Sound quality: The Heos 5 HS2 had very good sound quality overall. Bass has good impact, but is slightly boomy, and the deepest bass is lacking. Midrange is fairly even, but lower midrange is a bit recessed and upper midrange is a bit edgy. Treble is extended but a bit thin. It does a decent job of recovering room ambience, but lacks a bit of midrange complexity and treble air. There is no significant difference between WiFi, Bluetooth, USB and wired sound quality except that treble is a bit subdued in Bluetooth. It provides a decent volume level for a medium- to large-sized room. As a stereo pair, they can be placed to provide better stereo separation than many other models and sound quality improves and remains very good. Bass also goes fairly deep, but remains prominent and boomy, and midrange is somewhat echoey, changing the natural room ambience of the original recording.
Ease of use: We found the system's ease of use to be good overall. The Denon Heos 5 HS2 WiFi setup is very easy, which involves downloading the Heos app, connecting the iOS or Android mobile device to the speaker via the provided AUX cable and following the app directions, which include selecting a network and entering its password. Volume and mute controls are not prominent (on right side of speaker) but are clearly labeled. Bluetooth: Bluetooth pairing requires a press of a well-marked button on rear of unit and then the selection of unit from Bluetooth selection list on source device; unit provides an obvious indication that the unit is in pairing mode as well as when pairing has actually occurred. Bluetooth is also an unmarked multifunction control to reset unit. The remote control app is generally very good and mostly intuitive. Switching between sources is easy accomplished with the Heos app. The app remote is fairly easy to use and somewhat intuitive with transport controls, which were limited to Play/Pause and Skip.
