Customer Ratings & Reviews

Once again Bose outdoes themselves with the new Bose Home Speaker 500. This one not only looks cool, it has all the new tech to make it that much cool-er. Simply stated, the design element is very sleek. Out of the box, you can feel it's might and know that the sturdy construction will last more than a long time. But build quality is not why one buys Bose, it's the sound that they crave, and this speaker does not disappoint. Already a smart speaker, it allows you to connect multiple devices while having the option to stream directly from multiple channels, which gives you access to millions of songs, playlists, Internet radio stations, and more. The only downside that makes me rate it one less star is for not being as portable as the rest of their line of bluetooth speakers. Unfortunately for those that like to Bose on the go, this one needs a constant a/c source to power the strong sound. But, like I mentioned earlier, for that minor inconvenience, I wouldn't mind for the sound it produces is the classic Bose repertoire.

My dream to own a Bose speaker for 15 years other more important things always come first. Two months ago $300 boom my very own Bose speaker. Don’t get me wrong this a beautiful speaker bus’t something is wrong with its wifi and Bluetooth connection unpaired. It kept disconnected all the time. Why this speaker doesn’t come with a remote control ???

OK. First things first. It's expensive. But it's worth it. The sound is first-rate. I have it sitting on my kitchen countertop, and the sound is amazing. Crystal-clear highs, smooth midrange, and surprisingly deep bass. Also, the soundstage is much wider than with other speakers like this that I have tried. The all-metal construction and finish are high-end. The little display screen shows a picture of the album cover when music is playing from one of the supported services. I use Amazon Music and it works perfectly with that, displaying the album cover and song title. When nothing is playing you can configure the display to show a clock or to be turned off. I like the clock. Setup is super simple, if you already have one or more Amazon Echo devices it will take you less than a minute to have this up and running. Overall, I really like it!

This Bose speaker is an excellent buy. The legendary Bose sound quality is in this speaker. The sound is amazing. The people at Bose linked this speaker to Amazon's Alexa by incorporating it in the speaker. This gives you many listening options with the Amazon portal. The Bose speaker comes with a little tv screen that shows the music being played. When not in use it displays a clock. A cool feature. The build quality is first rate as is the Bose custom. Bose has taken their quality and history into today's technology with the Amazon Alexa component. Definitely a product worthy of five stars. Well built. Exceptional sound quality and the Bose name. What's not to like?

Sound quality is excellent but unable to use Alexa skills. Will be returning the speaker.

This sounds fantastic. I have a Bose Revolve and the soundlink mini, but I really wanted something in the bedroom that was big enough to sound good but small enough to not take up the dresser. This really sounds great. I can’t wait to get the Airplay 2 update next year. My wife has a pandora subscription, but I have tons of purchases through iTunes, Anyway, out of the box it sounds excellent, and I prefer the look over that of the HomePod, Google, or Echo smart speakers, Bose really knows how to make a beautiful product on the inside and outside.

The left speaker makes a shrill and annoying noise when playing music at medium to high volumes, especially when there are bass playing.

The speaker sound good, very good. But I knew it would though. Build quality is really solid, and has a good amount of weight to it. Controls are easy to understand, and anyone could use this speaker. The Alexa portion is more optional to some users, because some might not use smart devices. However, this one is ready to use. The display is very nice, giving you fill album art work. Overall it's just a very solid speaker, with only one downside like most. The price, is higher than it should be, but the name Bose is why. It's a nice speaker, and I can recommend it.

Cheap horrible horrible horrible paper weight. I have loved Bose and have several of their products but this was the #1 biggest regret. Such a cheap and buggy product Bose very disappointed.

This speaker was well-designed to fit into virtually any part of a home. The industrial design was well done, with nice ergonomics and intuitive controls. The sound quality is exceptional! Nice crisp lows, and solid and faithful mid-range and high-end fidelity. Alexa integration was pretty well done. Alexa understands the key aspects of the Home Speaker, which makes voice controls intuitive. I felt that the app setup was a little clunky, but that is a one-shot deal so it's not a biggy.

I've had my Bose Home Speaker 500 for almost a year now, and I'm still in love with it! I picked the 500 over the smaller (and screen-less) 300 due to the better bass response when I heard it in my local Best Buy store. The Bose Music app guided me right through setup, from connecting the 500 to my home WiFi network, to setting up Amazon Alexa, as well as my favorite music streaming service (Amazon Music), and verified that everything was set up properly before I started listening for the first time. I use my 500 mostly for Alexa, which I've also added the SiriusXM skill to so I can listen to my favorite channels on my 500. The 500 fills my home office with sound, and sounds great (SiriusXM is somewhat lower-quality, and the 500 makes it have better sound quality). I also use it for Amazon Music (also via Alexa), and it makes my favorite songs and artists sound great. I love the little screen that it has to tell me what's playing, or the status of the speaker. The great part about the 500 is that, even though it has excellent sound quality and deep bass response, it fits easily in the corner of my home office desk, and takes up very little space. I just wish the 500 was compatible with Alexa Calling, and maybe that is a feature Bose can work on adding, as I'm sure calls would sound just as crisp as music on the 500. Overall, I just LOVE my Bose Home Speaker 500, and highly recommend it for music lovers!

