The Bose has a slim profile and a weight of 600g, making it easy to carry with one hand or slip into a bag. You can attach the fabric loop to a carabiner or wrap it around your finger. In every way, it’s a portable design, though we think a cylindrical design like the JBL Flip 6 – which is also 50g lighter – is easier to carry and fit into small spaces. The speaker has a soft-touch silicone exterior and a powder-coated steel grille on the front, and it comes in four colors: black, white smoke, stone blue, and our limited edition Carmine Red. It’s built to withstand knocks and tumbles in the great outdoors, and Bose claims the finish won’t peel or flake and is resistant to rust and UV light. The Bose speaker can also be placed anywhere indoors and will not look out of place: we used it in the kitchen, home office, and even the bathroom. The SoundLink Flex is fully waterproof and dustproof, so we don’t mind getting splashes of water on it, and the finish is also wipeable. It will even play when submerged in water; we submerged our sample underwater and it continued to play, albeit muffledly. It also floats, and the speaker works perfectly after drying out. The Flex appears and feels more refined than the JBL and Ultimate Ears Wonderboom 2 speakers, which are built to get dirty. We feel bad when the soft-touch finish of the Bose picks up a lot of dirt, debris, and grass from being placed in the garden. We scrub it off quickly, but some stains remain, and we feel like we’ve tarnished it. In contrast, we have no qualms about getting or keeping the more rugged exteriors of the JBL or UE speakers dirty. But we’d be hesitant to take the Bose to a music festival.
