Pioneer - A4 Wi-Fi Speaker for Apple® iPod®, iPhone® and iPad®

I absolutely love this product. I have owned several speaker docks for my iPods / iPhones over the years and the quality has always been mediocre regardless of price. For reference, I have owned a Geneva Lab model S, a Bose Sound dock, and various Phillips offerings. I have heard the Bang and Olufsen A8 ($1150), the Bowers and Wilkins offerings, as well as some higher end Geneva Lab offerings. For the money and based on my experience, this product cannot be beat. The sound quality is excellent, the airplay feature is great, the aux cord still allows others to use the system, the subwoofer on this model provides excellent bass, but the other models provide a good amount as well. One thing that always drove me nuts with my Geneva Lab dock is that I couldn't turn it all the way up without the sound getting distorted. This dock sounds great at all volumes and definitely gets loud enough to fill a good sized room. This used to be a $400 product and they dropped the price to $200 so I had to try it. I haven’t been disappointed and bought both the A3 as well as the A1 for use elsewhere in my house. For about $50 in software (Airfoil / Remoteless) you can easily use these and other airplay offerings as a multi-room audio solution. This is probably obvious at this point, but I highly recommend this product to anyone looking for a high quality airplay speaker at an excellent price.

These speakers sound great out of the box. Bought these specifically to use as Airplay speakers. Setup was a bit difficult because it does not mention that your wireless network has to be on Wireless G and is not compatible with Wireless N. But once I was able to set get it up and running, everything has been smooth. Great sound and being able to play music from my iPhone is very convenient. Sound quality is much better than Bluetooth speakers. The few things I am dissatisfied about is that, it isn't Wireless N compatible. There isn't any bass control so you cannot fine tune the sound. And it takes about 20 to 30 seconds for the speakers to power up.

I really hated that it turned it self off all the time so I had to physically go back to it and turn it back on. It's a feature but it DOES have an option to change it. It was hard to find in the manual but you hold down the input "button" for a few seconds if it flashes 4 times you are in quick start non power save mode. If it only flashes a few times you are in power save mode. I have 5 of these throughout my house. It was annoying to say the least to have to turn them on after being gone just the afternoon. I'm happy with that part now. I would turn the volume up all the way on the device and manage volume from my source so you don't have to get the remote or touch the device. I kept thinking the speakers were off but they weren't they were just turned down. LUCKILY one remote works well for any in this series. I have only opened and used one of the remotes so far so I guess I'll never run out of batteries since I have so many remotes to use after one dies. Too much base for very small rooms. NOT a good match for a bathroom for instance. You cannot adjust the levels on the device. This is an oversight since one of the best features is AirPlay and with iTunes you can only set levels for the source out, you cannot adjust the individual levels, volumes yes levels no. I read somewhere you can just put a sock in the base port. This worked well for smaller rooms on the A4 but not on the A3 which has no base port just a handle. If you use anything other than AirPlay and want to switch back to AirPlay you need to turn the unit off and back on. Another oversight. These are a great buy under a hundred dollars. Above that you really need to make sure it fits your needs. The audio can be SO MUCH BETTER than bluetooth but most people don't care enough. My ears get tired if the audio is compressed too much and starting with digital compressed files and compressing it again is way too much for me, that's why I love AirPlay and this set of devices so much. OH...I have an AirPort Express 30 feet away through several walls and the device says low signal. I might buy another AirPort Express or a newer wireless router to fix this since the audio drops out from time to time from low signal. For me this isn't a deal breaker though for some people it might be. I would just test this before your return date passes. I hope the network holds if I'm throwing a party with a lot of people but if it doesn't there are a lot of speakers around my 1200 square foot two level condo.

Overall this is a great speaker for the price. Considering the price dropped in half to only $200 when most all wi-fi airplay speakers are considerably more and/or sound very poor at this price range. Sound quality is pretty solid. The built in subwoofer contributes to this, but it lacks the ability to get very loud without sounding a little distorted. I guess you get used to listening to the large home theater speakers long enough that you come to expect more. Listening to the little bluetooth jawbone was the toss up. That little thing sounds awesome for the same price, but it is not wifi compatible. I wanted a speaker I could add to my home network and put out on the porch when company was over and put in the other rooms when working on the home repairs, etc. while the same music plays throughout the other airplay enabled speakers. I wanted to pick up the outdoor portable one, but am happy I didn't and would hesitate since it did not have the built in sub I question how good that one would sound. Overall good sound and perfect addition to my home audio network for the price.

The Pioneer A4 is a stunningly awesome piece of tech. Built-in AirPlay, DLNA, and HTC Connect...but wait, what if your device has none of those things? No worries - Pioneer has you covered. With their proprietary Wireless Connect feature, it creates its own WiFi hotspot that you can connect to. Your device surely has WiFi, no? The sound is incredible for such a small and inexpensive device. Without EQ adjustment, the sound isn't exactly "balanced". It's quite bass heavy. However, playing everything through AirFoil on my PC, I boosted the treble frequencies a touch and BOOM - balanced, beautiful sound. Does it get loud? Holy God in Heaven, yes. Unless you have a huge, huge room, this thing will not disappoint. But what about setup? If you have an iOS device, it's a cinch. Simply plug in your iOS device to it's USB port in the back after the Pioneer has powered on, hold the Input (on the front of the Pioneer) and the network (on the back) buttons for three or more seconds, and your iOS device will ask if you want to share your network settings. Click "Accept" and BAM, it's connected. Don't have an iOS device? Try using WPS. That's just as easy. However, I'd recommend disabling WPS on your router after as some older versions of WPS are extremely insecure. Overall, this thing is unbelievable for the money. Why more people aren't buying it is beyond me. Get it - you won't be disappointed.

I love this speaker. Super quality, at any range (may have slightly too much bass at low volume.) It's not as easy to set up as bluetooth, but not very difficult. It can't be very far from the wi-fi, but you can do "direct connect" to your device. However, you have to remember how to re-set back and forth for wi-fi or direct connect. The other downside is that you have to plug it in, and it's slightly larger than most portable speakers. The upside is that it sounds better than the bose, and can fill up a room and more. I have it in my window to my small back yard, and I do not get close to maxing out the volume,

It's got insanely good sound. Worth buying if you can find one. Like others have noted, the bass can be overwhelming. As others have noted, you can deal with the bass in a couple of ways: you can use your device's sound EQ settings to turn down the bass or simply block the bass ports on the back with a sock or something. There's a third option I haven't seen mentioned and I think it's best one. What you do is place energy-absorbing foam or rubber feet under the speaker. Sorbothane (search for it on Google or Amazon) is great; that's what I use. With this method, you get crystal-clear bass with none of the "boominess." Other materials may work as well. Ideally you should be able to play a song with loud bass, and put your hand on the shelf next to the A4. If you can feel anything more than a slight vibration, add more padding between the speaker and the surface it's sitting on.

I love being able to wake up and get it started as I get out of bed so that I can walk into our living room with nice music. The set up was quite tricky. I had to go through a number of options (wired, wireless, through iPhone) and tries before it finally worked using WPS. But once you get it connected, it's pretty amazing. Because it uses airplay, even my guests can connect to it without having to download an app. It actually does have an app that I barely even use. Once you're connected via airplay, you can use any app (at least in my experience) and the audio will come out of the speakers. I use this with Spotify, Airplay, IHeartRadio, 8tracks, even Youtube. However there are times when it just loses connection and would stop for a while. I eventually decided to just plug in the ethernet cable.