Bluesound Pulse Flex 2i Portable Wireless Multi-Room Smart Speaker with Bluetooth - White - Compatible with Alexa and Siri

This product does a few things that are hard to live without once you have them. By far, my favorite is the fact that there are physical preset buttons. The ability to enjoy 5 different presets (Internet radio station, tidal playlist, etc) is a game changer.I'm sick of having to use my cell phone for everything. Walk up, hit a button and you're jamming. No phone required.I travel a lot for work and am often staying in an air b&b for extended period. I absolutely love that I can pair these as a stereo pair and use them as main monitors for the TV using optical or aux cable. Or, I can grab one and take it out to the patio .Sound quality is very, very good for their size. They hit above their weight class for sure with good mid-range, acceptable base, and clear highs. Bonus points in stereo configuration as your output is doubled, more than adequate.I'm an audiofile with Arcam, Focal, and other high end gear, I know good audio. These do not disappoint from a sound delivery perspective, especially as my travel system.I have a Bluesound node vault back at home and really enjoy the system. These fit right in as system extenders when I'm home.Only downside is that BlueOS doesn't support YouTube music or Google Cast. They do however support Tidal connect so I can steam my tidal library without needing Bluetooth.I'm really impressed with these and really recommend them.

I own a whole suite of BlueSound products including two Pulse 2i's, an NAD C368 receiver, and now the Flex 2i.I bought the Flex to bring on trips and to use on our deck. This small size speaker has awesome sound and is easy to connect to your network, and using Bluetooth. This little speaker is heavier than you would think, which is what helps provide the sound quality.While I use the desktop controller for my LAN network. I used the Android app to boot the speaker up for the first time so I could get the updates. Now, whenever I plug it in, my network will detect it.Bluetooth is easy to set up. BUT word of warning. Do NOT select the Bluetooth option from your Android app or desktop controller: that hoses your network. (If you do that, reboot each device and the network with find it.) Bluetooth is actually easier to set up. Plug in the speaker, open the sync for your phone, select the Flex, and you are ready to stream!Since I always have somewhere to plug in the Flex I didn't buy the battery but there is one available. But I did buy a remote. The remote is great. Works with all my Bluesound devices.Finally. BlueSound has its own operating system so Bluesound devices are very robust. Support is also great, you can call or email and you get help.

This speaker was easy to hookup to my network. Using Roon to play music through the Pulse Flex 2i.Sound just OK at start up. Sounds a little crunchy on the high end. I am going to follow the advice ofanother reviewer and play music without interruption for a day or two. If the sound settles down to asmoother state, I will be happy. It's a rare speaker or headphone that doesn't have improved sound afterrunning for awhile. If it doesn't improve enough, I will return it.If this works out sound wise, it's a great deal with streamer, dac, amp and speaker all in one tidy package.

Better than advertised; particularly if you are playing Hi-Res music. Highly recommended.

I purchased a soundbar and sub about two years ago. This simple setup seemed to work great so I decided to expand to a multi room setup and add surround sound speakers.Huge mistake.Since purchase and setup I have been plagued with a ton of issues that all trace back to a serious lack of thought on the software and networking side. Now for reference Im a network engineer turned cybersec architect with 13 years experience. I've been around a lot of software and networking stuff, and the choices made by bluesound are beyond pitiful.Let's start with the basics, network connection. These are wireless speakers whose main pitch is to allow multi room setup. Bluesound clearly cheaper out on whatever chips they use, because the speakers routinely see a signal strength about 10 dBm below what every other device/diagnostic tool does. This leads to incredibly degraded sound quality on speakers that are barely fifteen feet of unobstructed Line of Sight from the wireless access point. Additionally there has apparently been a bug in how they group speakers for Dolby surround with theater mode. I've had no eta on fixing it or any details, and no contacts from any senior support people despite promises they would.Onto the app.Some appalling design choices here. So the speakers will cast a non internet connected Hotspot for initial wireless network config. That makes sense, you connect to the devices Hotspot and then put in wifi info so it can join the network. One problem here, the app is designed so the speakers FIRST try to find an update and get stuck in that loop BEFORE YOU CAN CONNECT IT TO YOUR NETWORK AND THE INTERNET! This essentially forces you to have to login to the config page of the speaker to configure network settings as the app has no way to cancel the update search. Additionally common sense requests from the community, like being able to add speakers to multiple groups for on the fly sound assignment (basic feature for these types of devices) has been "on there to do list" for about 2-3 years from what I can tell from the forum posts. Dozens/hundreds of requests, no real movement or change from bluesound.As for support...Nice enough, but it seems like it's one person or two, and they essentially just read off a basic network troubleshooting guide with heavy implication you've set things up wrong. Now given my background I was able to counter this and prove my network was not at issue, unfortunately since this seems to be all they can address that left me dead in the water with my issues around quality, network connectivity, the surround sound bug, app issues, and other random big and little annoyances.I am heavily regretting ordering the additional speakers for my setup, and even more so on investing in this ecosystem in the first place. I am extremely dissapointed in the quality of the devices given my setup has cost around 3.5k, and bluesound does not seem to care to do much about it beyond imply I must have done SOMETHING wrong with my network config (again they can't say what because each specific they've had me check has come back fine/clean/configured properly of course) or say they're "looking into it". I would look at Sonos or Bose if I had to do this again.One final point, I've been able to get my system barely working (frequently need to reboot or reset/resync devices) mainly due to my Profesional background, it's absurd that these devices are so poorly made with regards to the network/wireless component that it essentially requires a background in network engineering to get about 70% of the functionality you're hoping for.