Bose Home Speaker 500

Bose is a brand that most of you who love audio or technology know more or less. Bose audio products have always had a distinctive sound quality and won the hearts of users. That is for traditional products, but when it comes to technology with products from the Home Speaker series that have just been introduced at IFA this year, will Bose timely upgrade itself to enter the market? Are smart speakers extremely active?

Smart speakers and multi-room have been very popular with familiar brands such as Sonos, BlueSound, etc. They are very young companies, quickly entering the market and with a very fast rate of change. Many long-standing audio companies do not grasp that opportunity, such as Bose, Sony, etc. They are slow to change, still stuck with their traditional products until they realize they need to be different. Bose launched a Smart Speaker Series with Home Speaker 500, Soundbar 500, and Soundbar 700. These are products that integrate Alexa virtual assistant, Multiroom support, and many other attractive features. After one week of use, I will share each part for you to imagine easily.

amazon Bose Home Speaker 500 reviews

1/ Connection: Bluetooth, wifi, and without Airplay 2

Home Speaker 500 has a 3.5mm jack for connectivity besides Bluetooth and Wifi. There is nothing complicated with the other two connections, but I have a little problem with the wifi connection. Initially, I could not connect to the active part; it failed, then I had to reset the device to connect. Many people have connected before because the product can only remember eight devices, and the speaker cannot connect more; it must reset to connect from the beginning. If any of you use it and encounter the above situation, you can reset it as follows: press the AUX and – keys at the same time for 5 seconds.

The absence of Airplay 2 can be said to be a minus point of the product. Because Bose only supports Spotify in its app, there is no other way than to listen via Bluetooth connection and ignore most of the rest of the features for those using Apple Music. Now, the Home Speaker 500 is simply a regular Bluetooth speaker.

2/ Bose Music app, unstable, not intuitive

That is a completely new application launched by Bose at the same time as this Series. Bose has a wide range of apps, and each one will be used for a different series of products. Therefore, if anyone hopes to buy Home Speaker 500 to combine with Bose soundtouch models, 100% rest assured that it would not work.

The point that I don’t like about this application is that it always drops the connection. Whenever I enter the application, I always receive a message that the connection is lost and wait a few seconds to reconnect to the speaker. Bose wants users to tweak through software, from the volume to speaker connection, and every time I enter the software, I have to wait a few seconds, which is very frustrating.

Both the UX and UI of this Bose software are pretty bad. I will talk about the part I use the most, Spotify; the rest are considered closed; perhaps Bose needs to take more care of my application if I want users to use it often.

3/ Support Spotify

Bose music supports many music streaming services, but most are only available in the US, and only Spotify is popular in the world. I use Spotify, so I also focus on this part and the other parts, so please share more if you guys use it.

The Spotify interface on Bose Music is quite beautiful, but it is much more than the original application in terms of usability. I can’t find the search history; I can’t click on it after the search is done. Basic operations such as entering albums or artists also do not exist. I don’t know how to describe it, but everything from the most basic can’t be used on Bose Music, and I have to go back to the Spotify app to use it because I can’t continue to use it.

Another problem is that every time you listen to music on the Bose Music app if you listen to the whole playlist album, it’s not a problem, but every time you want to switch songs, you have to wait a few seconds to connect, which is extremely inconvenient.

EVERYTHING WAS CLEARLY IN PLACE when I went back to Spotify, but a problem made me go back to the Bose Music app. That’s because I connect two speakers; when using Spotify to adjust the volume, I can only adjust the volume of 1 speaker. The other speaker does not eat the volume, so I want to adjust the volume of the two speakers simultaneously. I have to go back to Bose Music to do this, and it takes a few seconds to wait every time I adjust the volume.

where can you get a Bose Home Speaker 500 online

Bose Home Speaker 500: Smart Bluetooth Speaker with Alexa Voice Control Built-In, Black: Buy it now

4/ Multiroom but lacks stereo connection mode

Home Speaker 500 can connect multiple speakers through the Bose Music app. You can control music playback individually like other multi-room speaker systems and group speakers to play the same song. However, I searched for stereo mode and couldn’t find it. So if you have two speakers, combine them to hear louder, without the stereo effect at all. That can be said to be a shortcoming that I hope Bose will update soon.

When connecting in a group like this, only the main speaker can be adjusted if you adjust the volume from the phone. To adjust the two speakers, we have to go to the Bose Music app. The main thing here is that if I accidentally make the sound of the two speakers uneven, I have to pull both of them to the smallest level, but there is no way to combine the volume of 2.

Another problem is that sometimes the multiroom mode works unstable; sometimes, I can’t play the music of 2 separate speakers together. I will encounter a situation when one is turned on, the other will stop, and this situation will also stop encountered if someone else has access to your speaker system.

5/sound quality

Ignoring the unpleasant experiences of the software, now I will come to the sound quality experience. Because the article is also quite long, I will not talk about the product’s design anymore. However, we will talk about the special structure of this speaker.

The Home Speaker 500 is designed with two speakers facing each other, and Bose calls this “wall to wall stereo sound,” which means that the speaker gives a full Sound quality, good room coverage thanks to its ability to reflect sound into the room wall of your home. I find it very impressive because the speaker gives a full Sound effect no matter where you are in the room, the most optimal for a speaker in a room of 20-30m2; if the room is bigger or Many obstacles will reduce the sound quality quite a bit.

However, there is a problem here: when I sit facing the speaker, the sound slightly deviates to the right; both of my speakers are like that, and I have to listen carefully to realize it. However, I think the people who bought it probably just left it in their room and turned on the music, so this shouldn’t matter much.

Home Speaker 500 still owns the familiar warm bass of Bose. Due to the design of 2 drivers to face each other, the bass will not be very good compared to the Bose Revolve + with downward-facing drivers. Bose also doesn’t often specify the capacity of its speakers, so I don’t know much more information. If anyone wants to have better bass, they should put it in the wall corner; it will be better in empty places.

The midrange range has always been the strength of the Bose speakers, which are always warm, full, and attractive to listeners, and the Home speaker 500 is no exception.

Treb doesn’t have anything too prominent, so if you like treb, you shouldn’t expect anything from it. It can be said that in terms of sound quality, the Home Speaker 500 has not performed very well. With a speaker priced at $500, I expect it to perform better. I recently reviewed products in this range like the Marshall Woburn, or the B&O P6 do much better.

6/ Conclude

As I shared above, this is a product that is too hasty of Bose, perhaps to keep up with the product launch schedule when everything is incomplete, from hardware to software. If you have bought it, wait for Bose to update the software; if you are not in a hurry, you can wait a little longer when Alexa is updated; or if you need a portable speaker, you can choose Bose Soundlink Revolve Plus also very good.