Bose Home Speaker 500

Boss

The Bose Speaker 500 is a premium smart speaker that costs more than the popular Google Home and Sonos One combined. Why are they asking for $500? Behind the groundbreaking Bose technology, this is not just a smart speaker, but a smart speaker for audiophiles.

3D sound

The case has two drivers designed specifically for the 500th model. They are directed in opposite directions, the sound is reflected from the surfaces in the room and the whole space is filled with music. At full volume, the device can easily sound a room measuring forty metres in size, it will be enough for a small studio or a large living room. The sound character is traditionally for Bose assertive, powerful, and warm, there is a lot of bass and a huge headroom.

Seamless anodized aluminium body

The Bose Home Speaker 500 reads the company's modern design code: a seamless elliptical shape and an anodized aluminium chassis that looks serious against its plastic counterparts and will survive an accidental drop off the kitchen table. In the centre of the speaker is a display with basic information about the track being played, volume and album art.

Hear you anywhere

An array of eight microphones is hidden around the perimeter of the speaker to control the Amazon Alexa voice assistant. Therefore, the Speaker 500 will hear the user even in noisy environments. But the assistant does not understand Russian. Therefore, it is especially convenient that you can control the speaker not only with voice commands, but also with the help of a mobile application or a touch panel on the end of the speaker. The latter is especially convenient, since sometimes it's more common to just poke your fingers into the next track.

Bose Music

The Bose Music app is responsible for music playback. It works in several ways. The first is a classic multi-room over a home Wi-Fi network. You enter your Spotify, Deezer, TuneIn account details, then access the service libraries and then you can listen to your favorite tracks. The only frustrating thing is that the choice of music services is somewhat limited. But there is AirPlay 2 support for combining different speakers into a single system.

Airplay 2

The second way is the usual Bluetooth. In this case, the speaker instantly connects to the smartphone and starts in just two clicks, but the smartphone must be within a ten-metre radius from the speaker, and the display will not be able to show album covers. As an alternative to wireless connection, there is a good old minijack.