Hoping for battery play, too? Uh, not at this price. That placement isn’t as clean and neat as an underside power port would be, but the product designers have managed to pack all the electrical guts inside the Link Music cabinet, so there’s no clunky power wart cluttering up the other end of the flat line cable where it plugs into an outlet.
#AMAZON PRIME MUSIC WINDOWS APPCONTROLS BLUETOOTH#
On the backside, a small panel holds Bluetooth connectivity and microphone on/off switches and the power line connector, the latter mounted about an inch up from the speaker’s bottom. A rubberized bottom kept this thing from creeping across the counter even when the Springsteen crew was in soul-shaking, earth-quaking revival mode on “The Detroit Medley” and “Higher and Higher.” A row of LEDs blink on the front when you wake the thing up with a “Hey Google” command Flush plus/minus buttons on the speaker’s rubbery top control the volume, while a serious, center-mounted Google Assistant button controls playback and alarms and timers. It’s a boxy but rounded-at-the-corners enclosure measuring 4.1 inches in diameter by 5.3 inches high, wrapped in acoustically neutral black or gray textured speaker cloth. The speaker design is non-controversial, blending in with any décor. You can also ask the Google Assistant to serve up a recipe answer a burning question or command the lights, thermostats, window shades, and door locks in your smart home to do their thing. So, it’s designed to do a lot more than pull in music, internet radio, news, and podcasts.
#AMAZON PRIME MUSIC WINDOWS APPCONTROLS ANDROID#
Connecting wirelessly to a home network via dual-band Wi-Fi (802.11ac, but no ethernet port), a JBL Link Music runs on the Google Home platform, takes cues from an iOS 11.0+ or Android OS 5.0+ app, and from Google Assistant-aided voice commands. Now being regularly discounted to $79.95 (down from the original $119.95 MSRP), this mighty mite also ticks a bunch of the feature boxes you might be hoping for in a smart speaker. Get used to using voice commands, the JBL Link Music has minimal physical controls. There’s also enough bottom end extension (down to 60Hz) in a Link Music to make the room sway on an electro-dance pop thumper like Dua Lipa’s “Hallucinate,” found on a Spotify fresh hits list. Playing the ultimate (106-track!) Bruce Springsteen concert set “The Live Series Collection” (newly discovered on Napster), I was struck again and again by how much I felt (and miss) Clarence Clemons’ in-your-face concert saxophone wailing. Citizen Cope’s rap/rocking political rant “Contact” actually struck home with better clarity on the Link Music than it did on a Sonos One, and he emoted almost as articulately on the JBL as on the brighter-barking Bose Home Speaker 300. JBL’s typical midrange bump pushes vocals and throaty brass soloists forward.
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