker this size. Durable construction and actually holds a charge that lasts. Highly recommend!

Nice bass, great for the shower area a sits water resistant IP67, fast lag free Bluetooth 5.2, pairs well design wise with a MacBook Pro, nice build and super convenient handle, built well and has a hefty felt to it but not too heavy.

It sounds incredible! That Bose sound!! The bass is crazy!!! Rumbles!! Mids and highs are crisp and clear. You can also adjust the EQ to your liking on the app. Great battery life!! Dust and waterproof is a plus. It also looks elegant. A bit pricey but if you can afford it, you'll not regret it.

Love the BOSE portable bluetooth speaker. The battery lasts a long time after it has been charged. It is light weight too and easy to move around to various locations. Great sound!

Excellent sound, wish it was a bit louder. I’ve been using the Bose SoundLink Max, and I’m very impressed. The sound quality is outstanding—clear, powerful, and well-balanced even at higher volumes. The bass is deep without being overwhelming, which makes it great for both indoor and outdoor use. The build quality feels premium and durable, and the battery life easily lasts through long days. Overall, it’s a high-quality speaker that delivers exactly what you expect from Bose.

This Bose Sound Link Max delivers the best quality sound with a smooth design, pleasurable appearance and of course, portable and long playing battery life

I'm not a Bose fanboy at all but this speaker is fantastic. I think at one point I owned 15 Bluetooth speakers so I have a good idea of what I want out of a speaker over a wide range of sizes. Everything about the Max is perfect. The bass is solid. I can't believe they fit all this sound into such a small package. The build quality is perfection. The Bluetooth is rock solid. It connects instantly every time. Handles multiple devices no problem. The price is steep so maybe wait for a sale in the future. But even if you pay full price I don't think you will have buyers remorse. I would love if the app EQ was 5 band instead of 3 band but I would not change anything about the speaker itself. So tempted to get another one once they add stereo pairing.

I love this thing. Great sound quality, really loud for the size and the bass is crisp and clear. Highly recommend. Battery life is impressive and can even charge devices using port.

The SoundLink Max bolsters Bose’s reputation that “If it’s a Bose, it sounds awesome.” A three-band equalizer is included in the smartphone app. It has a few presets, but also allows manual setting of bass, midrange, and treble. Once pairing has been established, it connects automatically on power-up. A second device can be paired, and you can switch between the two. The thick, comfortable carrying handle just barely kept the speaker from fitting in the space I had intended. The handle is easily detachable, so that wasn’t a problem. The sound quality is unbelievable for a device this size. The downsides are few but not severe: FIRST: The only instructions actually included with the unit is inside the box. As you can see in photo 1, you are instructed to 1) charge the unit (without telling you exactly how you know when it is fully charged), 2) press the power button, and 3) connect to the unit with your smartphone and download an app for it, using the QR code. In my experience, Bluetooth devices need to be connected fairly quickly, before the pairing times out. This is exactly what happened to me, as I had to sign into the newly downloaded application, go back to my settings to select the unit, etc. Download and set up the app FIRST. SECOND: There is no owner’s manual. There was a 24-page booklet with regulatory information in seventeen languages. At the top of the first page, there is a QR code linked to Bose’s support website. [see photo 2] The website has everything, but you have to follow at least a couple links for every piece of information. Fortunately, it is not terribly difficult to find the link to the 40-page Owner’s Guide, but a link to that would have been very useful without having to chase it down. THIRD: When powering-up, the speaker “thumps” and announces its battery level. It is annoyingly loud. The announcement can be disabled in the Bose smartphone app, instead playing just the “thump” on power-up. It is still loud, but not as obtrusive. Overall, the SoundLink Max is an incredible speaker. Typical for Bose, the sound quality is unmatched in any other device in its class.

