AirPlay your music, no network
required
It's great being able to listen to music
wherever you go, but it's even better when you can ditch your headphones and
play your music loud and proud using a portable AirPlay speaker.
The AQ SmartSpeaker Portable is roughly
cylindrical, with a tapering top that houses the power, Wi-Fi, and volume
controls. At the back is an auxiliary input, plus a USB port to set up the
speaker to use your Wi-Fi network. Not that you have to: Thanks to
SmartSpeaker’s useful AO
It's
great being able to listen to music wherever you go, but it's even better when
you can ditch your headphones and play your music loud and proud using a
portable AirPlay speaker
Direct feature, you can connect your
AirPlay device directly to the speaker on an ad-hoc basis, with no network
needed. Unlike most AirPlay speakers, which have to be on the same network as
your Mac or iOS device, you can stream music through AirPlay directly to the
SmartSpeaker. So if you want to listen to music on the beach or in your
backyard, way out of range of your router, you can.
AQ
smartspeaker portable
You can also combine multiple SmartSpeakers
to create a multi-room audio system, or pair two so they act as the left and
right speaker in a stereo setup. Sadly, iOS can only stream to one AirPlay
speaker at a time, so you need to use iTunes to take advantage of these
features.
AirPlay setup was troublesome when using an
iPhone 5. It should be as simple as connecting your iOS device to the speaker
using its USB cable and pressing a button, but try as we might, we couldn’t get
it to work using an iPhone 5 and Apple's stock USB-to*Lightning cable. It
worked perfectly using an iPhone 4 with the old 30-pin cable, and you can also
set up using the AO Connect app or a web browser.
It's
clever, but perhaps not clever enough. Its sound is solid but somewhat
uninspiring, and we wish iOS didn't limit us to one AirPlay speaker at a time
When it comes to sound quality, the AO
Audio SmartSpeaker is a mixed bag. It delivers enough sound to fill a
medium-sized room, and most kinds of music sound decent. The lack of deep bass
oomph and a rather watery treble keep it from reaching the heights a proper
hi-fi speaker would, but it doesn't deliver any nasty surprises, either.
"Pleasant" is probably the best description.
The bottom line. It's clever, but perhaps
not clever enough. Its sound is solid but somewhat uninspiring, and we wish iOS
didn't limit us to one AirPlay speaker at a time.
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AQ
smartspeaker portable Specs
·
Website: www.aqaudio.com
·
Price: $199 each
·
Requirements: iTunes 10.1 or later; works with
iPhone 3GS and later. iPod touch second-gen and later, and iPad running iOS
42 or later. (Android devices and Windows supported, too.)
·
(+) AirPlay without a network. Multi room
capabilities. Battery or AC-powered.
·
(-) Lacks bass.
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