BOSEbuild Speaker Cube

Product Description

Do your kids know what Bose-quality sound is? You could enlighten them with a luxe Bose speaker system or some Bose noise-cancelling headphones. Or you could encourage them to enlighten themselves with [Read more]

Top Reviews

This is a cool product and a fun project but come on already with the pricing.
by rectangle (3 out of 5 stars)
May 25, 2018

This is a cool product and a fun project. Educational and engaging, but not particularly challenging. Total build time if you take it slow and utilize the learning points in the app is about 30 minutes. The app is well designed and offers further exploration of sound waves and the inner workings of the finished product.

The end result is a fun, nice sounding Bluetooth speaker.

I saved two of them in my cart before Christmas 2017 at a cost of 119.99. The price increased to 149.99 a couple of days later, and I purchased two kits without realizing the increased cost. Now it's 99.00. Hey BOSE: what's the deal with the "surge pricing" on this product?
In my opinion, while this is a very cool and innovative educational project, it isn't worth the $149 (each!) I paid, or the $99 they're charging today. My rating would be 5 stars, but I feel that the best educational value offered by this experience is: don't pay $149 for a kit that's worth *maybe* $75. It's not *that* cool or educational.
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Pretty cool! Happy with this overall. Only 1 minor complaint...
by Garfcadet (4 out of 5 stars)
December 31, 2018

I bought this as a gift for my 13 year old daughter. The description says appropriate for 'Ages 8+' so I figured it'd still probably be fun for her. Turns out, it was! Basically, you download their app to your phone/tablet and it walks you through, step-by-step. What I liked most was that it isn't just assembly instructions. Instead, they walk you through a series of magnet/coil/sound demos/experiments, with the app giving the user some interesting tools to vary the signal input shape/frequency/amplitude under various arrangements to see what the effect is. The actual speaker assembly itself comes at the very end, only after you've gotten to play around with the fundamentals of how it all works using the speaker's control module with a separate magnet and coil components that are included just for the learning part and not used in the final assembly.

We did have some difficulty early on with the Bluetooth pairing part. Basically, we were successfully pairing the phone with the speaker, but the app uses a 2nd pairing connection that requires the phone and the speaker module to be virtually right next to each other. We struggled with this for a good 20 minutes because the speaker control module must be plugged-in with an included AC adapter and it didn't quite reach the table we were working on. And this brings me to my only disappointment with the product: it is not a rechargeable BT speaker. It MUST be plugged into the wall to work. I don't consider this to be a deal-breaker, but I didn't realize this when I ordered it.

Having said that, the speaker seems to be extremely well made and produces very high quality sound - which frankly surprised me, coming from a single driver. Additionally, it is able to produce a shocking level of volume if you really want to fill a room.

Conclusion: if you really don't mind having to keep it tethered to a wall-outlet, this is a fun and educational kit that leaves you with a high-quality BT speaker that your son or daughter will enjoy for many years.
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Easy to build
by Crista N. Nimmerichter (5 out of 5 stars)
April 23, 2018

We bought this as a gift for my son. When he first opened the box, he was visibly disappointed. We downloaded the app for him to follow the instructions, and he built the speaker on his own. He was stepped through the process, learning things, and able to experiment all the way. By the time he was done, he was excited about the speaker, and the amazing sound.
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Sounds great and easy to make
by Tara (4 out of 5 stars)
July 30, 2019

If you want to learn about principles of sound or speakers, it is going to be a good buy for you. If you have kids, they will immensely enjoy assembling it. You will have to have an ipad or iPhone to be able to learn assembling it. The app has some very valuable information. Thanks to the app, assembling it is literally "child's play."

Sound quality is what you expect a Bose speaker to produce. It has some fancy lights which can be turned off or tweaked .

One drawback is the absence of Siri integration. I was hoping to have a button on it that could activate siri on the phone or iPad.

I was also not able to find a volume control on the speaker. Despite these shortcomings, it is still worht buying.
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Quality unit, fun concept.
by Edward Gallagher (5 out of 5 stars)
February 18, 2019

The product showed up in my 'big brother knows what you want' directed advertising stream the week before Christmas and I found it intriguing. The Bose brand is well regarded from my past experience with (29 year old) Bose 401's and a couple of Wave units still performing over a decade after purchase. I feel that you pay for the brand name to a degree, but it's 'good stuff'. Anyway, I bought it for a young teen grand-child and thought that it would be fun for him to do the 'experiment' portion with his little brother, and the actual assembly of the speaker by himself or with a parent. (They live out of state so as much as I would have enjoyed doing it with him, it wasn't going to be possible). About a month after the holidays I received a picture of my two grandsons with the nearly completed unit, and the assessment from my grandson upon completion was that it was 'cool'.
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Educational and Excellent Design
by A. Bastanza (5 out of 5 stars)
March 28, 2019

