Whether you’re looking for a rugged, take-anywhere speaker for the beach or a multi-room sound system, here are some of the best Bluetooth and Wi-Fi speakers you can buy (along with advice on picking the right one).
Wireless speakers are everywhere these days. Big, small, portable, expensive, cheap, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi…the sheer amount of choice can seem overwhelming. But our top picks are sure to have at least one speaker that’s right for you. Before anything else, though, you need to decide how you want to go wireless. Bluetooth vs. Wi-Fi Speakers Bluetooth is the most common wireless music streaming standard, but it isn’t the only one. Bluetooth is a point-to-point wireless system, pairing a transmitter (your phone or computer) with a receiver (your speaker) to play music. It’s very direct and easy to set up, and can stream pretty high-quality music thanks to technological advancements that have greatly improved audio fidelity over what it was a few years ago. Bluetooth generally doesn’t have any multi-room tricks in itself, though some speakers can set up stereo pairs with the help of an app, while others can create a wireless mesh among multiple speakers for multi-room audio. It isn’t quite as high-fidelity or as powerful as Wi-Fi multi-room audio, however. Wi-Fi audio includes standards like Apple AirPlay and Chromecast, along with various manufacturers’ own Wi-Fi streaming platforms. Wi-Fi can handle more bandwidth than Bluetooth, so it can support higher-fidelity audio. It can also integrate into your home network, so you can easily play audio from any device connected to your Wi-Fi without pairing anything. The trade-off is that Wi-Fi music systems require a Wi-Fi network to connect to, so they can’t be used portably with your smartphone like Bluetooth speakers (though many offer Bluetooth pairing as a backup). The different Wi-Fi standards also mean various services might or might not be available to stream over the device, though this is less of a problem than it has been in the past thanks to Chromecast and Sonos’ lengthy lists of supported third-party services. It’s worth noting that the new Sonos Move supports Wi-Fi and Bluetooth streaming, so compatibility isn’t an issue at all. Most new speakers available feature some kind of wireless support, whether they’re clip-on bike speakers or big soundbars. With some exceptions, any speaker you pick up at an electronics store will be able to stream audio either over Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. Your speaker might even be able to handle both wireless methods. Check if your Wi-Fi speaker has a Bluetooth mode for using it on the go. Do You Want Multi-Room Audio? If you want sound throughout your home, you’re going to need more than one speaker. Instead of juggling Bluetooth pairing with each one or physically carrying a speaker from room to room, a multi-room sound system is the way to go. Fortunately, multi-room audio is more common and easier to use than ever. Multi-room audio is exactly what it sounds like: playing audio in multiple rooms. It means a system can manage multiple speakers at once, playing from one or more sound sources to one or more speakers at a given time. Sonos speakers like the Sonos One (along with Ikea Symfonisk speakers made in collaboration with Sonos) tap into the Sonos app to let you access any or all speakers connected to your home network and play music from dozens of different streaming sources, or local storage. See How We Test Speakers See How We Test Speakers Apple’s AirPlay platform is the iOS- and OSX-friendly multi-room sound solution. There aren’t any first-party AirPlay speakers besides the Apple HomePod, but many other Wi-Fi speakers, including Sonos products, support AirPlay.
