Review on 🔊 Bose Home Speaker 500: Silver Smart Bluetooth Speaker with Built-in Alexa Voice Control by James Hova

I just ordered a Bose Sound Touch 20 but then found out about the Home Speaker 500 and that it is on sale at a reduced price. I decided to order 500 so I could compare them. Here are some comments from someone who isn't an audiophile, but someone who cares about sound quality and notices it. The two devices are controlled by different apps. The Sound Touch app has bass-canceling controls (which is useful) but no other way to control sound quality. The Bose Music app lets you adjust both bass and treble. The Sound Touch app allows you to enter a URL for any streaming content that is not supported by supported streaming services. The Bose Music app is not. It is important for me. A radio station I list often is only available on radio.com. The service is not supported by any of the devices. Both devices support Tune In. However, the Bose Music app doesn't support the premium version, forcing you to hear ads when using Tune In with the 500. It's possible to get around the two limitations above by playing content from your phone through the speaker over Bluetooth. . But that renders the preinstalled buttons unusable, which I think is a major downside. I found the 500 to be more aesthetically pleasing and reliable, being housed in a sleek aluminum body. The Sound Touch is housed in a plastic case with a foam grille over the speakers. The fact that 500 is smaller makes placement easier. In my opinion the 500 has a richer sound with cleaner and crisper highs. Spoken word sounds a little fuzzy at 500, but this is corrected somewhat by turning the bass down. This is of course a subjective call. Others may perceive the sound differently. I always planned on returning one of these and thought it would be the Sound Touch. But I think 500 sounds better but is not that useful for my purposes due to application limitations. I hope that these comments can be useful for someone.