Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I was surprised in every way upon the Sound Link Color II's arrival, connection and playback of music. To start with, the instructions were so poor, it made us wonder if we bought a fake from China. We later found an online manual, and wondered why it was not included with our speaker. Not to worry though, we had a lengthy set of safety precautions in twenty-one, I kid you not - twenty-one, different languages. Bose is a great name, right? Every Bose product we have ever listened to exceeded expectations and most of the time left us in awe. My wife and I listened to the Sound Touch 10 (cousin of Sound Link?) in Sam's and were thinking the Sound Link Color II would be just as amazing. It's not - the Sound Link Color II sound is just average. It is a little better than our four year old Phillips speaker, but comes no where near matching the sound of our two year old Harmon Kardon Onyx speaker. The speaker's bass is nearly non-existent, and it will not play as loud as either of the two other speakers we compared it with. The absence of the Bose "wow!" left us very disappointed. Looking through the manual we found online, Bose indicates the speaker works best when backed up close to, but not against, a wall. An odd piece of guidance given Bose's advertisement of the speaker as an on the go, outside, camping/swimming/party speaker. We did try the guidance though, and it did seem to add a little more bass. But not nearly enough to overcome the speaker's sound shortcomings. The rubbery speaker exterior is nice - some reviewers indicated it was a lint/dust trap, but we did not find it such. It felt good, provided a solid feel and seemed consistent with the speaker's water resistant claim. The speaker has a VERY annoying feature when charging - it beeps every 15-20 seconds or so. We could not find a way to turn the beep off anywhere in the Bose literature. Online, we found this irritant was very common and can be fixed by using a non-Bose micro USB cable. And indeed, the online fix eliminated the problem. Not a big deal cost-wise, but the flippin' cable has Bose's name on it! This is Bose for Pete's sake, you expect better. The app was a non factor. Not useful, not a problem. It was much easier to go Settings/Bluetooth, connect to the Bose Sound Link Color II and then play music from your music library. The app has no features, other than perhaps it's stereo/party mode where you need two Sound Link Color II speakers. Yeah right, like that's gonna happen. This was a VERY disappointing buy. I spent an embarrassing amount of Black Friday and Cyber Monday time looking for any kind of deal on the Sound Link Color II - to no avail. I reasoned it was Bose, and the sound would more than compensate for a few dollars. Bad call on my part. I bought our Harmon Kardon Onyx a couple of years ago via a Black Friday deal. It cost less than the Sound Link Color II and yet dramatically outperforms the Bose. A disappointing speaker, and not worth the Bose premium in my opinion.