Bose 500 Home Speaker with Alexa Built In - Triple Black

I love Bose products, end of. Well made, nice materials and easy to connect to via Bluetooth or AirPlay. The only negative is Alexa, it has a mind of its own and via the app is no better.It displays artist info, album art when streaming and using internet radio stations.Luckily I can’t stand Alexa and didn’t purchase this for having that function so I don’t really use it. I’m sure it can be set up in the app somewhere but as they don’t make using that as intuitive as the speaker I can’t be bothered.

Disclaimer: I do NOT use voice assistants (Alexa or Google's) so if that is important to you this review will not include that.I bought this in December 2020, so have had it for about ten months now. This has become the single most important purchase (technology wise) of the past year. I use it every single day. Now to the review.The item arrived promptly in a sleek box with plenty of padding to assure a safe arrival of the product. Included in the box is the 3-pin UK connector and setting up the speaker is as simple as plugging in the cord and then downloading the Bose Music app from the App Store. The app will guide you through the steps to connect to the internet. No issues there for me.Once you have connected to the internet (it supports both 2.4GHz and 5GHz wifi connections) you can link your music service of choice (Spotify, Amazon Music or Deezer. Note: you cannot link Apple Music but still can use it via AirPlay 2). After this I recommend you tune your Audio Settings (Bass and Treble) to just the way you like it and matches the room (for me Bass: 60, Treble: 70). Choose wether you want to display a clock when not in use and program the six programable buttons at the top of the unit. I have some playlist and radio stations assigned to them.The sound is clear and crisp, the bass is rich and deep. Overall a great sounding speaker. I have used different Bose speaker over the years and this one does not disappoint. It is truly stereo (two drivers) as opposed to the Bose HS 300 which only has one driver. It can be linked to other Bose Smart Speakers and play in all your devices at the same time. If you have older versions of Bose speakers you can still connect to them (only one at a time though) with a feature called "Group". It basically connects your older speaker to the Home 500 via Bluetooth (it must be within range of course) and again plays on both at the same time, depending on the strength of the signal it might be slightly out of sync but if the two speakers are in different rooms (my case) it is not much of a problem. When I connect my smaller portable Mini II Soundlink in the same room, there are no problems with synchronisation and delays.The great thing about Spotify is that "Spotify Connect" allows you to control the unit from their app without ever having to use anything else, on a regular day I'll simply choose what I might want to listen to within Spotify and simply transfer it to the Bose 500 with Spotify Connect. Or simple press one of the programmable buttons to go straight to a specific playlist.If you use Apple Music or have your library saved on another app you can use AirPlay 2, it is a simple as connecting any AirPlay 2 device, although the casting device must be on the same WiFi network as the speaker, I say this as with Spotify you can turn your music on or off from anywhere as long as your phone has data and the speaker is connected to the internet.If you don't use any streaming services and don't use Apple devices (or as it happened to me earlier this year, find yourself without wifi for some time), you can still cast via Bluetooth although doing this won't allow you to "Group" different Bose speakers.By the way, if you have a data cap (limited WiFi connection, 60Gb download a month for instance) bear in mind this will stream everything at highest settings (320kbps in Spotify's case with Premium, or lossless at 16/44.1kHz with Apple Music) so factor that in.Overall great experience, so take the leap and order yours today.

This is a great speaker despite what some people who are so precious about their audio devices seem to think. Yes there are a couple of things which could be improved. The set-up is awkward and a little confusing, but I did get there after about twenty minutes. As has been said the Alexa interface could be better, but the same could be said of many of the Amazon devices to be honest.The speaker is all about the sound which is excellent. It fills a decent sized room comfortably, and that is when not anywhere close to full volume. It gives a lovely bass sound which can be adjusted along with treble on the app to suit the listener. As someone who appreciates music, and how it is delivered I love this speaker. Small but deadly is how I would best describe, and I have no problems advocating this product to those who like listening to music, or indeed radio, like me.

Just arrived and set up, connected it to myAmazon Music and connected to my iPad, other devices to follow no doubt. Excellent sound quality even at high volumes although it will usually be at a more sensible volume.Just one small gripe, on the Amazon page it’s “people often buy” bit at the bottom it suggests a charger attachment for it but on looking underneath it it doesn’t look compatible with it and on checking the questions and answers bit someone says it isn’t which doesn’t matter to me i probably wouldn’t have bothered any way but Amazon should really do there homework and get their facts right.Others have said it’s a bit pricey but it’s great quality and I’m old enough to remember paying almost as much way back in the 1970’s for a music centre and it wasn’t even top of the range! Prices of audio equipment have certainly come down in real terms over the decades.