Sony | Music Center 17+

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.

I just bought the srs xb31 for $150, I love the speaker but you must have the app running and Bluetoothed in order to use any extra features.... ok that’s ok if it actually would work 1/4 if the time. It’s always losing its sync and goes to default. There’s a party mode where you can bang on the speaker to play drums and stuff and I love it! Gives you something to tap while listening to music but half 75% of the time the app doesn’t recognize the device even when I’m still playing music, so I have to close the app, turn bt off and on, reconnect because it doesn’t try to automatically, then go into the app crossing my fingers, and half the time it shows 3 extra speakers saying “need to be setup” but still doesn’t connect to mine.... so repeat. Finally have it working and your settings ready to go!? Well have fun when you lock your phone and go back into the app because it’s unsynced again... and just a helpful tip, don’t lock your phone while in the app, eventually you’ll have to restart your phone to even get it to work because it bugs out.... the quality of the speaker is what I expected with Sony but the app really ruins their reputation with me if I see “extra features in app”. Recommend the speaker if you just want good sound and bass, but don’t recommend it if you was wanting to use the extra features of the speaker and if that’s you deciding factor between $150 and another good speaker with as good quality for $60...

Checking in almost a year after first purchase. App is still garbage. Basic functions continue to fail. No idea what all these monthly updates are for, literally nothing has gotten better. App still crashes every other time I try to connect to a device. Forget party chain. If you ever get it working, which is rare, leave the app and don’t return, or it will crash. If this app represents Sony, they have fallen a long, long way. I would never have bought these speakers if I knew this app was required. Their failure to address major problems in over a year shows they just don’t care. UPDATE: Another year gone, and this app continues to get worse. I have no idea what updates they are making, but they obviously don’t read these reviews or bother to test their app in the least. I can almost never pair speakers correctly, and when they do pair, the volume on each gets reset after each song. Most of the time the app just fails to work properly so it doesn’t matter. I have 3 speakers, all of which are great individually, but this app is so, so, so terrible. Any 2+ star reviews are either from company employees or people who haven’t actually used this app.

Update: 4 years later and nothing has changed. Still the worst app ever published.