Sony XB20 Portable Wireless Speaker w/ Bluetooth

I am not an audiophile by any means, but I give the Sony XB20 Portable Wireless Speaker with Bluetooth a 4.5 star rating. However, this must be taken in context. I rated this speaker taking in consideration into which category of speakers it belongs. As a small, portable, BT speaker system it rates 4.5 stars. It delivers crisp sound and even good bass for its respective category of speakers. Will it compare to a purpose built large 100+ watt surround sound home speaker system? Of course not. It isn't designed to compete with systems costing hundreds of dollars and containing large speakers in large cabinets for better separation. But as far as a small, portable, BT speaker system costing less than $100 goes, it more than delivers terrific sound that I think is above average within that category. If you are looking for a personal speaker system that delivers crisp sound and good base in your office, study, bedroom, etc, and you are not going to try to vibrate the entire house with loud music, then you cannot go wrong with this speaker. It is not designed to rock the house. But it is designed to deliver excellent music quality at volumes that are louder than most people would use in their office, study, bedroom. It was easy to set up both as a wired speaker system using a standard after-market dual 3.5mm speaker cable and also easy to set up using BT. (Note: I suggest not using that crap Sony calls an app though. It is total garbage and you don't need it anyway.) The buttons/controls on the speaker are easy to read and operate and function very well. The sound quality is extremely good for casual entertainment purposes. If you want to rock the house during parties, then spend more and get a speaker system designed for that purpose. My primary use of these speakers: I used a wired connection to connect the Sony XB20 with my Amazon Echo Dot 2nd generation. Needless to say the sound is much better than what the Dot alone provides. Well, duh! The Dot has a single and very small tweeter and was not designed to deliver great musical sound quality. But I must say I have an original Echo 1st generation (fullsize Echo) and briefly owned the new Echo 2nd generation (fullsize Echo), and I also briefly owned a VAUX Cordless Home Speaker + Portable Battery for Amazon Echo Dot Gen 2. All three of these speaker system have a single driver powering a single set of tweeter and woofer speakers. All three are claimed to provide room filling musical sound of great quality. None of them deliver on their promise though. You will never get a true stereo sound from a speaker system containing one driver, one woofer, and on tweeter. The sound might be loud and might fill the room, but the quality will be terrible with muddy bass and tinny high and mid ranges. They all sucked at even casual music listening in my home office/study. They could fill the room with terrible sounding music, but who wants that? I returned both the Echo 2nd generation (fullsize Echo) and VAUX Cordless Home Speaker as they were very disappointing, especially the latter one. The newer Echo 2nd generation was supposed to be a great improvement over the 1st generation, but it only did a tiny bit better, even with the updated firmware. But with the Sony XB20 connected to my Echo Dot 2nd generation I get room filling musical sound with great quality. No muddy bass, no tinny highs or mid ranges. Just top quality music that one expects from great quality speakers of this size and design. The Sony XB20 speaker system has the advantage here though, to be fair, because it contains two separate drivers independently powering two woofers and two tweeters to provide true stereo. The two drivers provide sound from different frequencies to provide a higher quality of sound which none of the single driver systems can provide. Sony's Extra Bass function is icing on the cake as it boosts the quality of bass when the speaker is turned up loud. I find the sound is better with the Extra Bass function turned ON when the volume is loud and turned OFF if the volume is low. My secondary use of these speakers: I connect the Sony XB20 with my iPad Pro 9.7 via BT. I mostly use this setup for listening to Spotify. I can also listen to spotify via the Dot and Sony XB20, so that setup gets used much more often than this one. The comments I made above for my primary use of these speakers applies here as well. Same great room filling, high quality, musical sound. So to sum up my comments, the Sony XB20 is terrific for what it was designed to accomplish. It will blow away single driver speakers with only one woofer and one tweeter. So the Sony XB20 is going to blow away the Amazon Echo, the Google Home, and other similar speakers. But don't expect the Sony XB20 to compete with larger portable and home stereo systems containing larger speakers and more physical separation of speakers within the cabinets. But if you want to turn your Amazon Echo, Google Home, smartphone, tablet, or computer into a much greatly improved room filling musical sound system, the Sony XB20 will do that and at a reasonable price. If you want to aggrevate your neighbors with sound that rocks the whole street, buy a more expensive and more appropriate sound system.