JBL Authentics 500 - Smart Home Speaker - Black

Let me help other buyers avoid the headaches I went through. Here’s how I ended up choosing this speaker.I wanted something for casual listening. My first pick was the B&W Zeppelin Pro. The sound just wasn’t there — none of the expected B&W signature was present for me. Their earbuds and headphones are phenomenal and need no break-in, but this speaker didn’t come close. The app was also a mess, and getting it connected was a nightmare. I was willing to tolerate all of that because the design is gorgeous, until the seams split in under a week. That was the end of that.Next came a pair of Klipsc

I use this speaker in my 1200 square foot shop space. The sound quality is great at 3/4 power or so then starts to not sound so great. Its a large space and meets my needs quite well, however if you looking for big sound and more of a party style speaker this may not be the most bang for the buck. Im super satisfied with the speaker as I most often play at half power or below finding the sound quality and volume level to be excellent for my purposes. I am not an audiophile by any means, just a guy who likes music and wants to have a well balanced listening experience. For the money I am satisf

To give a bit of background I am an audiophile (a lover of music) and take my music quite seriously. I run some serious hardware from meze elite epoque headphones to legacy signature speakers. I say all this to give a bit of credit to my background on sound and knowing where a good set of transducers can take you.I recently changed my bedroom audio setup to move my floor standing speakers (old wharfedale diamond 9.5's) to acomidate my tv. This had the drawback of removing them from my echo and I needed a solution to provide the room with "good enough" audio that the little echo just could not

I’ve had the JBL Authentics 500 for over a month now, and I’ve grown to like it quite a bit. Initially, I couldn’t stand it because the setup was such a pain. The pairing button turned out to be the problem: it requires a quick press of about one second. If you hold it down any longer, the speaker will not enter pairing mode, leaving you to think that something is wrong with it or that the speaker may be defective. Once I figured that out, the setup became much easier. The JBL One app isn’t particularly useful for much beyond getting the speaker initialized.After experimenting with different s

Buy it. You won’t regret it. It is well designed and sounds fantastic. I also really like the retro look of the speaker grille. I’m using it as my home speaker system.

Starting with the double box it came in, wow this was so well packaged, it even has a soft velvety cover over the speaker itself. The packaging is superb. I set it up on my computer's bluetooth and fed it MP3s and what an absolutely fantastic sounding speaker! The highs smooth and balanced, same with the midrange and the amount and quality of the bass is perfect, full, tight and well defined. My first time with this speaker was nearfield from 3 feet and I decided I wanted to keep this speaker close so I moved my printer down a shelf and the Authentics 500 sits right behind me and it sounds gre

Nice good bass and gets loud, easy to set up and use. “PS” don’t spend long looking for on off button like I did there an’t one , it simply goes into sleep mode when not in use which is nice because if all a sudden you want to listen to music you simply use your phone go into iPhone music app and play what you want and it wakes up “nice”. Oh yea did I mention it very “loud”. There is nothing I feel it lacks or disappointed with. I also have a JBL 1000 sound bar that’s like $1,200 in my bedroom for my tv . I like them both.

I'm torn on this speaker.Alexa works fine after it not wanting to work with my phone (had to switch to an old one I fortunately still had around and then afterward it worked on my regular phone). Wifi and Bluetooth connections have been fine. As I need it to be my Alexa base, it being powered on all of the time is not a problem for me.My negatives are: 1) sound quality. I don't consider this to produce audiophile level sound. For it's price point, I don't think it measures up to expectations. There's enough bass, and enough power, but I don't find the sound to be clean or particularly emersive