If rumours are to be believed Apple has had a HomePod with a screen in the works for a couple of years now, and at first glance you’d be forgiven for thinking this is it – but the WiiM Sound is more of a Sonos rival than a smart speaker.
With its HomePod-esque chassis and 1.8in touchscreen, the WiiM Sound could certainly pass for a new version of Apple’s original smart speaker, but the only microphone you’ll find is built into the remote (although you can use Alexa or Google Assistant via your phone).
Inside there’s a 4in woofer and a couple of tweeters, with 100W of amplification to push your choice of tunes out of them, and Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.3 and ethernet to pipe them into it in the first place.
If that WiiM logo at the bottom wasn’t enough of a giveaway that this isn’t a new HomePod, perhaps the fact that AirPlay 2 and Apple Music are absent is, so you’ll just have to make do with Spotify Connect, Chromecast, Tidal Connect, DLNA, or Alexa Cast. Support for hi-res files up to 24-bit/192 kHz is also present and correct.
It’ll automatically make sonic adjustments to compensate for the acoustics of the room you put it in, but there’s also an EQ you can fiddle with in the WiiM app if you’re not happy with how it sounds.
Buy two WiiM Sound speakers and you can connect them together to form a stereo pair, plus it’s also possible to use them as part of a 5.1 surround-sound setup. With the price yet to be revealed it’s impossible to say how affordable that will be, although WiiM kit tends to be pretty reasonably priced.
We’ll find out for sure when the WiiM Sound goes on sale in the second half of this year. Could we still see Apple’s own version before then?
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