Customer Ratings & Reviews

The Bose Build Speaker Cube is really a fun experience for a child to put together and learn about how a speaker works. My eight year old put the speaker together by herself, learning in the process with the Bosebuild Sound app through the Apple App store. Once assembled, the bluetooth speaker connected easily to her tablet, and she was able to listen to her favorite tunes. The audio quality is very good with well balanced sounds and clarity. Kids will enjoy the changing lights as the speaker plays music and sticking the various silhouette covers on the cube. Here are things I liked about the Bose Build Cube: (1) Educational – Kids will have fun learning (2) Simple to assemble (3) Very good Bose quality sound (4) Connect via bluetooth or with a 3.5mm aux cord (5) The speaker lights up as it plays music. (Note the lights can also be turned off if it's too bothersome.) Minor things that I disliked include: (1) Bluetooth speaker is not portable. You must power it with the supplied AC adapter power supply. There is no rechargeable battery. (2) No separate volume control on the speaker. All volume is controlled through your host device (tablet, laptop, PC, phone) (3) The speaker is exposed. There is no speaker grill to protect it from being damaged. Knowing that children can be rough on things, Bose should have provided a grill. (4) Relatively expensive. At the regular price of $149, the Speaker Cube is an expensive learning tool. You could take the entire family to a science center for a whole day of educational fun and still have money left over. (5) Access to the app is only through the Apple App store. The entire Android market was left out. It would be wise for Bose to include an app through the Google Play store in the future. Note, the speaker will work on any device (iOS, Android, Windows PC, laptop, etc.) that has either bluetooth or an aux connector. Overall, it is a great sounding, quality speaker that kids will enjoy learning and building. It's a five star product, but I have to deduct a star for value because, as I mentioned above, it is expensive for the learning experience gained.

Put this together with the kids on a rainy day. They thoroughly enjoyed it! Waited until it was on sale and made the purchase. And it sounds great as a Bluetooth speaker as well. Just wish it was portable instead of requiring to be plugged in.

We enjoyed putting the speaker together and my daughter commented on how much she learned about sound and electricity. Very happy with the kit and even the sound quality is very good for what I thought would be just a learning tool.

This is a gift for a teen, seems like a good project to do with him

I gave this BOSEbuild Speaker Cube to my 8-year-old daughter who was completely engaged the minute she opened the box. The only help she needed was to download the app on her iPad and pair the controller to Bluetooth. She went through the tutorial and put it together by herself with no support. That is, until my 17-year-old and I became engaged which happened when we realized how much fun she was having. I can't deny all of us had a blast playing with it and her. It comes with a magnet and a coil which you attach to a controller which then interfaces with the iPad app. You can do experiments and learn about magnetic fields, frequency and so on. The coil can behave as a small rocket that is launched with the app and can be taped to any cardboard box or other objects which then become speakers. A few other things you can do with this coil and magnet. Pretty cool. Then there is also the fun of building a real speaker cube - hence the name - with the included speaker, controller, plastic sides and templates to decorate. A truly magical moment to see my daughter enjoying so much something that she build herself while learning. The built-in LED lights can change colors and dance to the sound of music with infinite number of customization that your child can do by themselves. It sounds very good too. Much more than a toy and a learning tool. Even I learned that children and many teens can hear some high frequency sounds that none of the grown ups can. I was amazed that they could hear it even from another room while my wife and I could not hear it although it was in our hands and we all have good hearing. An enjoyable project that was enough depth that she really learned something but shallow enough that she stayed engaged and very excited. Although its target is children, parents will enjoy playing too. I highly recommend this product.

Bought this for my 12 year old son and he loved it! He loves it more because he had to assemble it!

Very good sounding speaker once assembled. Only downside is needing an apple device for instructions. Put it together with my 3 year old daughter.

what can I said, kids love it, very educational! thanks Bose!

Good assembly kit to learn basics of how speakers work

It’s was very easy to put together, and the app you have to download talks thru it as well teach you the sound waves and how a speaker works..

