We had this speaker all set up but then needed to move it to another location. We could not get it to reconnect to our network. This is the only frustration related to the speaker itself. It works great with Alexa but to play on multiple speakers you need a subscription. We were going to add the subwoofer but think that would mean we need to subscribe both to the music service. We would like to play everywhere in the house but not without more $. Maybe your music service acccomodates it's users base better!.

It work okay but lost it's ability to connect to WiFi after 18 months.I bought it with the understanding that it had a 3 year warranty but was lied too...only one. Sent it for repair & was told it was no longer under warranty & even if it was they couldn't get parts for it anyway to fix it. NOW IT'S SCRAP!

I have owned this for almost 2 years. It has been a constant struggle keeping it connected to my wifi and alexa. Multiple restarts weekly, the playfi app is horrible and needs to be reconnected constantly too. Don't buy this!

The design, build quality and price (If you shop carefully) of the Elite makes it a far superior product to Echo, and other brands, even Sonos. There are places that are still selling the Elite at $299.00; that being said I picked up two at $59.00 each from Amazon! The consumers who paid $299.00 absolutely got what they paid for, if you acquired it for anything less you got a steal!This is a speaker at its heart, not a "smart control device"; it will nearly but not fully replace an Echo/Dot as a control device. It is however, a speaker with its soul centered in quality sound that is far superior to anything in the Amazon Echo Line. It provides room-filling sound FAR BETTER IN QUALITY than any Amazon Echo/Dot device.Alexa functionality does exists and is a second or two slower in response compared to an Echo. The voice response is slower than any Amazon device. If you are adding to your shopping list, don’t use this product with this condition: if you have an Echo/Dot in your residence. If you don't have an Amazon product then it will do a great job at that. It’s for music and fun and games. It streams very well, better than the Echo/Dot products.PROS:Fantastic BuySuperior Build qualitySuperior DesignThe BEST sound quality hands downStreams very reliably at distanceA sufficient control deviceCons:No man made product is perfect and as such the Elite has two areas that should be considered.1. Their is a quirk if you already have an Echo or Dot; it would inexplicably stop or drop for some random reason and my Amazon Echo does not do this. Finally I realized the Elite's microphone input sensitivity is measurably inferior to the Echo or Dot and they (the Amazon products) will be executing commands intended for the Elite with placement 30 feet away around the corner before the Elite that is only 3 feet away has done anything. I use Amazon Prime music and the drops or stops are because the Dot or Echos hear and "grab" the service first leaving no device slot for the Elite on the Prime Music Service subscription. Sometimes I go to my 3 Amazon devices and mute the microphones just to avoid this when I want to listen to the superior sound of the ELITE.2. Unbelievably Pioneer's support and web content fall far short on this product if you have a question beyond the one sheet "Quick Set Up" guide. Go figure, they have a far superior product than the other much more expensive competitive smart speakers on the market (including Sonos) and yet, after all the product development and design investment that went into this, they can't answer a question?CONCLUSION:Overall, extremely happy with the speaker and its performance, it isn't audiophile quality (and I did not expect audiophile quality sound with any presence or depth of field at this price). In fact no Smart Speaker under $4,500.00 is audiophile quality IMHO and perhaps the VA-FW40 does not deserve the Pioneer "ELITE" branding which when seen brings things to my mind like at lest minimally THX Certified. It is after all a very small (in the world of audiophile speakers) amazingly inexpensive smart speaker and it does that better than anyone else.Would I recommend it to a friend, OH, YES! Go get one NOW!PS: I am not an employee of or representative for any retailer or manufacturer and am not compensated in any way except that if I have hopefully helped you along the way of searching for the best smart speaker buy. I am thus pleased to do so, as I too appreciate those who take the time to share great finds with others.

Sound quality was okay for the 6 months that it worked, not up to par with some of the other speakers in the price range. Alexa functionality is also not comparable to the actual Echos, wouldn't play direct through Spotify etc.Worst part was after 6 months it stopped connecting to the network with a constant orange ring light, tech support wasn't any help and now I have to ship it halfway across the country for who knows how long to get it repaired. Do yourself a favor and buy from a company with better customer / tech support and a better product (shouldn't be too hard).

Have one in the bedroom. Phone app to control it (Play-Fi) is hard to navigate and usually cannot even find the system at all. There's even a second app by Pioneer that doesn't really do anything. Doesn't seem to maintain a wi fi connections and needs restarting frequently. The sound is good but the LED ring lights on the top sometimes pulses at night in the bedroom and have to cover it with a towel so I can sleep. That a little annoying. I think it's relationship with an existing Echo is not good and may be the reason for many of it's issues.

So let me start with what is good about this device. It seems to have a good recognition of voices and far field mics work very well. It has a very nice sound and will play music when asked and it integrates with my other Play-Fi devises seamlessly through the app (Polk Play-Fi devises). Set up was easy to accomplish with the Pioneer application... I tried for a while straight from the Play-Fi application with no success, I guess I should read the directions and not just look at the pictures.I am disappointed with a few things though.First: I purchased this devise to be able to integrate and control my other Play-Fi devises through the Alexa interface. The Pioneer speaker does work individually as would be expected and I can activate my other devises through the app but when I try to control the volume through Alexa the only devise volume that is changed is the Pioneer. everything else that is playing along with it stays at the same level. I am also unable to add or remove speakers that are playing from the same Play-Fi Zone that are playing with the Alexa or choose a service that I have configured through Play-Fi. (I understand that would be more complicated but it would be nice to have at some point) I would think that volume control of the whole group playing at the same time would not be too tough to sort out.Second: I am quite disappointed in the actual Alexa options built into the device. some very basic functionality that is already a part of the general Alexa product is not present. First is the ability to change the wake name, and second is the ability to do "drop in" on other devises.Overall it is a nice sounding device but without those 3 things it doesn't fit my expectation.