Customer Ratings & Reviews

Awesome!!!! Best Buy never lets me down!!!! Best service, Best products!!!

I WOULD RECOMMEND TO MY FRIENDS FOR SURE THEIS IS A GREAT ITEM FOR HOME USE

Excellent quality, spotty connection sometimes but bearable.

i was wary about sale price but product has not disappointed.

Sony never disappoints! And so is Bestbuy's order fulfillment.

I love this thing, I tell it how to control all my sony google stuff.

Awesome Bluetooth speaker with Google Voice Assistant. We are loving it

Personal assistants are getting more and more ubiquitous these days, now that just about every smart phone on the market has the power needed to run them. And I think that most people who have ended up getting hooked on the convenience of being able to talk to them has ended up thinking about getting one for the home, and that goes double for anyone with smart home equipment. Currently just about all the options for the home are locked to a specific manufacturer though, with the exception of the Google Assistant. Seeing as the device is basically a 3rd party alternative to the Google Home, reviewing it is a little tricky. How well it works, even just how it works, is subject to change. So I’m going to start with the one thing that doesn’t change, which is the hardware. The S50G is built around an omni-directional speaker, a somewhat novel gestural control panel, and a 360 degree microphone pickup. As one might expect from a brand like Sony, the sound quality you get from the speaker and the mics are both excellent. The speaker really does fill the room, and has a surprising amount of volume for something this small. It’s also one of the nicer looking Bluetooth speakers of its type out there, with the tastefully understated cloth cover obscuring hidden interface elements until they’re needed. There might be just a bit more bass response than is ideal, but I’ve yet to really find anything that sounds bad on it, and the VR quality you get through the microphones is top notch. The only area where I feel the hardware is lacking is the gestural interface. In practice, it’s a cool idea, particularly if you want to stick this in the kitchen where you might have things on your fingers that you don’t want on your very expensive home assistant. In practice, I found the controls to be a little hit or miss. The most basic commands, allowing you to bring up the assistant or play music, are very reliable, but the volume adjustment and forward/back commands often either required multiple attempts or were misinterpreted. This is pretty minor seeing as you can get much more accurate control with voice commands, and hopefully this is something that can be updated with software later, but it is a little disappointing. Speaking of software, the google assistant itself works great on this, which is no surprise since the bulk of the processing is actually done in the cloud as opposed to on the device. It can cast content (video and audio) to a chromecast, control connected smart devices, and be hooked into IFTT to set up a variety of routines. It handles multiple users, sounds good, and will probably only get better as Google continues to update the software. The only real problem I had was with trying to control my smart lights. It appears that there’s some kind of issue connecting the first generation Philips Hue bridge to the software which required a somewhat clumsy workaround with another program, so if light control was one of your main reasons for wanting this (like it was for me) you might find that frustrating.

Good Buy at Best Buy for one who loves quality of sounds

I bought this primarily as a Bluetooth Speaker and not really for the Google features. Fortunately, I bought it on sale for 50.00 otherwise I would have been really disappointed with the very average sound quality.

i would recommend this to a friend great great great

My wife love this speaker specially wet she cook .

This speaker is a serviceable Bluetooth speaker but the connectivity to WiFi is weak. Since the WiFi connectivity is poor, the Google functions are essentially worthless because they are inoperative.

We enjoy using this to listen to music, and ask questions

GREAT EXPERIENCE AT BEST BUY**WILL DEFINITLY RETURN

Ask a question and it will always have an answer!!!

Sweet speaker. Works great!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Far as the sound and functions it’s fine but it randomly tells me the mic is on and it’s hard to watch tv anywhere near it because it think the tv gives the command ...and I think I’m being recorded

[ Overview ] This speaker has great sound quality for its form factor, but doesn't come close to comparing with traditional sound systems. That would be fine for what it is, a supposedly 'smart' speaker, but its severe lack of 'smart' features makes this device a novelty not worth its price tag. [ Sound Quality ] For a circular-directional speaker of its size, the sound quality is great. Compared to a popular same-priced, similarly sized, portable bluetooth circular-directional speaker that I have, this speaker creates sound with significantly better clarity over all frequencies, though has less pronounced bass (having a rather flat frequency distribution). However, the sound quality still doesn't compare well even to much cheaper and very old computer speakers, much less HiFi stereo speakers around the same price range. The frequency muffling is similar to a traditional speaker placed inside of a cardboard box. The maximum volume seems entirely sufficient, though distortion picks up sharply at the higher levels, at which point voice commands become difficult to issue. Aside from the higher volume levels, Google Assistant was very good at picking up my voice commands with great accuracy, even while the speaker was playing music. [ Appearance, Gesture Interaction ] The round body design and mesh net material design that covers most of the outer speaker surface borrow heavily from competing products already on the market, but it works well. There's a chrome-colored ring about an inch high at the bottom of the speaker which, in my opinion, clashes with the rest of the speaker design. The contactless gesture system is--in my opinion--complete trash. During my testing, attempts to manipulate the volume failed more than half the time, and they were frequently confused for swiping gestures that resulted in triggering of the 'back' and 'forward' functions. Well established contact-based technologies would have worked out much better, which I would have preferred. [ Functionality ] This is my first device of this sort, so I can't directly compare it to others on the market. Instead, I'll compare it with what I expect from this kind of device. By far, the most disappointing aspect of this speaker is its severe lack of support for basic functions. Virtually all account-specific information and features are missing. I can't ask Google what upcoming appointments I have (which are defined in Google Calendar), or to read to me my latest emails. Even when the speaker is paired with my Android phone over Bluetooth, the only interaction it has there is streaming audio from the phone; it can't make or answer calls, read text messages I receive, or otherwise interact with the phone in any of the ways I'd expect it to handle. What's left is a rather impersonal and 'dumb' assistant that merely provides responses to basic queries; basically a two-way voice link to Google search. This level of voice assistance is a novelty, not coming remotely close to either what I expect from a Google Assistant, nor to what I know is possible. An issue which seems to plague all Google Assistant devices--a major oversight from Google--is the lack of ability to address specific devices with voice commands. This becomes a significant issue when simultaneously my phone, my tablet, and now this speaker all chime in to answer my query when I say "Hey Google". Also noticeably lacking is any form of permission system or device lockout, resulting in a chaotic free-for-all. Basically, any device on the network can control streaming audio, and devices can fight each other for Bluetooth pairing control. At a minimum, I think there should be an option for Bluetooth device whitelisting or blacklisting, and an option to disallow network access to audio stream control.

The only good thing about the speaker is that it also connects via Bluetooth, besides that it’s the same as your google home Mini as far as sound goes. Just louder.