I have several Bluetooth speakers and the BOSEbuild Cube stood out to me as unique for its educational value, and as a simple introduction to electronics and sound project I could do with my kids, 10 and 14. So that’s the aspect I’ll focus on most since that’s what sets it apart from most other Bluetooth speakers. The only downside is that the BOSEbuild application only runs on iOS devices. Android and other devices can still pair with and use the BOSEbuild Cube perfectly fine, and you can still enjoy the experience of putting the components together, but the BOSEbuild app provides some experiments and experiences that you’ll miss out on without an iOS device. The app also has the instructions for assembling the speaker but it’s simple enough that most people can probably figure out the assembly even without it. Hopefully BOSE will eventually make the app available on other platforms as well, but it’s not a showstopper. The experiments in the app include connecting and testing a coil and magnet, setting various power levels to make the coil “jump” off that magnet, building a sample speaker box for the coil and magnet out of paper or any other material you want, equalizer comparisons, setting the cube colors, comparing the sound of the cube if one of the panels is removed, etc . None of it’s rocket science but my boys were both pretty fascinated to see how the basic components work together. You can take as much or as little time as you want to either just get through it and build it, or to take your time and dwell in the experiments for awhile -- in our case we took our time and spent about 2 hours in the experimentation phase, and for assembly we put it together and took it apart several times just because we could. In the end we now have a nice family/household Bluetooth speaker. The sound is fine if not excellent for its size. So far as I can tell the speaker does not have any volume control of its own, it’s set to a single basic level, though you can control overall volume from the playback device itself. This actually streamlines usage in my opinion since you have only a single point of volume control rather than the “my phone is set to one volume but the speaker is set to another” kind of conflict. You just pair, play, and control the volume completely from your playback device. And personally I like that. My personal favorite “unique” feature is the different color modes -- you can set the cube to either 1) a single constant color, adjusted by a slider bar, 2) continuously cycle through the colors at a speed controlled by the slider bar, 3) dynamically pulse colors based on the audio, 4) show no color at all. We found that we liked the dynamic pulse when playing music, and leaving it on the slowest color cycle setting for a decorative lighting effect when it’s just “sitting there”. All of this can be controlled directly and simply from the on-cube panel, no app required. It accepts both Bluetooth and 3.5mm aux connections, selected automatically and simply by whether an aux cable is connected. On the Bluetooth side it can remember up to 8 devices at a time, and can connect with any 2 of them simultaneously -- though it will only play audio from 1 of those 2 actively connected Bluetooth devices at any given moment. My one very minor grump is that it uses a proprietary power brick. The BOSEbuild Cube does have a microUSB port but it appears that port is for doing firmware updates, not as a path for power. Since this is not a battery-powered speaker that most people will be lugging around with them this is admittedly a very minor issue. And, not being limited to what USB standards can be depended on to provide may give it the ability for some extra audio “oomph”. So this is an observation for those that may want to know, but nothing I’d mark it down for.

Got this for my niece for Xmas. She seems to really enjoy it.

So when we took delivery of this, I gave the box to my 10 year old and told him to build it on his own. I was around in case he had questions or ran into any problems, but I wanted him to do it by himself. From the loading of the app to the actual building of the speaker, the instructions were clear, concise and easy for him to follow. The only snafu we ran into was getting his iDevice paired to the speaker using the "touch" method. But, after we jumped that hurdle, everything was easy and straightforward from there on out. The final product is a, typical for Bose, great sounding speaker. The whole process took him less than 30 minutes. A couple of notes - after building the speaker, I don't think the app is necessary any longer. If the app stays connected to the speaker, the volume level on the speaker doesn't get very high when controlled from the iDevice's volume buttons. One has to go into the app to get the volume to go higher. Also, all the lights on the speaker can be controlled by physical buttons on the speaker itself, so it's really not necessary to keep the app connected. In fact, we disconnected the app from the speaker and then deleted the app so that the speaker behaves just like any other bluetooth speaker. The only other thing I wish about this speaker is that it was battery-powered. That would make it much more portable.

This is a great product for kids who love to build things and figure out how they work. I have a 10 yr old son and I had him put the cube together and work on it with the help of the app. He initially spent 2 hours working on it, which for kids nowadays is a long time. Almost everyday since he put it together he has gone to the app and continued to tinker with the sound and the different lighting of the cube. He has the cube paired up with 3 of his devices. His only complaint is that the cube can't be charged and so it must plugged in for it work. My only complaint is that the app can only be downloaded through Apple and not droid products. In order for him to tinker with the app he has to borrow my I pad. Overall, I would recommend this product if your son/daughter enjoys building things and learning how they work. Another great quality product by Bose.

