Bose Home Speaker 500 Wireless Smart Speaker with Google Assistant - Black

If you want beautiful, acoustic sound, then you want the Bose Home Speaker 500! The unit is rather sleek, fitting into nearly any space, while providing the most balanced stereo sound I have heard. It is nearly right on par with my bulky stereo system that has 6 external speakers and a bass speaker, but it is much more compact and does so much more. And, there is no remote control that I can misplace! You can integrate the Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa and use the voice-activated functions to play songs or listen to your favorite playlists. The set-up for this speaker was easy and took about 5-6 minutes to get it connected to my network. I simply downloaded the Bose Music app on my iPad Air and followed the prompts via the app. Make sure you disconnect your VPN (if you use one) while connecting the speaker to your network. Take some time to look through the app because there is access to all sorts of other apps like Spotify, radio stations, podcasts, etc, for streaming music and shows. You can create pre-sets in your app that allow you to simply touch the number on the speaker to play that chosen pre-set. This particular model also has a nice screen that shows you which device you are connected to and how, as well as what's playing. To connect your device via Bluetooth, simply touch the “B” (Bluetooth) on the speaker and it will search for a Bluetooth-active device to pair it with. Likewise, if you prefer to connect via an auxiliary cable, simply choose “AUX” on the speaker. If you wish to turn the speaker off, just hold down the play/pause function on the speaker and it will disconnect from the device. I love music, especially when I am getting revved up for my day on my elliptical. This speaker puts out massive sound and the bass isn't overwhelming, which is always a concern when living in a townhouse. You never want the bass reverberating through the neighbor's walls because that's just annoying to hear. I didn't feel this speaker was overwhelmed by bass and offered crisp sound in all ranges. I have a couple of smaller battery-operated portable speakers, and granted this one is larger in comparison, but it is fairly portable. We moved it from the kitchen area to the dining room table – all I had to do was plug it in! It will automatically search for the last device it was connected to, and if that one isn't available, it will search for the next one. I don't know how they packed all of this amazing-ness into this sleek unit, but it truly doesn't get any better than a Bose Home Speaker 500!

I'm a senior citizen so tend to be apprehensive about setting up new technology. My last speaker died of old age and crashed when I did an update so it was time for a change. I wanted something as close to what I had before and this new Smart Speaker did not disappoint. It has a really wonderful mellow sound and the ‘surround sound' really works. I'm into classical music and the quality of sound is great. I admit that I DID struggle setting it up but your product support pages were very helpful and all was well in the end. I own a lot of your products and chose them because your sound is second to none. I'm very satisfied with my purchase and you are always my ‘go to' for new products or replacements of old ones.

[This review was collected as part of a promotion.] Having had this a few weeks, we are now listening to more music. I am using the speaker with Google and Spotify to drive the voice commands. The quality of the sound is excellent and clear throughout the volume levels, including low. Base is lovely. with sound nicely filling the room. I tried this with both Alexa and Google voice assistant, which both worked as expected. However, we found the Google assistant driving a better experience from Spotify. It seemed that the Alexa preferred to pull content from the Amazon streaming service, with no obvious means to default to Spotify. Alexa also tended to filter out some of the request on passing it to Spotify, making this almost annoying. Neither Google Assistant, nor Alexa deliver the full feature set of their capabilities on the speaker, but that is fine as I just want to listen to music. I love the fact I can browse spotify and play at will on the Bose smartphone app. I can also stream my Apple music library direct to the speaker. There are lots of other options to stream to it. Basically it makes streaming music a joy. I had both an Alexa and Google smart speaker where this now stands. The family loves it. No one has suggested bringing back the old Alexa / Google speakers - this is in a different league.

[This review was collected as part of a promotion.] Bought this for my other half for his birthday. We already have a amazon echo, and combined, the echo now works as a additional speaker in another room! You just need to set up the Alexa app as well as the Bose app! Awesome!!!! it's not clear on set up, that you need to add the Bose wifi!

[This review was collected as part of a promotion.] Had this for about 2 weeks now and can't stop using Bose Home Speaker 500. Design Quality is what you expect. Color is matalic grey and doesn't look out of place in any room. Its small and compact. Sound Quality is excellent, you can hear every single beat and the base is good too. It features amazon Alexa and you can stream music through WiFi or your Bluetooth device. Bose app is available for you to listen to music, radio and news Overall this is a good product and I would recommend the investment as once purchased you would not need to purchase any other stereo.

[This review was collected as part of a promotion.] I purchased this about a month ago it has great sound in all the range I found the piano sounded as if it was actually in the room , I personally finding it hard to program it to its full use but I'm in my 70+ yrs and no techno savvy. But still the best sound speaker I've ever listened to. Well Dane Bose

[This review was collected as part of a promotion.] I brought it 10months back. The sound is amazing. Watching movies gives an outstanding theatre like music experience. Can't express the feel while watching movies. Thinking of what would be the sound experience while having the whole bose movie room setup. I am amazed with the bose service . My Home 500 speaker was having distorting sound. The bose replaced the defected part but after few days it again got the same issue. This time bose fully replaced with brand new Bose 500 speaker. This is why people stick with BOSE brand. A proud owner.

(This review was collected as part of a promotion.) We have owned the Bose 500 since Christmas last year. It has amazing sound, but it just stopped working the other day when we switched rooms and now all we get is a solid red light on the screen and it won't respond to anything......very frustrating......I expected more from a name like Bose

[This review was collected as part of a promotion.] Ok so my review of this speaker is slightly *tainted by one missing feature but I will come back to that. So straight out of the box and plugged in I eagerly awaited for it to burst into life, I had already downloaded the app so I was ready to play! Set-up process to connect to my wifi was a breeze as are all the Bose products all you have to do is follow the instructions and not jump ahead. So the first thing to do was get some presets programmed and then the music flowed. Now set up its time to have a play, after flicking through the app I found a new feature for Bose, you can actually adjust bass and treble to your liking where as with the Soundtouch products you only had "Bass reduction" this made it very pleasing on the ears for me as I like a good crisp top end and this speaker certainly delivers this! The Alexa feature gets used every morning to check the weather and deliver my news briefing as I make my first coffee of the day, shame Alexa does not interact with my coffee machine :) For those that are worried you are being listened too all the time there is a microphone mute button you can use. The Bose 500 can still be operated by the discrete buttons on the top of the device but a smart phone with the app delivers full functionality easily at your finger tips. You can easily stream audio for music/films/videos from any bluetooth enabled device to deliver rich and full bodied sound. This is perfect for the kitchen when you have mucky/wet hand as it offers totally hands free operation via the built in Alexa. So in summary its a great piece of kit with awesome sound and features. *Alas its sadly lacking integration with my existing Bose products, I have spent (Cant really say exactly how much just in case the wife reads this) good money in furnishing every room with wifi enabled speakers from Bose but sadly this one can't join the party :( Poor show Bose poor show.

Just bought this as I like the new feature of the built in Alexa, however it's going back as I can't conect it to any of my SoundTouch speakers therefore it's useless to me! Will be changing the house sound system. Bose need to get up to date and make new products compatible to their older products like many other systems available out there or they will lose peoples business!!