Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

While the Bose Bluetooth Audio Adapter is twice the price as many other bluetooth receivers, it works as a bluetooth receiver should while other, cheaper receivers I've owned just cause headaches, some quicker than others. As I learned in the end, sometimes you just have to fork over the extra money. Before purchasing the Bose, I had two Homespot bluetooth receivers, a Pioneer bluetooth adapter for my A/V receiver, and tried the Brightech Brightplay bluetooth receiver. The Brightech was returned pretty quickly. Although the Bose may not be perfect, it is as close as there is to perfect for a bluetooth audio adapter. After a few days use I purchased a second Bose adapter to replace the other Homespot. During the review I'll draw comparisons to my other bluetooth receivers. Positives: 1. Very easy to pair. If nothing is connected to the receiver, you just go to the bluetooth settings on your tablet, phone, or computer to pair. Even if another device can be connected to it, you simply touch the button on receiver to start the pairing process. The Brightech is horrible. You have to unplug the audio cable and then reconnect the cable to start the pairing process. While the Homespot is easy to pair also no other device can be connected to the receiver if you want to pair a new one. With the Pioneer bluetooth adapter, I have to go into the receiver's menu to pair which isn't a user friendly process. 2. Three devices can be connected to the Bose at once. This is a feature which caused me to look to replace the two Homespot receivers I was using. Only one device can be connected to the Homespot. When my wife decided she wanted to start to streaming to the Homespot also this became a problem for us. One of us would try to connect but couldn't, so she or I would have to search for other's iPhone and iPad to see which was connected and then go to the bluetooth settings and turn the bluetooth off to disconnect that device. While the Brightech does allow two devices to connect, it doesn't always work. The Brightech also has a big problem of randomly auto connecting to devices. With that problem, it became a bigger nuisance than the Homespot. The Bose works perfectly! If multiple devices are connected, just pause audio on one device and click play on another. The Pioneer also doesn't allow multiple devices to be connected to it at the same time. 3. If you are connected to the Bose, then go out of range of the receiver and back into range within about a 10 minute period, the Bose will automatically reconnect you. This is very nice if you move around a lot in your apartment or house while streaming audio. If I walk out of range when using the Homespot or Pioneer, even for a few seconds, I have to reconnect to the bluetooth adapter to start streaming audio again. This is a nuisance. While the Brightech had auto reconnect, it was a needly little receiver and seemed to always want to be connected to something. It would randomly connect to one of our devices at home. Very frustrating. 4. The Bose, Brightech, and Homespot all feature auto connect when the receiver is powered on. This is great if you use the bluetooth adapter in a car or if it is powered by an amp. If the bluetooth adapter is plugged into a wall outlet it will stay powered all the time. 5. The Bose is powered by a USB cable and comes with a wall adapter. That means if you have an amp that has a powered USB port you can plug directly into it for power. The Brightech plugged directly into a wall outlet which I didn't like. The Homespot is powered by a USB cable also. However, when I plugged either of my Homespot receivers into the Orb Mini-T amp using either cable that came with them, I could hear noise and interference through the speakers. I thought it was the amp until I got a new mini amp, a Polk Omni A1, and experienced the same noise and interference through the speakers. I then became suspicious that it was the Homespot receivers that were causing this. When I got the Bose Bluetooth Audio Adapter and plugged into the Polk receiver, there was no noise or interference whatsoever. 6. When the Bose is connected it stays connected and when it is disconnected it stays disconnected. It may seem like such a small thing but neither the Homespot or Brightech could get that quite right. While streaming audio to the Homespot, well within bluetooth range, the receiver would occasionally disconnect itself while the Brightech as I mentioned earlier would randomly hijack the audio of my iPhone or iPad. 7. Audio quality from the Bose is excellent. If using the auxiliary out of the Bose, the audio quality is indistinguishable from the Brightech and nearly indistinguishable from plugging my phone directly into the amp with an auxiliary cable. Audio from the Bose and Brightech is noticeably louder than that from the Homespot but again the same volume as plugging directly into the amp. 8. The Bose Bluetooth Audio Adapter features apt-x codec for lossless streaming and digital optical out. iPhones and iPads are not compatible with apt-x so I'm not able to comment on that feature. If you have an open digital optical input on your amp or receiver, the Bose is without a doubt the bluetooth adapter to get. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the sound quality is even better using the digital optical out than it is using the auxiliary out. Using the optical out, music is more lively, punchier, and has better soundstage. Negatives: 1. There is one disadvantage to the auto reconnect. On the Bose and Brightech if I'm connected to either receiver but listening on headphones and walk out of range of the receiver and then back into range within 10 minutes, the Bose and Brightech will reconnect to the device (that's great) but then the receiver will select itself as the primary audio output thereby stopping playback to the headphones (not so great). 2. All Bose Bluetooth Audio Adapters have the same bluetooth name in your computer, smartphone, or tablet. This can be a problem if you have more than one Bose adapter and are using an iPhone or iPad to connect to them. Unlike Android, Apple doesn't let you give a bluetooth device a nickname, although you can on a Mac. Therefore you can never be sure which Bose receiver you are connecting to. The Homespot is the only receiver I know that gives a number value, 00-99, to the name of their bluetooth device. That means if you have multiple Homespot receivers, as I did, you can easily distinguish one from the next. One of my receivers was GT BT-Receiver 35 and the other was GT BT-Receiver 67. This obviously isn't entirely Bose's fault but it isn't entirely Apple's either since competitors of both have found solutions to this problem. Summary: I understand the desire to try to get by inexpensively on a bluetooth receiver. There are several receivers in the $30 range and then the Bose at $60. You may think you're spending a lot for the Bose name and a $30 one will do the same for half the price. As I learned the hard way this isn't true. I got fed up with the Homespot and Brightech and Pioneer before finally forking the extra money over for the Bose. After using it for a few days, I ordered a second one. It works as a bluetooth adapter should work. If your amp has an free digital optical input that you are wanting a bluetooth receiver to plug into, the Bose is without a doubt the one to get. The sound quality from the Bose is superb, especially using the optical out. The Bose features auto reconnect and the ability to connect three devices to it at once. It's easy to pair to even if a device is already connected to it. It has the ability to be powered from an amp which has a powered USB port. Plus, it has bluetooth 4.0 along with apt-x for the best bluetooth streaming currently available.