Phorus PS1 Speaker with Multi-Room Wireless Audio Streaming

So, I picked a couple of these up for my roommate. I have a couple Polk Play-Fi speakers, Play-Fi adapters for my home theater receiver and my office soundbar. Play-Fi is alright, but thats something for a different time. This little guy cost me $50 each. it is a stereo little thing and it sounds just OK. like sound quality is like 5 out of 10.BUT, this is perfect for a non discerning ear. My roommate wanted tunes for their bathroom and bedroom. this thing is perfect for that.It is: Airplay, Play-Fi, Bluetooth, aux audio input, and it has a mobile device stand all in one.My gripe with some play-fi speakers is that not everyone likes play-fi, and there is limited ways to connect some play-fi speakers. With these, anyone who comes to my play and connects to my wifi, can just use one speaker at a time with Airplay. my roommate takes like an hour in their bathroom in the morning, and now they set their phone on the stand and airplay music in the morning. this bathroom is also the common/guest bathroom, When they arent around, I setup the whole house to play music. great for parties and stuff. Overall, its a nice little speaker that is usefull for small rooms that has a ton of connectivity options that make it worth it.

I do not know why these people rave and rant about this product. However, I must give the credit on the WiFi and BT configurations are very simple and fairly quick out of the box comparing to Sony and Sonos (no BT), Big Jambox (BT only). It is a nice and small compact design but other than that, for $199, it's terrible comparing to other products out there like the Sony, Jambox and Sonos.Sound quality - it does "fill" the room, a small room, NOT a 2 story house like one reviewer claimed, what a joke. I am not sure what that person is listening too. As you walk around the speaker, the sound quality/level is very consistent, I guess due to how the speaker is mounted and the box dimension. Other than that, the bass is next to none and all you hear is the mid-range without any separation. A couple songs I tested, it cannot reach certain range so you cannot hear anything or it would be washed out if you crank it up. It does clip as you crank up the volume but I only did this for evaluating the sound quality level and design. Even my teenagers make comments such as "what a terrible sound", "who make that speaker?", "it's a waste of $$ and a piece of junk". I let my kids play 5 different songs from their iTouch to get a variety of music for comparison and they all sound terrible. Given, these songs are purchased from iTune and Amazon so the quality is so so.. These songs range from Hip Hop, Pop, Alternative, Jazz (including vocals), Christmas and one from Phantom of the Opera. Comparing the same songs to the Sony and the big Jambox, it's like day and night. I also played some high bitrate MP3 that I ripped from my CDs collection. I purchased this for one of the kids as xmas gift for his room and he prefers to use the other two. To me, the sound quality of this box is more like those cheap PC speakers... It is very disappointing for a company claiming high quality sound to release such product, especially this is a subsidiary of Dolby.SW App - does not have one for iTouch/iPhone so I have to use my Nexus 7 to setup. Easy to download, setup and the speakers has a firmware update right after configuring the WiFi. Once it's up and running, I see Pandora, Music, Media Server and Setting. I tried playing music from my NAS/Media server as all of my songs are stored there. I was so disappointed as it was not able to see 90% of my music collections. My server requires login to access and this app cannot do that comparing to the Sony or other 3rd party DLNA apps. So for now, I can only stream directly via BT to listen to the music I want. As I select the Music option, I am not sure how it aggregates these songs but that is all I can see from my NAS, which is very limited. I find myself stop using this device after the first day. I noticed one beta tester on here with the review. How in the world you test a product like this and did not see these problems. I only need one hours to all the problems. I hope Phorus fixes this problem! The Sony app is not that great either but it was able to see all of my NAS/Media Server to select, login and play any songs. The multi speakers sync and streaming is a good feature but useless when you can get to all your music collection. I did purchase this and the adapter.Bottom line, I would not recommend this to any of my friends. I do wish people really review the product instead just rave about something that is just junk!!! I do not like to do review online but I was so disappointed with the product and see these good reviews that are just not true. BTW, I do understand one cannot compare this to a full stereo system and I did not do that either. :)

This review may be a little unfair because I should be just reviewing the hardware, but integral to the experience is the software and that is why I am subtracting a 🌟 star. The sound is decent, and while I know I can get better sound from other speakers, even other Play-fi speakers, I believe that the price/performance ratio is great. The sound is loud without crackling, and the passive bass is decent without being over powering. So why the four star rating? Well, one must use either the Phorus app or the Play-fi app, and while these apps are decent they are not quick nor are they full audio control (unless you buy the PC app for an additional $15, which seems a little ticky-tack as well (you have to purchase an app to use the speaker in Hi-Fi mode?)). But here's what I mean... let's say you want to play a YouTube video through your Phorus speakers, you've got to do that on either a PC (there is a free version, but one speaker at a time), or BlueTooth/AirPlay (limited to one speaker), because the Android or iPhone *apps* don't have a YouTube output. Here's what it does have: Internet Radio (although for some reason, even though I see my local stations in the Internet Radio dialogue, I can't hear it through my speakers... other local stations I do get), Media server, Deezer, KKbox, Pandora (Phorus app only, not Play-fi), QQMusic, SiriusXM, and Songza. Finally when it loses a connection, the app hangs, and I'm stuck, with nothing to "click" to and no music to play. Now, with all that said, the app does get updates every so often, and maybe then boot time speed won't be such an issue and maybe Phorus Speakers will be integrated into the Android IS (I can wish, can't I)?

Sound quality was good, but 2 problems which caused me to return them: (1) I couldn't listen to my Prime Music Playlists and (2) I couldn't listen to 2 or more speakers through my PC (could only listen to multiple speakers if I played the music through my phone.)The main reason for the 2 stars was that we finally got through to Phorus customer service and they told us those problems would be solved if we paid $15 for the app. Unfortunately now I'm out $15 and it still doesn't work as they indicated it would.