How Bad Can a Bogus Bose Be? Wirecutter

Real Talk

Advice, staff picks, mythbusting, and more. Let us help you. Share this postSaveI never thought I’d be shocked to see a counterfeit item, having browsed the wares of illicit street vendors everywhere from New York to Shanghai. But I was indeed amazed by what I encountered when I toured Southeast Asia earlier this summer: Bogus replicas of the Bose SoundLink Mini Bluetooth speaker clogged every market I visited in Singapore, Thailand, and Cambodia. Considering that the is one of our current picks for the —a model so good, I bought the review sample even though I already have more than a dozen Bluetooth speakers—I couldn’t contain my curiosity. The fakes were as obvious as a cheap toupee, but I wondered how bad they could be, especially at a typical US-equivalent price of $12 to $15. That’s about 1/15 the cost of a real SoundLink Mini II. We’ve struggled to find recommendable speakers at that price. Could one of these bogus Boses really be a viable alternative to our favorite budget Bluetooth speakers? The clerk at one of the stalls in Bangkok’s sprawling Fortune Town IT Mall immediately sized me up. When I asked the price of a phony SoundLink Mini, she insisted, "Oh, no, you want quality!" and attempted to step me up to a counterfeit selling for the equivalent of about $30. Happy that I impressed her as a discerning shopper but determined to buy the Bose, I picked one up for 450 Thai baht, or about $13. (Incidentally, it isn't illegal for US citizens to buy counterfeit items, but it is illegal to sell them.) I could tell at a glance the speaker I’d bought was a counterfeit. Bose offers the real thing only in dark gray, while the counterfeit is blue. (Advantage: counterfeit.) While the genuine article has its jacks on the side, the one from the stall has jacks on the back. The fake adds a microSD card slot apparently intended for playing MP3s. (Advantage: counterfeit.) The knockoff also sports a USB Type-A jack, about whose function I can only speculate. Regardless, I could have told the difference even wearing a blindfold, because the real SoundLink Mini II is 77 percent heavier. (Advantage: counterfeit.) Both the counterfeit (left) and the real SoundLink Mini II (right) have a 3.5 mm audio input jack and a Micro-USB charging jack, but the fake adds a TF (microSD) card slot and a USB Type-A jack. When I tried mating the fake SoundLink Mini with my Samsung Galaxy S6, I got another surprise: an actual voice prompt coaching me through the process. Not bad for $13! Even better, the prompt was a female voice in heavily accented English. (Advantage: counterfeit.) Things were looking bad for my SoundLink Mini II until I put the bogus Bose up against the $5,000 worth of test equipment I use for speaker reviews in audio-enthusiast publications. When I measured both speakers’ frequency response—the evenness with which audio gear reproduces various frequencies of sound—I noticed a difference. Ideally, a speaker’s response plot looks like a fairly flat line extending from the lowest bass notes up to the highest treble tones. That means no tones come across as emphasized or muted, and the sound is at least reasonably natural and full. Frequency response of the Bose SoundLink Mini II (blue trace), the counterfeit (red trace), and the Cambridge SoundWorks OontZ Angle 3 (green trace). The flatter and longer the line, the better the sound. The real SoundLink Mini II produced a surprisingly flat response for a small Bluetooth speaker, with a bass range that extended down into the lowest notes of a cello. But the counterfeit had no bass at all—it could barely play the lowest note on a flute! It didn’t have much treble response, either, which meant that you wouldn’t be able to hear much of a singer’s whisper, a flutist’s breath, or a cymbal’s ring. Of course, it’s no surprise that a $200 speaker beats a $13 speaker. I then wanted to find out how the counterfeit compared with other speakers in its price range, but every similarly priced Bluetooth speaker I had on hand lacked an audio input I could use for measurements. I did have a $30 speaker I could try, though: the . And as you can see in the graph above, the measurements of the OontZ Angle 3 easily outclassed those of the counterfeit Bose. So not only is the counterfeit no substitute for the real thing, it isn't even impressive for its price., which sounds pretty nice yet is much smaller—and splash-resistant, too. So if you find yourself in an exotic locale, facing piles of Bluetooth speakers at prices too good to be true … go for the instead.

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