Wireless audio for the home is nothing new, but the past few years have brought a proliferation of speakers that use Wi-Fi streaming as an alternative to Bluetooth. The ability to control music in a multiroom environment is one of Wi-Fi’s biggest selling features, but almost all Wi-Fi speakers also offer voice control via a voice assistant including Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant and Apple’s Siri.
It’s a challenge to find a budget speaker that doesn’t have microphones onboard, but they all come with mic switches or you can opt for a “dumb” speaker like the Sonos One SL, if you have privacy concerns. Keep reading for our breakdown of the best Wi-Fi speakers for your needs.
Top pick under $600: Sonos Five
The Sonos Five is a wired mid-size speaker that you can use horizontally or vertically. With its Trueplay room correction feature turned on, it has a bright sound profile that brings sparkle and detail to vocals and instruments. It also offers quite an extended low-bass, so you can feel the thump and punch in bass-heavy audio. While it doesn’t have a more comprehensive EQ to help tweak its sound, its companion app offers bass and treble sliders. That said, it only supports Wi-Fi and Apple AirPlay, so you can’t connect to it via Bluetooth. It also has a lot of compression at max volume and doesn’t offer voice assistant support on its own. However, it’s a suitable choice for users looking to incorporate a sleek-looking speaker into their Apple ecosystem.
Top pick under $200: Sonos One
The Sonos One SL is the microphone-free variant of the Sonos One Gen 2. While it doesn’t support voice assistants, it retains the audio-centric features of the Gen 2 like Trueplay tuning, which adjusts the speaker’s audio reproduction to better-suit the room it’s in. It also has bass and treble sliders so you can customize its sound, and you can even add it to your existing Sonos-compatible soundbar setup as satellite speakers. Unfortunately, it doesn’t get very loud, and there are compression artifacts at max volume. It also doesn’t support Bluetooth.
On a budget: Google Nest Audio
The Google Nest Audio is a speaker with built-in Google Assistant capabilities. It’s voice-activated, and it can understand you even if you aren’t very close to the speaker. You can also mute the microphone when you don’t want the speaker listening to you, which is nice. However, it doesn’t get very loud, and it’s lacking low-bass. Fortunately, there are bass and treble adjustment features available in the fantastic Google Home app.
Best portable speaker: Harman Kardon Citation 200
Smart speakers are becoming a fixture in the modern home – but models like the Harman Kardon Citation 200 demonstrate that these hardworking devices have their place in the garden and on the move, too.
Now there’s one caveat with the Citation 200 – the onboard Google Assistant only works when you’re connected to the Wi-Fi, so you can forget any dreams you had of using it to turn on your smart thermostat at the park before you get home.
Once home though, you have all the functionality of a Google Assistant speaker – and that means you can ask it questions, give it commands, and control your other smart home devices.
By the pool: JBL Xtreme 3
JBL’s penchant for outdoorsy wireless speakers like the Xtreme 3 has produced some cleverly designed, competitively priced and impressive sounding products over the years. Multiple generations of Flip and Charge models have received positive reviews, while the previous generation Xtreme secured five stars when we tested it way back in 2019. But what about this new iteration, the Xtreme 3?
As the name hints, the JBL Xtreme 3 is a wireless speaker built to deal with a range of listening scenarios, whether it’s powering a pool party or a get-together at the local park, or providing the background music to a lazy Sunday afternoon at home. But, as you’re about to find out, there’s a lot more to this speaker than just a sturdy exterior.
Partying under $200: Amazon Echo Studio
Now that the latest $99.99 Amazon Echo is just as powerful as the $149.99 hub-equipped Echo Plus, the door is open for a bigger, louder Echo. The Echo Studio is Amazon’s biggest, loudest, and most advanced Alexa speaker. It features five drivers to offer not just stereo sound, but Dolby Atmos-compatible surround sound in a single, voice-controlled package. It’s as big and as loud as the Apple HomePod and Google Home Max, with more advanced sound processing and better imaging, but at $199.99, it’s far less expensive than either. It’s truly impressive for its size and price.
For friendly gatherings: Bose Home Speaker 500
In the early days of the smart speaker revolution, finding a speaker that was both smart and had great sound was a challenge. Thankfully, those days are long gone. With products from Sonos, Marshall, Apple, and Amazon, you can now have your cake and eat it too. But before you settle on a new wireless smart speaker from one of those companies, you should consider the $300 Bose Home Speaker 500.
Affordable 360° sound: Huawei Sound X
With an intriguing mix of sleek design, expansive sound, and a choice of digital assistants, it could be just the smart audio device your home has been missing.
The Huawei Sound X, co-engineered with French Hi-Fi brand Devialet, is an upmarket wireless speaker with genuine audiophile DNA.
It borrows heavily on Devialet audio technologies, like the brand’s low distortion Push-Push woofer design, and SAM (Speaker Active Matching) optimization, both normally found on products costing a magnitude more. It also offers a more prodigious bass performance than similarly specified all-in-one speakers.
Unfortunately, there’s no support for digital voice assistants, and it lacks smart functionality, so you can’t rope it into a wider ecosystem, in the way you might with any number of Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant models.
