I love my Sony SRS-XG500 portable music player. The unit build quality is solid. And the sound quality is very good. Excellent battery life as well. It is one of the few portable music players that has a USB input port which was something I highly desired. I can insert a flash drive with hundreds if not thousands of songs. No need for a cord or fear that I am out of internet reach to stream music. I have a very large digital music collection from well over a thousand CDs that I ripped onto my computer. I love making custom USB drives and using them in my later model vehicles and now my Sony player. The one complaint I have is that the Music Center software will not allow you to SORT the songs by Songs or by Album which is very annoying. Almost all music software in later model vehicles will allow you to do this. Another issue is that in random play mode it seems to “favor” some songs over others with the result being that some songs are played MUCH more frequently than others. I keep waiting for a software update that solves these issues.

This app may well work with wireless speakers and the like, but for control of Sony receivers, well…it just doesn’t work, at all. I have their current top-of-the-line STR-AZ7000ES, overpriced like all Sony stuff for comparable items from other manufacturers, but the extra cost certainly doesn’t help the consumer at all. Every other receiver manufacturer I’ve used (Yamaha primarily of late), the connection to their app just works. With Sony, it’s impossible to even get the app to find the receiver, whether through Bluetooth or network. The receiver itself is connected to the network, and yes, the same 5GHz network that my phone with the app is using, but the app just doesn’t see it. And the receiver connects with no problems to Bluetooth, but, alas, the app still sees nothing. Sony got really lazy by attempting to make an all-in-one app, but it’s utter useless garbage. I’ve found absolutely zero people online who have been able to connect any of the ES receiver line to the app. Part of the problem is it makes Sony’s already useless instructions and troubleshooting pages too generic and even more useless, instead of being written for the device you’re using (and in the case of the STR-AZ7000ES, paid a lot of money for).

The speakers are great. Sony knows sound, no doubt. But the app is absurdly complex and full of friction points. -why can’t I name a speaker group (maybe like: yard party)? Or an individual speaker (like Dan’s XG-300)? We were left with 4 identical speakers that we could not tell apart in the app. -If the speakers don’t belong to the grouping app owner and software updates are needed, the whole process grinds down until the speaker owner updates that speaker? C’mon, we are just grouping already functioning speakers for cryin’ out loud. -Party Connect process is just as clumsy. Spent an hour trying to calibrate (must control individual speaker sound on the speaker itself?) and add other Sony speakers brought to my house by friends. It seriously felt like working with 2001 software, complete with ungraceful actions that provided little or no accurate feedback as we worked through the app. Like software written by folks who never even tried it for themselves before inflicting it on us. The four of us (an engineer, a product designer and two quality process managers) wasted far too much time on what should have been simple, quick and frictionless. With Bluetooth 5, there is no excuse for all the clunkiness,Sony. Do better!