Sound quality: Phorus's PS5 had good overall all sound quality. Bass has decent impact but lacks deep bass and sounds a bit boomy. Midrange is fairly even but a bit muffled, and treble is recessed and rolled off; what remains is a bit sizzly. This model does a so-so job recovering room ambience--a sense of the acoustic space where the recording was made--but is congested, constricted, and lacking in detail. We found no significant difference whether a WiFi, Bluetooth, or wired connection was used. When two units are combined as a stereo pair, sound quality remains the same but the soundstage can be made wider depending how far apart the speakers are situated. There were a few oddities. When two units were used as a stereo pair, we noticed that the volume would fade between the left and right channels. And when used as a single unit, there were some spontaneous, intermittent volume changes. We also experienced some random WiFi dropouts during playback. This model can provide a decent volume level in a medium-sized room.
Ease of use: We found the system's ease of use to be fair overall. The Phorus PS5 Bluetooth pairing was easy, although once paired you still have to manually reconnect if you want to use your Bluetooth device, and the volume controls are good. However, the mute button is unlabeled, and performs multiple functions when pressed at the same time the volume controls. Switching between a wired and a wireless device, or from WiFi to Bluetooth, was, while not convenient, straightforward, as the line-in connection takes precedence over wireless. But all the rear-panel labels, including those for the line-in connections, are poorly placed underneath the speaker. There were no WPS setup instructions, and other connections require the use of the downloaded Phorus app on an Android or iOS device. The app itself, required for WiFi network use, was well laid out but the volume and music player controls were sluggish. Switching from Bluetooth to WiFi often caused the Phorus app to hang-up, and there were random disconnections from the WiFi network and the app had to be restarted in order for it to work.