I bought 2 of these. One for a 7 year old girl and one for an 11 year old boy. They worked together at this, with no parental help. The 11 year old would complete a step and then make sure his sister did as well. She did her own work, he was "Quality Control". I like the idea of getting them both involved in science and tech, especially the girl, who had shied away from it. It took the two of them a little over an hour to complete it, not counting the time spent watching the acoustic and electronic principles in action videos. They have them paired to their iPads. Both are very happy with them. They made them, which also adds to the pride and enjoyment. I would buy them again. People complain about the price, but I think it was worth it.
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Surprisingly complete experience
by Ken Housinger (5 out of 5 stars)
June 16, 2019

I figured this would be some Lego-like electronic project--we'd open the kit, follow some step-by-step assembly, and have a working Bose speaker at the end. I got the kit for my for Christmas 2018. I hadn't been able to motivate him to work on it with me until I played my Father's Day card today. What a win for both of us.

The kit requires a smartphone to get anywhere near a complete experience. The app you need to download takes you through assembly easily enough and you get a nice working Bose speaker in the end, but the road there is fantastic. You start by learning some basics about how speakers work using a magnet and copper coil (provided). I'll have to say, it was kind of magical getting these two simple components to work together to make sound. Playing with the primitive speaker, you learn some principles of sound and eventually get to assemble the sophisticated Bose speaker, which is sort of anti-climactic after all the other cool stuff you get to do. Both my 10-year-old and I had a blast working on this.

If you just want to make a speaker, this will get you there, but that's not what makes this a winner. My only complaint is that it might have been nice for the app to have links to more technical details about sound science and hearing. One suggestion I have for other parents is to test what frequencies you and your children can hear. Adults lose some frequency sensitivity and it was fun for my son to have it play a pitch that he could hear that I could not.
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Great app for iPhone
by O. Nissan (5 out of 5 stars)
December 17, 2018

Bose made a great product for kids who love science.

Besides the components needed for building the speaker, there are other components for educational purposes only, and we had tons of fun learning together.

The speaker has high sound quality, as expected from Bose...

Overall, it gave me the opportunity to spend few hours with my 10YO daughter, and both of us had fun.
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Great hands-on learning experience
by Tom Mott (5 out of 5 stars)
January 24, 2018

The speaker cube has great sound, but I wouldn't buy this product for that reason alone. There are plenty of top-notch Bluetooth speakers out there. As an aside, I'm very happy with my JBL Xtreme portable Bluetooth speaker.

My 5-stars are for the absolutely first-rate experience my son and I had building it. Downloading and connecting the initial app that guides you through the steps was straightforward and frictionless. The step-by-step experience teaching about electromagnets, vibrations, and sound waves was excellent and informative: just the right balance of learning and play, freedom and hand-holding.

And it was frustration-free, unlike some experiences with other iOT products. [Another aside: My son's drone required that we connect to the drone via wifi ... but then it told us to connect to a wireless network to download a software update ... but then it told us we weren't connected to the drone ... but when we reconnected to the drone, it said we still needed to download the update ... and then the update failed the first two times ... ugh. AWFUL out-of-the-box user experience.)

Back to the BOSEbuild Speaker Cube: I have one significant quibble: 85% of the step-by-step learning experience involves experimenting with an electromagnet and copper coil which aren't part of the final assembled speaker. Most of the learning is done with those parts and taping them to the cardboard box that the product was packed in. When it's time to build the actual speaker, those parts are set aside. Furthermore, speaker itself is mostly already assembled: You simply plug the face (cone) into the back control board, and then snap the other four sides together around it with clips.

I totally understand why Bose chose to do this in order to maintain the audio integrity of the final speaker, but it doesn't really feel like we built the speaker itself.

That said, the step-by-step learning experience was still so good, I forgive them. 5 stars.
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I bought it as a sort of "I think she might like this too" sort of add on to the pile ...
by Joe Cummings (5 out of 5 stars)
February 24, 2018

This was a Christmas gift for my 16 year old daughter who's on a robotics team. I bought it as a sort of "I think she might like this too" sort of add on to the pile of spoiled child gifts that I gave her this year. It ended up being her favorite gift of all. She tore into it and put it together right away. Once she saw it light up, there was that WOW moment where you could tell she was impressed. Then when the lights changed color, she proclaimed "this is lit". If you haven't deciphered your kid's lingo yet, that was a very positive teenage endorsement for this product. This speaker now has a prominent location in her bedroom and is used just about daily. The sound quality is very good. I'm thankful she hasn't tested it's upper volume limits, but it does quite nicely for her bedroom tunes needs. I'd definitely recommend it for teens, and basically anyone who enjoys putting things together, as well as music.

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