If there’s one thing I’m picky about, it’s the quality of sound, so before I invested in a small Bluetooth speaker I did my research. (By which I mean I went through CNET’s list of the best Bluetooth speakers.) The one I chose, and one that continues to rank high in quality for its size, is the Bose SoundLink Flex Bluetooth speaker, and it’s $30 off right now for October Prime Day.
Instead of its usual $149, the SoundFlex Bluetooth speaker is on sale for $119 at Amazon. And as another perk for people who’d rather support a business besides Amazon: The speaker is also $120 at Best Buy and $119 through Bose itself.
I really love this speaker for the reasons you’d love a speaker — music sounds really good on it, speech is clear when I’m listening to a podcast and the sound is full enough to fill my (tiny) studio apartment.
But I like it more for another reason: As a restless and light sleeper, I need some sort of sound going that’ll mask the noise from inside and outside my apartment building. In a series of events I don’t completely remember, I found that playing the “Commercial Airliner” soundscape track from my Calm app through my Bose speaker effectively blocked the bass sounds I can hear in my apartment. It’s also a whole lot more comfortable than trying to sleep with the same track flowing through headphones (which, I’ll note, weren’t designed for sleeping either).
While I can’t compare its off-label use as a white noise machine to the real white noise machines out there, I can say its versatility is one of the main reasons I’m tied to this Bluetooth speaker. In terms of how it tests in overall audio quality, you can read David Carnoy’s full Bose SoundLink Flex review here.
