Bluesound Pulse MINI 2i Compact Wireless Multi-Room Smart Speaker with Bluetooth - Black - Compatible with Alexa and

Wow... the sound and functionality of Pulse 2i Mini is exceptional! I was looking for a Roon Ready device to play on my porch and other remote areas, and this is the perfect solution (you do need to plug it into an outlet, but it connected to my network within 30 seconds). I was able to unpack, connect, and "group zones" within 15 minutes. You will have hi-res music playing from your main system, other Roon devices, and this wonderful system completely in-synch without any fuss. Sound quality, for both CD and hi-ressources, is incredible. I noticed most negatives review pointsfor this system are based on the user interface. It's a side point, but Roon solves them all, including up-sampling CD resolution files to hi-res, DSP, and seamless multi-zone control. Don't have Roon? The Bluesound Pulse Mini 2i software still offers an incredible amount of options to listen to online streaming services, other networking, usb sources, and beyond. I tried the Bluesound interface briefly and didn't find it to be bad at all. Build quality is exceptional... and again, the sound is amazing! Highest of recommendations. Read more

This portable Bluetooth speaker delivers unusually good sound but considering the premium price (currently $499.00) it should. The sound quality is good enough that it can deliver the higher sound definition and richer tone of an uncompressed FLAC music file when compared against a 320kbps music file which is impressive because 320kbps is already considered a high-quality bit-rate better than CD audio and FLAC is an audiophile format. I was surprised that I could hear any difference on a compact Bluetooth speaker but you don't get a true sense of what the Pulse Mini 2i can do with sound until you are playing a very high-quality music source--with a 320kbps sound file this unit doesn't really sound much different than a lower end Bluetooth speaker. Listening to an audiophile quality music source the Pulse Mini 2i delivers excellent sound definition in the high and mid ranges, clear bass and crisp percussion. This is still a compact speaker, however, and Bluesound wasn't quite able to pull off an engineering miracle. The Mini 2i doesn't sound as good as a nice quality conventional sound system (the kind with an amplifier and separate speakers) and to get the benefit of the high-quality sound you need to be in the same room as this speaker. Also, while the Bluesound Pulse Mini 2i can get plenty loud without sound distortion it can't fill a multi-room home with music the way a conventional Hi-Fi sound system can. This product loses one star because I wasn't crazy about the Android App which is necessary to set up the speaker. Set-up is simple enough and the app allows you to adjust the sound. There are separate listening modes for TV, Music, and Movies, a wide mode that enhances stereo separation, an enhanced dialogue toggle, late night mode, deep bass toggle, a lip sync delay setting, treble and bass adjustments, replay-gain, volume limits and an output mode in case you want mono sound instead of stereo sound or just want to hear the left or right audio channel. That's the good part. The app seems to be designed for use as a music player but you can't choose a local music source and which means it's missing the most fundamental function of an Android music player. The only way to add a music library seems to be via network share but when I tried to create a music library using a network shared folder on my Windows 10 PC I wasn't able to get that to work either. But there are settings to reindex your music library after you made changes and to optimize the artwork in your music library even though I could find no way to create a music library. You can access a number of streaming music services from directly within the app which allows you to use the services without opening or installing the separate app for that service. Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, Spotify and Tidal are included but strangely Pandora is not. There is also a choice for Amazon Alexa but I could not get it to work. No matter what I tried I could not get Alexa to recognize the existence of the Bluesound Pulse Mini speaker. Using the Alexa selection under Music Services in the Bluesound app doesn't add the speaker to Alexa, trying to add the speaker within the Alexa app doesn't work because Alexa never detects the speaker and adding the BluOS Voice Control skill to Alexa doesn't do anything since Alexa can't find the speaker. The fact that this doesn't work with Alexa (at least for me) and has an Android app that needs a lot of improvement isn't a deal breaker but the premium price point probably makes this an audiphile only item--most consumers would probably be just as happy with a much cheaper product. Read more

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. Read more

Looks great, good connectivity and good app to control everything. Very good sound but not great or $500+ worth at all. I have one older Sony RDP XF300ie that sounds just as good or Harman Kardon Oynx system just as good and at nearly half the price Read more

It's not technically portable but the reboot time is only a few seconds so I can move it from room to room and plug it in on the porch. Pricey, but good, product. Sonos is way cheaper but the Pulse Mini's sound quality leaves Sonos in the dust. The app takes some getting used to but it serves. Read more