Sunday, March 18, 2018

Help! My Bose Soundlink Colour won't switch on... what to do???

In the world of Bluetooth speakers, you really do get what you pay for.

I've sampled a few models in my time, and the sub-R1000 units, while they may be loud, are usually very tinny with a lack of low down bass response.
I've been fortunate enough to own a Bose Soundlink Colour for a few years now, and this speaker has delivered solid performance the whole time.

While it may not be the loudest bluetooth speaker that I have heard, it can sit in a corner and push out very decent sound at a moderate volume, without any distortion.

At higher volumes, the bass does drop off somewhat, but I've been very impressed with this little gadget overall.

I was therefore understandably alarmed when the unit refused to switch on yesterday, leaving me stranded in a world without music.
The situation was dire.
I started to envision an expensive visit to Bose South Africa, followed by an unreasonably large EFT from my bank account to theirs...

Thankfully, today we have a resource called the internet, which pretty much makes us all professionals in all fields. Instantly.
It's also a great place to spread dodgy news and make up wonderful factoids.

In this case however, it helped me to get to the bottom of my conundrum, and what follows is the recovery process for a Bose Soundlink Colour that refuses to switch on (assuming that it is charged):

  1. We want to get the speaker into something called "Shipping mode"
  2. To achieve this, first plug the speaker into your wall charger
  3. Hold down the Play / Pause button for 15 seconds
  4. After 15 seconds, while keeping the Play / Pause button pressed, unplug the charging cable from the speaker
  5. Release the Play / Pause button
  6. Plug the charging cable back into the speaker
  7. Press the power button, and the speaker should power on

This process worked perfectly for me, and saved me a repair visit to a Bose store.

My Bose powers on.
Long live the Bose.



  1. My bose color soundlink does not start but is getting charged. Once i remove the speaker from the wall charger, it doesn't start. What do i do to make it start.


Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...