Bose SoundTouch Portable Series II Wireless Music System (Black)

Expected high Bose build and app quality, very smooth installation

As with others it took me all of 10 minutes to get the SoundTouch system setup and running on my network. It's about as easy as it gets when carefully following Bose's well written instructions. I'm using the 20 in a 15 x 15 foot living room, and it's plenty loud with lots of good bass. I'm also using it as my sound source for Apple TV. I can use it without problems with my NAS iTunes library, and have the presets programmed to my favorite radio stations. The AirPlay integration was about as easy as it gets. All in All it's taken me about a half an hour to get it 'dialed-in' precisely to my tastes and situation. We'll see how usage goes over several months but so far I couldn't be happier, it was money well invested.

Good sound and significant flaws
** Update **

I continued to have network problems with the SoundTouch 30, and you will too if you have a dual band router. Remarkably, the Bose system only works over the 2.4 GHz band, not the 5.0 GHz. Unless you configure your router so that each band has a unique network name, the Bose system will not be able to connect to the correct band consistently. If you're tech savvy, it's not a huge deal to set up two network IDs for the 2.4 and 5.0 band, but if you're a regular person who doesn't do well with home network administration, you're going to have a very tough time solving this problem. If you don't have a dual band router, you'll be fine. At any rate, I think this is a pretty significant flaw because all of the ease-of-use features of this unit count for nothing if you have to reconfigure your router.

However, after setting up a 2.4 GHz network ID just for my SoundTouch, Airplay works flawlessly. So there's that.

** Original Review **...

Simple, compact, and exceptional sound

The sound from this speaker will amaze you. It fills even a large room with rich deep sound comparable to a large speaker system. The set-up is simple and the app works great. I love the simplicity that they've engineered into this.

Pros:
+ Sound (Rich Deep Sound, that I almost want to say is as good as a separate sub-woofer)
+ Build quality
+ Instructions and Ease of Set-up
+ Excellent App
+ Very portable
+ Simple to use
+ Stereo separation (it sounds like the speakers are spread a apart)

Cons:
- Price (it is a good value considering what a full speaker system would cost you, but it is still pretty steep)

I recommend this system. I don't think that you'll be disappointed. I love mine.

Click To editorial Review