The Bose SoundLink Max is the latest iteration to the SoundLink family, a well respected line up of portable Bluetooth speakers. Does this one live up the name, and as its own name suggests, provide the Maximum experience? Lets take a listen and find out. The packaging is clean and straightforward, with an emphasis on minimal use of plastic or Styrofoam. Refreshingly, the speaker comes with both a USB-C cable and a high wattage charger, bucking a recent trend of not including chargers with products. Other than those two items, some basic documentation, and the speaker, there is nothing else in the box. The speaker itself looks like a grown up version of the SoundLink Flex. It has side grilles for the passive radiators, a set of buttons on the top, and the carrying handle. It’s an understated design with no flashing lights or other gimmicks, which is what a speaker should be, in my opinion. The Blue Dusk color is very on trend and looks great. Inside, the speaker features two woofers and a tweeter, and does support stereo sound, which is nice to not have to link two smaller speakers together. It also supports Bluetooth 5.4, finally moving the line away from the older Bluetooth 4 standards. Another nice include is an analog audio input, letting you connect it to any number of devices, like a turntable if you are hopping on the vintage audio trend of late. You can also use the battery in the speaker to reverse charge your phone or other device by plugging it into the USB-C port. I do wish there were dust covers on the ports to keep sand and liquids out of them, especially the aux input port. If you are going to take it outside you might want to get a couple of dust plugs for the ports to keep stuff out of there. After charging the speaker the recommendation is to connect it and use the Bose app to configure things like the EQ, apply any product updates, and customize the shortcut button. Weirdly, the shortcut button right now has just two options – configure it to switch to the line in input, or be kind of an oddly hacked up interface only for Spotify. I left it at input switching. You don’t have to use the Bose app if you don’t want to, but a few controls do require connecting it to the app from time to time. After connecting, it’s time for a listen. It’s immediate that this by far has the most bass of any SoundLink speaker to date. It’s not room shaking, as there are limits to the size and power of a portable speaker, but it is present for sure. It also has a very wide stereo sound stage, remarkably so for a smaller speaker, especially at the sweet spot of about 4-5 feet away. Bose is claiming they are using some of their virtual surround enhancements normally reserved for a soundbar in here, and there is kind of an uncanny depth to some audio tracks that does sound more like a surround sound setup than just stereo. It may also lead to kind of an overprocessed sound on occasion, with Charle Puth’s “Left and Right” (which I used to test the stereo separation) having an oddly distorted sound at some moments in the drums. This could either be an issue with the track’s encoding or how the speaker is processing it, and Bose may still be working the kinks out of how their sound processing works with this specific speaker. I found the speaker with the default EQ to be a little bright and actually a little lacking in bass when used outside. I tuned the EQ to +5 bass and -2 treble to find what I found to be a more balanced sound. It can get SUPER loud at full volume. Overall, it sounds good, which at this premium price point, it should. As anyone with other SoundLink speakers know, one feature of the SoundLink family is the ability to link SoundLink speakers together in a “party mode” to spread sound around a space. Sadly, this speaker, despite the name SoundLink, does not actually link to any of its SoundLink cousins. In fact, it uses the Bose app, not the Bose Connect app, so it sits outside of the SoundLink line and only seems to share the name and the look. That said, this speaker is quite capable of filling a space with sound on its own, and having stereo means you don’t need two speakers linked together for stereo sound. You can link it to some other Bose smart speakers as well, but it's still a little odd that the SoundLink Max can’t link to the other SoundLink speakers. Overall, this is an expensive, premium portable speaker that punches well above its size. Showing up at a party with it or using it when you have guests over will almost certainly get comments about how much sound is coming out of this still relatively compact package. Portable, modern Bluetooth and charging capabilities, and still having an analog input make for a well rounded speaker that will keep your party rocking for hours.

Great sound quality. Water and weather proof. Cool carrying strap. Loving the color.

This is probably my favorite speaker I've ever purchased from Bose. The highs are crisp and the lows are thunderous. This speaker honestly takes every party to the next level. I mostly use it as background music at family parties but its really convenient having this speaker get as loud as it does. Super versatile and I really LOVEE the top handle. It is made of such great quality and it feels so comfortable to carry this speaker around with the top handle. Battery life is also pretty amazing. Used it at a family party for over 5 hours and only got it down to 70%.