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The Bose Home Speaker 500 in front of a window.
Sam Smart / SoundGuys

Bose Home Speaker 500 review

It sounds great, but it comes at a high price.
By

Published onSeptember 24, 2024

Originally published on August 16, 2024
Bose Home Speaker 500
The bottom line
The Bose Home Speaker 500 is a solid smart speaker with great sound and features. It's pricey, but it's designed well and the Bose Music app helps a lot with getting the most out of the speaker. This is a good choice for day-to-day use and parties.

Bose Home Speaker 500

The Bose Home Speaker 500 is a solid smart speaker with great sound and features. It's pricey, but it's designed well and the Bose Music app helps a lot with getting the most out of the speaker. This is a good choice for day-to-day use and parties.
Product release date
September 20, 2018
Price
$379 USD
Dimensions
203 x 170 x 109mm
Weight
2150g
Model Number
795345-1100
Waterproof
No
What we like
Sounds great, even at high volumes
Alexa and Google Assistant built in
Streaming service integration
Good design
Microphone can be muted
What we don't like
Pricey
Convoluted setup
Long updates which can fail
Privacy concerns, as with any smart speaker

The world of smart speakers is ever-expanding, and the Bose Home Speaker 500 is among the many. Bose has a lot of smart speakers in its lineup, and the Home Speaker 500 fills the niche of being moderately sized but with loud audio. Is that enough to stand out from the rest?

Editor’s note: This review was updated on September 24, 2024, to answer several more FAQs.

About this Bose Home Speaker 500 review: We tested the Bose Home Speaker 500 over a week. It ran firmware version 16.0.6, and the Bose Music app ran version 6.1.2. SoundGuys purchased the unit for this review.

What you need to know about the Bose Home Speaker 500

The touch panel on top of the Bose Home Speaker 500.
Sam Smart / SoundGuys
The Home Speaker 500 has a touch control on the top of the speaker’s enclosure.

The Bose Home Speaker 500 is a smart speaker that works wirelessly over Wi-Fi or Bluetooth 4.2. It supports the SBC and AAC audio codecs and has a 3.5mm aux input. It needs to be plugged into a wall outlet to work and requires the Bose Music app (available on iOS and Android) to use Wi-Fi features. Those Wi-Fi features also include Apple AirPlay 2 and Chromecast. There’s Alexa and Google Assistant integration, so you can choose which you want to use with it.

The Bose Home Speaker has capacitive touch controls on the top of the speaker, which allow you to adjust volume, play and pause music, turn on Bluetooth, turn the microphone on and off, and select presets. You can also control the speaker from the Bose Music app. It has an LCD display on the front, showing what you’re listening to, and album art when listening to music.

The speaker features two 2.5-inch full-range drivers, one on either side of the speaker, and Bose advertises good stereo separation.

What’s good about the Bose Home Speaker 500?

The Bose Home Speaker 500 sitting on an end table with a phone beside it, the speaker screen is showing that the speaker is playing Anti-Hero by Taylor Swift.
Sam Smart / SoundGuys
The Bose Home Speaker 500 sounds really good.

Arguably, the most important aspects of a speaker are how loud it gets and how good it sounds. Thankfully, the Bose Home Speaker 500 does well in both of those areas. The speaker gets quite noisy, even when the volume is only halfway up. It sounds really good, with a strong bass response and pleasant treble. When I play Anti-Hero by Taylor Swift through the speaker, the bass sounds punchy and loud while not drowning out the oscillating synth, and Swift’s voice comes through clearly throughout the whole track. The bass might be loud for some by default, but the Bose Music app lets you adjust it or treble, which I find handy when I want to avoid irritating my neighbors.

The Bose Music app works well for the most part. You can select your preferred voice assistant from Alexa or Google Assistant, connect a music streaming service and choose music, adjust bass and treble as mentioned, install updates, and more. It’s a simple app that helps get the most out of the speaker.

The speaker gets quite loud, even when the volume is only halfway up.

The speaker can connect with other Bose speakers (to an extent, more on that later) to create an ecosystem in your house. This way, you can use your voice assistant in multiple rooms, play music in different rooms, and enjoy your smart home setup.

The touch controls on the Bose Home Speaker 500 are quick and responsive. The touch panel has six buttons for presets, so you can quickly play your favorite playlist or song at any time.

It’s also very aesthetically pleasing. The aluminum exterior works well with many different interior styles and blends easily into a home. The light silver color I’m using matches many of my other tech products in my home.

What’s not so good about the Bose Home Speaker 500?

A hand pressing the first preset button on the Bose Home Speaker 500, with the screen showing the preset being chosen.
Sam Smart / SoundGuys
I wish the buttons gave a better indication when pressed, like a sound or an LED on the touch panel.

Immediately upon setting up the Bose Music app, the speaker had an update. This update took 10 minutes to install and made me think something was wrong. Never-ending updates are a known issue with the speaker and can sometimes take hours or never complete. After downloading the update, neither the app nor the speaker shows progress for how long the update will take to install, so you’re left to wonder when you’ll be able to use the speaker. After that, setup takes a while, and the process is quite convoluted.

