RIVA ARENA Smart Speaker Compact Wireless for Multi-Room music streaming and voice control works with Google Assistant (Black)

The media could not be loaded.  Two of the three units work fine; this review is for the last unit and the TERRIBLE customer support.When I set up and turned on the third Riva Arena initially, it was fine. One day about a month or so after purchase, it started emitting static as well as the music. I did a factory reset, and it emitted a huge blast of static upon connecting to the wifi. Music streamed through it was still static-y. I tried moving it to a different location with no different result. I tested streaming with my phone, tablet, and laptop before contacting customer support, who implied it was user error, and had me ship the unit back at my expense. They "had a technician look at it", said "he couldn't reproduce the problem, and shipped it back. It worked for about a month and a half, and then got static-y again. Although I have another Arenas and a Festival, I would not recommend buying a Riva Arena because of the high lemon rate and horrible customer experience.

Update: Added the mounting screw size to the review title, as it was not something I could readily find on the Riva site when I was ordering a mount. I wrote to Riva for the info. They responded promptly.This is a quality speaker that performs well. Audio quality is of course objective, but in my opinion it sounds great. You do need to set your expectations accordingly. It is a small speaker, so there are of course physical limitations. That said, I think it does have a bigger sound than the size would lead you to believe. It does a great job filling our decent sized kitchen with sound, and I am happy with how it is tuned. I do think that the bass is slightly over-emphasized, but much less than is typical in most speakers. Mine is corner mounted, which of course contributes to the bass. But overall I feel it is tuned quite well, and has a pretty smooth sound signature. As a bonus, Riva recently released updated firmware, with an accompanying app update, which lets you adjust the bass and treble levels a bit. I knocked the bass down just barely, only 2db, and I'm very happy now. The firmware updated happened over the air automatically by the way, so no hassle there.I assume that a lot of people out there might be trying to decide between this speaker and the Sonos equivalent, which was the case with myself. I can't comment on the sound of the Play 1, as I haven't heard it. Some comparisons I read said the Sonos sounded better, and some said the Riva sounded better. All that I read were complimentary of both. Based on both companies putting focus on audio quality, and both facing the same size limitations, I doubt that either sounds significantly better than the other. But again, this is a very subjective area.Where the Riva truly shines over the Sonos, in my opinion, is the available functionality. The Sonos locks you into an expensive ecosystem. If you want to expand, you buy more Sonos products, at a premium. The Riva uses common protocols like Airplay, Chromecast, and Bluetooth. It also has options for physical connections, with an aux in and USB in. This provides a ton of flexibility, and allows you to do multi-room on the cheap. For example, I purchased a Chromecast audio on sale for $20, and hooked it up to my receiver in the living room. Now I've got the Arena in my kitchen, and the Chromecast in my living room, giving me 2 zones. I could have actually gone even cheaper, there are Chromecast apps available for the Fire TV, eliminating the need for hardware. I personally don't want the Fire TV coloring the sound at all, so I opted for the Chromecast. Additionally, Airplay 2 is supposed to support multi-room when Apple releases it, and I read somewhere that Riva anticipates being able to add support via a firmware update (obviously can't guarantee that at this point).In summary, this is a really solid product. It feels like a quality build, sounds good, and has tons of functionality. I can easily see myself picking up another one or two of these in the future, or maybe even trying their larger Festival model, and probably mixing them with some additional Chromecasts or software solutions to expand into more zones.

I bought this speaker at the end of August 2019 to replace UE Boom that my roommate took with him upon departure.Initially, I was highly satisfied with the sound quality and connectivity of the speaker. After 3 months or so, I started to notice that the speaker would temporarily lose connection REPEATEDLY. This happened when connected with WiFi as well as Bluetooth. A weekend of leisurely cleaning my apartment turns into me having to constantly adjust the location of speaker. I'm a recent graduate and my apartment is not big by any means. Also, and LG Sound Bar that I bought circa 2012 still works perfectly, including the Bluetooth Connectivity to devices manufactured as recent as last year.The sound quality continued to deteriorate and I reached out to customer service by phone to ask about the two year warranty. At this point, I've owned the speaker for a a little under 5 months. Their warranty is suspicious in itself. "I know I really should've bought the additional warranty through Amazon"... said no person ever. To have the warranty process started, they ask that you send them (by email) a copy of the original receipt of purchase, your full shipping address, the serial number of the product and explain the issue at hand, even if you have already registered your product. They DO NOT cover the shipping of the product to their facility for evaluation but they DO pay to have the product shipped back.The Riva speaker boasts about its Trillium technology but what good is that if you can't listen to your music the way you normally would. I will admit that I listen to a ton of pop-music, R&B, Beyonce, Whitney Houston, and Hip-Hop. If you enjoy music at somewhat loud volumes or music with some bass in it, THIS IS NOT YOUR SPEAKER!!! The company is fairly new and hopefully they're better able to figure out the issue of having quality bass in their compact speakers, but for now, I'd recommend you save a few more dollars and go with more reputable audio brands such as Sony and Bose.

Riva managed to pack some great sound quality into this little Arena speaker. The Riva app for controlling the device is sad and not worth using. My big complaint is the Bluetooth (or lack thereof.) I actually had returned a set of Sonos speakers in preference for the Arena due to the fact that Riva advertises Bluetooth connectivity for this speaker. I tried a total of 4 different devices, and not a single one would stay connected for more than a few minutes. Riva's website claims this is an issue with my phone or tablet attempting to connect to another Bluetooth device, but I was sure to delete connections to all other Bluetooth devices, and the problem persists. If you are being swayed toward this speaker based on the Bluetooth capability alone, think again.

Easy to setup with Airplay. Great surround sound. Portable. The supplied power cord will need replacement for Australia.