Review on Upgrade Your Home Stereo With SIMOLIO JH-211 Long Range Bluetooth Receiver - AptX Low Latency, AptX HD Bluetooth 5.0, EQ & VOL Control - Ideal For Music Streaming With 3.5Mm/RCA/Optical Connectivity by Tommy Rao

Ever get frustrated when you are connected to a speaker with bluetooth, listening to music, and you walk away for a moment and, a few steps away, your sound stops as the bluetooth connection is lost because your phone is in your pocket? Happens to me all of the time and I'd tried a few different Bluetooth receivers, including a newer one from Logitech. 10 feet away and the connection would get lost, so I had to leave my phone by the speaker. I ended up missing calls way too much, so I reluctantly would not use it. When I found this Simolio claiming to have longer range, I thought I'd give it a try as my wife and I enjoy the sound quality from our Bose Wave system, which doesn't have bluetooth. Unfortunately, it sits way across the room from where we dine so we either had to leave my phone (a later model iPhone), with the music, near the Logitech, and lose control of our source, or not listen at all as our table was out of range. The product arrived quickly and was well packed. It came with an optical cable, and RCA cable, and a 3.5mm aux cable, which allows for connection to most devices (see pic). I used the 3.5mm to connect to our Bose Wave. After plugging it in and connecting the cables, I was pleased to find that the unit had an on/off switch. The Logitech was annoying in that, if plugged in, it was on all the time. I'd walk by within range of the unit and my phone would auto connect to the bluetooth, dropping any other connection I had. Ended up that I unplugged the Logitech to keep this from happening; however, I was then forced to reconnect the bluetooth every time I plugged the Logitech back in, which was somewhat of a PIA. The unit also has a small single antenna. When I turned it on, it immediately went into pairing mode: funny coincidence, I was looking at my phone waiting for 'Simolio' to come up to pair, and all I saw was 'Joan C'. Now, my immediate neighbor below us is 'Joan C' so I thought this unit was trying to connect to something of hers, so I did not connect. When nothing came up 'Simolio' I refreshed and tried again. Still only 'Joan C'. Now, when I looked back at the manual to see what I was doing wrong, I read the next step and it said "Select Joan C from available devices". After laughing at myself, I chose 'Joan C' and It immediately connected to my phone. I set the Bose to Aux and put on a Katatonia album, and the sound started flowing. There is a nice feature in an on-unit EQ switch with 3 settings: Normal/Music/Dialogue. Sound was decent on 'Normal' and, when switching to 'Music', there was definitely and increase in the bass. I put a CD of the same music into the Bose and it did sound better; however, I've noticed this on several of my Apple Music downloads when streaming from the phone. Dialogue is supposed to boost dialogue clarity (like for TV or movies); however, without a specific source, it was difficult to ascertain how well this feature worked. You could tell it changed the EQ and was not kind to the music I tested. Pay attention to the instructions, too, as the unit volume buttons both increase/decrease volume (short press), they also do next track/previous track (long press). Between the adjusting of the volume on my phone, this unit, and the Bose, I could get the sound quite loud; however, not as loud as the Logitech.I might need to play with this some more as I use it moving forward. Now to the range: The manual says "Up to 50-70ft indoors with no obstacles (depending on the transmitting end). I can tell you that it definitely worked at 40'+ with line of sight and no obstacles, way more than twice what the Logitech was able to do. Lastly, in the instructions they tout support for aptX Low Latency Codec. I had to look that one up and it is a codec that reduces audio delay from 'standard' of 220ms to as low as 40ms, which I believe would aid with quality and lip sync (when dealing with TV programs and films). Since music is what I am streaming, lip synch wouldn't affect me; however, you can go to aptx.com to see if your device is certified. For info, I went to the site and it says that the music will stream with higher quality, too, if your device is certified. The list of phones was long, but all Android models and not Apple. Since I don't have an android phone from this list available, I could not test to see how much of a difference this made. I'd give the sound a 4/5 as is, at least with my iPhone doing the streaming, and it may be better if you have an aptX certified phone. If you are looking for decent range like I was, It would be worth your try.