You’re out of luck if you want to use the Bose Home Speaker 500 as part of an ecosystem with a Bose Soundtouch speaker. You can pair this speaker with other speakers that use the Bose Music app, but the two aren’t compatible since the Soundtouch line uses the Soundtouch app.

This speaker, and smart speakers in general, are not for people who don't want to compromise on data privacy.

While the buttons are responsive, I wish they had a way of letting you know you used a control. Sound, haptic feedback or even physical buttons are preferable. It just feels like I’m touching a cold piece of metal and hoping it does something, and it would be nice to feel like I’m pressing a button. When you press something, the screen shows a light strip, but that doesn’t feel like enough of an indicator.

A concern that applies to all smart speakers is privacy. The whole point of a smart speaker with a voice assistant is that it’s listening to you for a wake word or command, and the fact that it’s always listening can be pretty creepy. You can turn off the microphone, but you won’t be able to use the voice assistant. Your commands and questions are recorded and sent to servers, which helps improve the voice assistant software. Your data is also collected through the Bose Music app, adding to the information companies have about you. This speaker, and smart speakers in general, are not really for people who don’t want to compromise on data privacy.

Bose Home Speaker 500 specs

The Bose Home Speaker 500 sitting on a table.
Sam Smart / SoundGuys
The Bose Home Speaker 500 looks classy and blends well with most home environments.

It’s a good idea to know what you’re getting into when buying a smart speaker, so here are some of the most important things to know about the Bose Home Speaker 500.

Bose Home Speaker 500
Size
203 mm x 170 mm x 109 mm
Weight
2.15 kg
Channels
Stereo
Audio specs
Two full-range drivers
Audio inputs
3.5mm
Wireless audio connection
Bluetooth 4.2
Wi-Fi
Apple AirPlay 2
Chromecast built-in
Streaming services
Amazon Music
Deezer
Pandora
SiriusXM
Spotify
TuneIn
App
Bose Music app (iOS/Android)
Controls
Touch
Price
$379 USD

Bose Home Speaker 500 review: Should you buy it?

The Bose Home Speaker 500 playing Xtal by Aphex Twin, sitting on a white desk in front of a computer.
Sam Smart / SoundGuys
The Bose Home Speaker 500 is a solid, smart speaker with great sound; it’s pricey.

Overall, the Bose Home Speaker 500 works well and sounds great, making it a solid choice for anyone looking for a high-quality smart speaker. The most significant caveat is just how expensive it is, which is $379 USD. I would recommend this speaker to anyone with a lot of money who wants a loud, smart speaker in their house. I wouldn’t recommend this for most people, for whom the $379 USD price tag may be too expensive. There are cheaper alternatives that could suit those with lower budgets, and this speaker isn’t the be-all and end-all of smart speakers. I also wouldn’t recommend this speaker, or any smart speaker for that matter, to people who don’t want to compromise their data privacy.

If you want a cheaper option with Google Assistant integration and good sound, the Google Nest Audio is excellent. You can even pair two together to get stereo sound or put multiple in different rooms to create a home ecosystem. You can pick up the Google Nest Audio for $49.99 at Best Buy.

Another speaker with many similar features to the Bose Home Speaker 500 is the Sonos One (Gen 2). It has Alexa and Google Assistant integration, streaming service integration, and in-app EQ in the Sonos app. It’s more affordable than the Home Speaker 500, though still pricey. You can buy it for $219 at Amazon.

Bose Home Speaker 500
Bose Home Speaker 500
Bose Home Speaker 500
Loud sound • Good design • Helpful app
The Bose Home Speaker 500 brings room-filling sound to your smart home setup.
If you want an aesthetically pleasing smart speaker to bring you great sound and voice assistant support, the Bose Home Speaker 500 is a solid choice.

Frequently asked questions

No, the Bose Home Speaker 500 is not water-resistant in any way, so you shouldn’t use it in a humid environment.

No, the Bose Home Speaker 500 does not have Bluetooth multipoint.

Yes, the Bose Home Speaker 500 has strong, punchy bass that sounds great even at high volumes. You can adjust the bass settings using the Bose Music app.

The Bose 500 offers superior sound quality, with better stereo separation and more features, but it is also more expensive than the Bose 300.

It works via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, allowing for wireless streaming from various music services. You can control it using the Bose Music app or through touch controls on the speaker itself.

Yes, it requires a constant power supply from a wall outlet.

Yes, you can connect it to your TV using Bluetooth or the 3.5mm aux input. However, it is not designed as a dedicated TV speaker.

You can control it via touch controls, voice commands (Alexa or Google Assistant), or the Bose Music app.

Yes, it has Wi-Fi and supports Apple AirPlay 2, Chromecast, and various music streaming services.

Yes, you can use Bluetooth or the aux input for non-Wi-Fi connections.

Yes, Alexa is built-in, along with Google Assistant, so you can choose either for voice control.

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