I thought this would be a neat DIY project for my kids to put something together, but this is more of a learning kit than a construction project. The key to it is the app-based nature of the experience. It leads you through several stages of learning about electromagnetism and sound, and it has half a dozen side projects that expand on the learning experience far beyond just putting a speaker together. This was a great learning experience for both my 7 and 9 year old, and at the end, you have a cool bluetooth speaker with customizable LED lights.

Bose really hit it out of the park with this one! I was a little concerned about a DIY speaker for kids. Would they have to make dozens of tiny electrical connections? Thankfully, no. All of the tiny electrical connections are done and sit behind a Plexiglas shield. All your child has to do is plug in power and make a molex-style connection from the speaker to the control board. Assembly of the speaker box is quite easy, but what really earns top marks for this product is the instructional app for iOS devices (sorry Android users). Bose has a simple magnet and a coil to introduce electromagnetism, and build on it to touch on frequency and amplitude (power) and basic waveforms. But if you don't understand any of that, you're still getting a chance to have some fun with things like making the speaker turn different colors or making different tones. And you still end up with a decent Bluetooth speaker. The Bose app had animated illustrations that helped to put things together and a few short videos that helped you understand some concepts. So all of the lessons were broken up into digestible chunks so they wouldn't lose kids' attention. I can really see my kids going back through the app once in a while to play around with different things. I later connected to the BOSEbuild speaker as a normal Bluetooth speaker to my Android phone and it worked great. I kinda wish it had volume control on the speaker itself, but I could easily control volume from my phone. While it is on the pricey side, I'm still really thinking of purchasing more as gifts.

The Bose Build speaker cube is a good product with a couple of limitations. First the good: The product contains well made components, is easy to assemble, and sounds OK when complete. My 11 year old thoroughly enjoyed putting it together is uses it frequently. Now the limitations: - While the assembled speaker will work with Android phones, the actual assembly instructions and extra projects require an iOS device. In a world where Android runs on 64% of all smartphones, this is a colossal oversight. - Assembly, even without the iOS instructional app, is pretty rudimentary and is over quickly. - There is no battery for portability. With all of that said, its still a good product that will interest young minds that are interested in DIY.

My 9 year old son had a blast putting this together. His sense of accomplishment when he was finished was priceless. He learned about how speakers work though the provided experiments. Truly a wonderful experience for my son. As for the sound, I was pleasantly surprised. It sounds very nice. Still get Bose sound once it is complete. If you are looking for a bluetooth speaker for your child this one is a must have. They get to learn while building their very own bluetooth speaker.

My daughter is 8 and she loved putting this together. The instructions and directions were great to follow. She loved learning how the speaker worked and being able to adjust the sound and color along the way. My only complaint is that it has to be plugged in to the wall to work. I wish she could charge it and move it around the house and not have to be tied to the power outlet in the wall. Otherwise this was a great speaker with lots of STEM studies built in.

My sons love to build things, so i thought this would be a good project for the three of us to do together. I broke open the box and laid the pieces out and the first problem was that there were no actual instructions. The manual tells you to download an app from the Apple Appstore and it will walk you through building the speaker. Of course, my iPhone was dead, so i decided to see if the app was available in the Google Play store. It was not. It wasn't difficult to figure out how to put it together, other than what the coil and magnet does in conjunction with the speaker. I decided that we would figure that out the next day after my iPhone had charged. I downloaded the iPhone app and figured out how to use the coil and magnet and all was finally right with the world. My sons and I rocked out to the Sing soundtrack and had a ball. This speaker paired easily with my iPhone and subsequently, their Kindle tablet and has very impressive sound. It was plenty loud and has stencils that can be installed to customize the speaker cube and with the push of a button, you get colors that light up the cube. All in all, this was pretty fun to do with my kids. My complaints are the lack of instructions and no available app for the Google Playstore. I have my iPhone, but my kids have the Kindle's so a Google app would be ideal. I give this four stars because of the fun I spent with my two little guys building this and the sound quality of it. I took away one star for the lack of written instructions and no app available outside of the Apple App Store.