I am a BOSE fan and always will be so long as they keep the quality I expect from BOSE. It’s like the Bose Home radio speaker marketed but it does so much more as it also uses Alexa. But the Alexa is cumbersome if you have never used it. I have Amazon prime, but it wants me to pay for the music service too. It could be I just don’t know how to set it up right. The radio plays for free but it is also predetermined links to local channels. The speaker engineering is superior as always, I can count on BOSE. The quality is there. I believe they will be improving the app as we go alone with them on the improvement journey. Once plugged in, the speaker goes through a turn on procedure where it looks for the router it will use for Wi-Fi. I then set up the speaker to connect to my router. It was that simple. Pretty easy if you follow the instructions. CONS: Limited music app. Alexa will not play Amazon prime free music that is listed in my play list. But I just may not know how to set up Alexa. The manual is NOT intuitive. It would be nice if they sent an Alexa manual with this to help us use all the great features. I could not get my Bose quiet comfort 35 head set to connect. That would have been nice, so I can listen to it in bed while hubby sleeps.

This is one of the best things I have ever had in my house. I am really loving it. Set up was pretty easy...the app was quick to download on my phone and got my preset channels done in no time...the only issue I had was during the update,the speaker froze a bit but was easy to fix just by turning it off and back on, and we have been running ever since. I have Alexa (Amazon Echo devices) and like that I no longer have to have it hooked up to a stereo system to have great sound. I get better sound out of this speaker than I do my stereo anyway. I have had no issues with it and now can hear my music clearly with no distortion from almost anywhere in my house. It is easy to adjust the speaker to the sound you want so if you like more bass or treble just by clicking on the speaker icon on the app and going under adjustments. You get 6 buttons that you can program with your favorite music stations and you can change the station by your Alexa app, the preset buttons or on the Bose app on your phone. I haven't had any issues with it and like I said, I LOVE this speaker. It takes up less room than my stereo and has much better sound. If you are on the fence on whether this is worth it or not, I can tell you honestly it is SOOOOO worth it in my opinion.

I always think the quality of the box indicates the quality of the item. Once again Bose doesn’t disappoint. This arrived in a very sturdy box, with the speaker wrapped in a cloth bag. Set up was very easy just attach power cord & it was ready to go. I didn’t know it was on & it was so loud when it came on that I jumped! The volume was only at half way. You need the Bose Music app & Amazon Alexa app to connect your devices & sync your accounts. This was the hardest part for me since I forgot most of my passwords. I was able to login into iheart radio & play my music from there. I also connected my iPod through Bluetooth. I wasn’t able to sync Sirius radio with it & I don’t have an Amazon music account. You can also link Spotify, Pandora & there is a Tunein service which you don’t need an account for. Any kindle books purchased also appear on the app. I am new to Alexa so it was fun to ask her to play a song & also the current weather. The speaker itself was amazing, color screen for iheart radio & simple operation with controls on top for speaking, volume, play/ pause, aux & Bluetooth. It sounds incredible & like I said before I very loud even at half volume. Very pleased with this & it looks nice too!

Very attractive. Easy to start. Just take out from the box, put it on its place, download the app on your phone and follow the instructions. That’s it. I could connect it to my TV as well. Now I can watch movies with a better sound

