Bose has confirmed a local release date for its compact new smart speaker and started taking pre-orders despite one of its key advertised functionalities still not being available.
The Home Speaker 300 ($399) is a compact addition to the American company’s line of wireless speakers announced earlier this year.
The smaller speaker streams music via Bluetooth and Apple’s AirPlay 2 technology, but its wireless audio nous doesn’t extend to true wireless portability as the Home Speaker 300 is still tethered to a mains power cable.
Bose began taking pre-orders for the new speaker last Thursday and have now confirmed it will be available from August 15.
This comes after the speaker already went on sale in overseas markets more than six weeks ago.
The company’s local Facebook announcement that pre-orders have opened for the speaker also tout the speaker’s smarts, saying the speaker has “built-in Google Assistant”.
Its website said the integration gives users “instant access to millions of playlists, albums and more using just your voice”, along with access to “things like weather reports and news headlines”, but goes on to say “news playback and routines with news content included, sleep sounds and routines with sleep sounds included, and Chromecast capabilities” are “not supported at this time”.
Google Assistant voice control of Chromecast-enabled TVs is supported, while customers can also choose to use Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant.
But whether Google Assistant will be available when the Home Speaker 300 eventually does go on sale is another issue, with one customer pointing out the update to make Google Assistant available in Bose’s other wireless speakers is still yet to be rolled out to Australia.
A press release from the company sent last week claimed the functionality had been rolled out, advising journalists to click on a link “for details on Bose’s Google Assistant integration”.
Much like Google Assistant, the link is missing.
An earlier version of this report stated Bose had not set a firm release date and has since been corrected, but SmartHouse is yet to receive any further information on when Google Assistant functionality will be available.
