Audio Pro C5 MK II Speaker, Compact HiFi Stereo System, WiFi, AirPlay 2, Chromecast, Spotify Connect, Office, Beach, Camping, Grey

UPDATE: I've had the T5 over a year and continue to enjoy it a lot and recommend it. But Addon has a new speaker you might consider: Audio Pro Addon C5 - Compact WiFi Multi-Room Speaker - Grey. The C5 adds wifi connectivity and comes with an app for iOS or Android, for streaming over wifi and multi-room setups. Otherwise, the C5 is exactly the same as this T5: same cabinet dimensions, same size tweeters and woofer, same specs. The C5 is priced $50 higher than the T5, so if you don't need multiroom support and you're happy with Bluetooth streaming, buy a T5 and save $50.---The Addon T5 speaker is excellent for its intended application, a stationary stay-at-home speaker. It has great sound, it looks really great, and it has a USB power port on the back. It is not a portable bluetooth speaker - it has no battery, so you have to keep it plugged into the wall. And it's too big to throw in your backpack or dufflebag to take with you. If you want something portable, there are lots of other options. If you want high quality sound for your home, the T5 is a fantastic option.I'm comparing the T5 to the Bose Soundlink Mini and Soundlink 3, both of which I own and like very much. The T5 is bigger than both--and sounds bigger. It sounds like a real speaker, not a tiny portable compromise. I think most people would agree it sounds better than both the Bose units I mentioned. You can hear the space between instruments and voices, like with a good hi-fi system. There's more bass, too, but it's not muddy or boomy, it's well balanced with clear mids and crisp highs. One thing, though: it needs break-in time. It'll sound better after 10 or 20 hours of use than it does right out of the box.The speaker's front feet are a bit taller than the rear feet, so the speaker is slightly angled upward - this is smart design, since it's likely to be placed on an end table or shelf below ear-level.As with every all-in-one unit, stereo separation is largely lost when you're more than a few feet away from the speaker. That's true with every self-contained bluetooth speaker unit, though. If you want stereo separation, you need two speakers that can be placed a few feet apart from each other. There are a few bluetooth speakers with this capability. This manufacturer makes one called the Addon T14 (not currently available at Amazon). You can pair two of these: Ultimate Ears WONDERBOOM Super Portable Waterproof Bluetooth Speaker, Phantom BlackBack to the T5. It's a gorgeous speaker, in my opinion. It has a high-end aesthetic, with a handsome cabinet and carrying handle made of high-quality leather. It's not gaudy or obnoxious, it's somewhat understated (but absolutely not boring), it'll blend in to the decor of your living room or any room. It comes in about 5 different colors. I have the grey one which is quite handsome.The T5 has a standard 3.5mm auxiliary in, in case you want to connect a non-bluetooth device with a cable, like an older iPod. The T5 has a USB power port on the back, which is a handy feature on many bluetooth speakers now.Though the T5 isn't truly portable, it has a small footprint and is easy to carry from one room to the next. It's in my living room, on an end table which it shares with a lamp, there's plenty of room for cocktails or books.There is a version of this speaker that's a bit smaller & more portable and has a built-in battery: the T3. Audio Pro Addon T3 Portable Bluetooth Speaker (White)The T3 is more expensive due to the battery. I'd encourage you to read the reviews of the T5 and T3 at the professional audio website WhatHiFi.If you're looking for a speaker that will be mainly stationary, the T5 should be on your short list. It sounds big, clear, and great, and has an understated but gorgeous high-end look, too.Highly recommended at this price point.

I ordered these because I'm working from home all the time now (like many people) and my favorite work area was one of the few in the house with no decent audio. Our Sonos Play 5 has been extremely frustrating with its wifi dropout issues; evidently they're well known for poor performance with anything other than strong wifi, which I wish I had known before I bought them. Anyhow, I wanted the C10 but couldn't find one in stock anywhere, and thus took a chance on the "lesser" C5. If I had paid attention to the measurements and realized how small it is I wouldn't have ordered it, and that would have been a huge mistake! The sound is amazing and the features are excellent, including built-in Bluetooth. It has EQ features which I've played with a bit but ended up leaving at defaults because that sounds great; at first I thought it was a little boomy and needed less bass but I've changed my mind. Our wifi is worse on the first floor than I realized, and the C5 will drop occasionally, but unlike the Play 5 it doesn't lose its mind and refuse to ever play anything again -- it just picks up again when it can, usually in a few seconds. However, when I do carry it down to the first floor I use Bluetooth instead of wifi, thanks to the dropout, and it's flawless. I'm pretty sure there's a C10 in my future, perhaps replacing the Sonos. I know there are features on the C5 I haven't even explored (presets, Spotify connectivity, inputs I don't need, ...). I'm well and truly sold on Audio Pro.

For over a decade I've streamed music locally within my home (I have LOTS of CDs, all of which I've ripped). My oldest device that I used for locally streamed playback died recently, so I bought the C5A as an intended replacement. This turned out to be much harder than it should have been: some reasons were clearly issues with the C5A and/or the AudioPro app, while some issues were related to my home network hardware/software. In principle, I wanted to rely on the ability of the C5A to act as a UPnP/DLNA client to play music stored on and served from my (old) network attached storage (NAS) unit--something I've more or less been doing for years with other devices. The C5A and/or the AudioPro app would occasionally see one of the three different UPnP/DLNA servers I tried using with it (two on the NAS, one on a Windows computer), but nothing worked consistently. Something might work for 5 minutes or 5 hours--and then disappear, with the connection sometimes never to be seen again in the AudioPro app. I occasionally got the C5A to work with Logitech Media Server (LMS) software running on a Windows computer (but not with the version running on my NAS, for reasons not the fault of the C5A). This particular Windows computer is not supposed to sleep completely, but in the morning it and the C5A could never see each other; resurrecting their ability to find each other was hit-or-miss. My eventual solution was drastic: buy a CanaKit Raspberry Pi 4 kit; download and install on it piCorePlayer (a free, pared-down Linux with some free streaming media features--including the ability to run LMS); and use LMS on the Raspberry Pi to pull music from my NAS and play it on the C5A. A software plugin (also free) for LMS needed to accomplish this is a "bridge" for LMS to communicate with UPnP/DLNA devices. This worked, after considerable learning on my part. I then repurposed an otherwise now-useless first-generation iPad (too old to run the AudioPro app) to run an app to control what music LMS (on the Raspberry Pi) sends from the NAS to the C5A. The AudioPro app can do other things, but it can't do that.For the last three days, all of this has been working, with the NAS and the Raspberry Pi on wired Ethernet connections and the C5A on Wi-Fi. Fingers still crossed.My favorite message from tech support at AudioPro: "Our App has NAS compatible issue." I think their app actually has a problem with linking to UPnP/DLNA servers, regardless of whether the server softwar (or the music they are serving) is on a NAS or some other computer. That may have been what tech support meant.For my purposes, I give the C5A four stars (ignoring the fact that my wife hates its "look"), then subtract one for the two weeks I spent getting it to work. Not to mention having to buy and configure a separate (although inexpensive) computer with an operating system about which I know almost nothing.P.S. If you want to use the C5A just to access Spotify or other online services, ignore me.