Bose ® SoundTouch 20 Series II Wi-Fi Music System - Black

Product Information

The Bose SoundTouch 20 is a mixed bag. We like the idea of preset buttons, and being able to play our networked library with relative ease. They both have embedded OLED displays in the center that show connection and music data. Manual control consists of six physical preset buttons, AUX input, and a power button. The presets can be assigned to six favorites of your choice, perhaps your iTunes library, a Spotify playlist, or your favorite radio station. This is an excellent feature that will save you the trouble of taking out your phone every time you want to play something specific. It’s a comfortable listen – insightful and clean – and while it may favour a club beat, doesn’t turn its nose up to the more folksy sound of a man and his guitar. The audio performance is good, but not amazing. Sound is clear and volume is never an issue, going louder than you’d ever need it to without hardening.

To set up the SoundTouch 20, you need to plug it into your computer through the included micro USB cable and run the SoundTouch app. It's an incredibly simple process that walked me through configuring the speaker to access my Wi-Fi network, registering my iTunes library, and setting up my Pandora account. It was painless, but there was no option to set up the SoundTouch 20 wirelessly with my iPad. Personalize your home with “living” presets like Spotify’s “Discover Weekly” or Pandora’s “Thumbprint Radio.” Always have a fresh list of favorites a touch away, without having to even find your phone. And if you’ve bought into the whole Apple ecosystem, you may like the system’s network integration. Both let you program and control speakers throughout your home to play music. You can choose to have the same music on multiple speakers, or different music on individual speakers. It's important to know the free versions of services (like spotify, Google Play Music, etc.) will not work with the apps on either systems, so if you're planning on getting the best experience from your streaming services, you should be prepared to upgrade to the premium versions. A workaround for the Bose system is to stream via Bluetooth from the streaming app of your choice; however, this means you won't be logged in through the speaker's controller app, so you may only be able to stream on one speaker at a time.Experience your favorite music from one or many SoundTouch® speakers, with the SoundTouch® app. SoundTouch® is a family of wireless speakers for your home that play the same music throughout, or different music in different rooms. If you're planning on managing your streaming music through paid services like Apple Music and Spotify, then the Sonos family of speakers offer the best support. Which is right for you?

These presets offers instant access to your favorite music without needing your smartphone,tablet, or computer on-hand. It's an incredibly handy and simple feature that combines the ideas of a multi-room audio system with a dedicated Internet radio device. Unfortunately, you can't set any of your favorite playlists from other streaming music services like Spotify if it's not available on the app.

Bose SoundTouch 20 - Q&A

In theory, you can plug in an iOS device or computer and just transfer your current settings over, but this didn’t work for us. The Bose SoundTouch 20 adds additional features over the entry-level SoundTouch 10 while still offering exceptional, room-filling, audio. The design of the SoundTouch 20's speaker casing naturally produces punchy bass balanced through the high and midrange frequencies pushing through the SoundTouch's transducers. This means you end up hearing clean bass and warm high and mid-range frequencies.

There’s still room for improvement in the sonic and streaming service department, but right now it shapes up to be a good value option for those who are after the whole works. Ask Alexa to control your SoundTouch system. Be sure to use the name you gave your system in the SoundTouch app. For example, if you named your system “Kitchen,” try these commands:

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Once connected, the SoundTouch software is basic across all platforms, but easy to navigate. The default-screen is the same six numbers that you find on the main unit. Scale, power and volume distinguish the SoundTouch 20 from its little brother, the SoundTouch 10, and they are more than decent for its price and size.