Bose Soundlink Revolve

Round sound for many pounds

Bose is famous for its unique technology that extracts better sound from smaller speakers and more money from your wallet. It’s been very successful on both counts. This column-shaped portable Bluetooth speaker looks, however, much like many others.

The Revolve’s eponymous feature is, no, not that it revolves, but rather that it blurts out sound from all sides, so you can plop it in the middle of the garden and hear the radio, or whatever you stream to it from your PC or mobile device, clearly wherever you go. Several other Bluetooth speakers do this. The Revolve is also showerproof, as are, well, several other Bluetooth speakers. It supports Bose’s Soundlink multi-room system, or you can pair a second Revolve for stereo; it can also be used as a speaker for Amazon’s Echo Dot.

While speakers from rivals such as Libratone (see Issue 486, page 29) look more modern, the Revolve comes in unexciting charcoal or silver aluminium. There’s a quarter-inch thread on the bottom should you want to mount it on a tripod, and for an additional £25 you can add a charging base, which it sits on like a cordless kettle. Alternatively you can just plug the charging cable into the Revolve’s own Micro USB port and save yourself £25. The battery lasts about 12 hours.

Despite relying on Bluetooth, with no aptx or Apple Airplay, the Revolve does sound really good, except at top volume, which starts to get boomy.