Bose® - Home Speaker 500 Wireless with Built-In Amazon Alexa Voice Control - Triple Black This system is supposed to be an Alexa controlled speaker. With Alexa being able to control other devices in your home. 1st thing to note. The Android app is only half functional. It will start the setup and then fail to finish the setup leaving Alexa non functional. The phone I’m using is a Galaxy S8 fully updated with the newest Bose App and Alexa App. After I went through all of the trouble shooting I could do, I called Bose. They were VERY friendly and I spent an hour on the phone with them redoing everything I had already done. Nothing worked and the tech on the phone said my only option was to get another phone, NOT Android, and try that. So a note on this, if you have a Galaxy S8 you may have an issue setting this speaker up. Not sure about other Android phones, I only have the one Android phone. When my wife came home I used her iPhone 8 to finish the setup. I had to download all the apps on her phone and finish the setup. Since I had originally set the speaker to “Public” that meant any phone with the correct apps and on my Wi-Fi could control the speaker. So after many hours I have an almost working speaker. None of the presets work at all. I continuously get “could not set that station to a preset”. I think it has something to do with Alexa not wanting to work with the free versions of the online music apps. I’m not willing to pay for one just to make a preset work. It is also misleading in the way it tells you to set them up. One way says to play something on the speaker and then hold down a preset button, that fails. The other way says to play something from your phone and set that with a preset, that fails. Alexa controls are very confusing to me. You can’t just tell it to play, (list artist here). You have to tell it who, what, where, to play it. I’m used to telling my Google speaker to play, (list artist here), and have it do it. Even with all the free services it just responds with “You can’t play that Artist without Google premium, but here’s a station like that”. I would be sure most of the issues I’m having would be with me not understanding how Alexa works, but I did spend an hour on the phone with Bose and they were unable to get Alexa working on their device, even after a complete setup with the Alexa app on my phone. I had to finish the setup on an iPhone, and even then presets don’t work and there’s no help on why. I am going to blame all my setup issues on 2 things. 1, I’m not versed on how Alexa actually works and I can find no real help, even Bose is at a loss. 2, Alexa’s AI is not very friendly, and not at all intuitive. I’m at a complete loss on Alexa. I really wanted to use Alexa and start adding Alexa controlled devices to my home. I think I will hold off on that for another year or so. So, Alexa, in it’s current form is a complete failure for me. Oh sure I can set a timer or ask for the weather and what not, but the way it interacts is confusing. If you completely understand how Alexa works, and are an Alexa fan, you may have a completely different experience than I did. Now let’s talk about the speaker. It stands 8 ¼” high, 6 ¾” wide, and 4 ½” deep. The top controls are, Alexa action button, Mic mute, Presets 1 through 6, Volume down and up, Play/Pause, Aux, and Bluetooth. It has an Aux input in the back at the bottom, as well as a service micro USB port and the Power input. The face of the speaker has a 2 ½” color display that shows the current time or station and artist being played. The speaker contains 2, 2” full range drivers, one on each side. It uses Bose tuned wave port with a wrap around internally vented port to boost the Bass. The speaker itself will work as a Bluetooth speaker or with an AUX input without Alexa. It is wall powered and has no battery, so it’s meant to be stationary. The sound and volume are acceptable, although the bass is lacking a bit. If you push the bass it starts to break up. I found the speaker to be likable and usable, although a Sony speaker of the same price range will have much better bass. The speaker looks are clean and meant to be displayed, it looks more like any other electronic device and less like a speaker. My overall feelings about the speaker are good, “the speaker”. My overall feelings about Alexa are very poor. People familiar with Alexa will have a much better experience than I did. I am not trying to bash on Alexa. It does work, just not as clean as Google. In time I believe Alexa could pass Google, but not yet. If you have an Alexa home, this speaker will be a nice addition if you don’t already have a good speaker. If you live in a small apartment or dorm room this could be your complete stereo system. It will fill a medium size room with good sound.

As a Bose product, this speaker does not fail. It is loud and clear and can fill a room. I have several other Bose speakers and it lives up to the Bose reputation. I had only a few issues, although minor. Alexa. This was my first experience with her and I was not impressed. First off, connecting her is not automatic, and the set up directions are not clear on that. I had this a week before I finally realized it had Alexa and I found that out by watching other YouTube video reviews on this product. You have to go into the Bose app, sync your amazon app, then turn her on. As a first time Alexa user, I wish this would have been clearer from the get go. Second, as a spotify user, she doesn’t quite support that app. You can access Spotify on the Bose app, but if you tell Alexa to play a certain song or station she tells you she doesn’t support Spotify, so what’s the point of having voice control? I also had an issue where she stopped working and I had to reset her and once again, no information was found on the Bose app, I had to do research on the internet to figure how to turn her back on. Other than those minor issues, the speaker sounds great. I would buy it again.

Wow. This home speaker sounds awesome. It fills the entire room with clear, detailed sound. It is so effortless to setup and the led screen makes it so easy to see what's going on with the music and stuff. It is a simple yet attractive design as well. I a, so happy with Bose right now lol

Honestly, with this being a Bose product i am not surprised that it is good. I have gotten into smart products recently, and my previous forays were only with Amazon Echo products so this was a new experience. The setup was easy using Bose new app. Very straightforward to get connected to Wifi and then my Amazon Music account. The body of the speaker is the same sleek appearance of all Bose products, not like any of the cheap off brand speakers. My first impression when I started to use it though was how loud it was. At only half volume it filled my entire apartment with sound. I couldn't even turn it up all of the way without worrying about disturbing my neighbors. I think part of the benefit of this is that it is 360 projecting. I have it in the center of my living room and can hear it just fine from any location that i am at. Alexa is easy to use with this, just as it is with my other Echo products, so no worries there either.

The bass on this speaker is incredible. Warm and rich without overpowering the song. Whatever genre of music I put to the test, the speaker holds up beautifully. The bluetooth feature is excellent and provides amazing ease of use. Very much happy with this speaker.