Jul 08, 2019 03:38 PM
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This is a near perfect speaker for the living room or even bedroom. The sound signature is balanced, clear, wide with ample bass. I say near perfect since for this price, one would expect a relatively premium experience from the word go. This speaker has a few niggles - so if you can work your way around those, it can be a good purchase.
In all disclosure - I bought it offline on a heavy discounted price for 20k. Even at that price, it feel like a very steep price to pay a wifi desk 2.0 speaker.
Don't get me wrong - it packs a wallop for its size. I am writing this review on Amazon since its a expensive purchase & any sensible buyer would like to do some R&D before swiping their card to make the payment.
I was torn between the SoundTouch 10 vs 20. I wanted a speaker to setup in my living room. Which is about 11 x 23 feet. The ST-10 is pretty solid & I felt the output is best suited for smaller spaces such as Kitchen or Bedroom. I also preferred to have the display - which makes it that much more easy - not having to check your phone each time for whats happening on the system. Which made me choose the ST-20. I already own a SoundTouch 300 5.1 soundbar home theater setup - so adding another ST system to the home felt logical.
Please note: All of SoundTouch series systems are some what unidirectional. Which is to say that the sound clearly appears coming from one single point in the room. And with a lower volume output, the ST10 won't fill up a large space that well.
Also the ST 10 being a mono speaker means you won't have any stereo sound. I also wanted to have a backup plan where I can hook my TV to the ST20 to get a better output via AUX or BT. Note that FireTV stick allows you to output the sound to a BT speaker:)
ST20 was the logical choice. And since I was getting it at 20k, it was just 3-5k more than what the ST10 retails at. Now to the ST20's performance.
The ST20 feels dense & well built - not odd creaks or rattles anywhere. This unit is acoustically balanced & objects kept in proximity wont rattle or vibrate unless you blast it at 90%+ volume - which is unlikely since this thing gets loud.
The display is helpful indeed. Shows not just telltale signs of mode or volume level but also picks up information from the channel about the song playing etc. Can also display the tunein channel name etc. Bose also added the ability do display the clock when idle. That is very useful. I also find it useful that if the streaming stops due to the system buffering - that is displayed with a spinner on the display.
The little speaker puts out good amount of volume. Very good bass too. So much so that Bose offers a control in the add to dial it down by 6 notches. Volumes are good, mids are a bit weak in comparision. But for the living room - its alright.
Now for the things which keeps the overall experience away from being perfect.
The setup process is finicky. I own iOS & Andriod devices - I found that setup works much better on iOS. Andriod is finicky. But it does take some amount of patience & time to get it up & running. I'd say - use an iOS device such as iPhone or iPad & this niggle will get ironed out.
Uni-directional sound - means its not as wide as I had hoped. It lacks Bose's trueSurround. My Companion 5 has it & I can feel the difference.
Overwhelming Bass. Best to tune it down a few notches in order to get the right balance.
No EQ other than Bass. Though this isnt exactly bad. Most Bose systems don't offer any EQ except the top of the range SoundBar 500/700, LifeStyle systems or SoundTouch 300.
Software support is a bit limited. Amazon Music doesnt work. You are limited to use TuneIn & Spotify for the most part.
Stereo separation is not that great. I expected better stereo sound separation but I suspect that it is because the sound stage isnt wide enough.
Overall - I am happy with the purchase. The easy of pressing a button on remote to begin streaming over wifi is certainly a big plus. I compared it to the Bose Solo 5 soundbar & I found this to be a tag bit louder. Now I can easily connect my tv to upgrade the sound.
I might still get a SoundTouch 10 for the bedroom.
