Best Wireless WiFi Speaker of 2024
Whether you’re hosting indoors or outdoors this summer, you’re going to need a wireless speaker. Today’s Bluetooth speakers are not only portable with great sound quality, but they also let you play music from virtually any music streaming service, including Spotify, Apple Music, Pandora, and more. We’ve found the best wireless WiFi speakers to pump up the party and fill your space with high-quality sound.
To help you find the perfect fit for your home audio setup, we’ve put together this list of the best wireless speakers for streaming music anytime, anywhere. We tested all of these speakers in the CNET Labs to gather first-hand insights and identify the speakers that are actually worth your money.
Read more: Best Bluetooth Speakers of 2024
For $249, the Sonos Era 100 the smart speaker to please every music lover. The compact device features a number of improvements over the award-winning One, including stereo playback and even better sound quality. With Bluetooth, Amazon Alexa and Apple AirPlay 2 compatibility, the Era 100 is a more flexible streaming speaker than ever before.
For $120, there are a number of excellent smart speakers to choose from, including the Amazon Echo, Nest Audio, and HomePod Mini, but the Symfonisk is larger than all of them. Bigger cabinets usually mean bigger sound. While this speaker is best used as part of a Sonos surround sound system, it also makes a great speaker for a kid’s bedroom or garage.
Check this out: Sonos Era 100 and Era 300 are here: check out the next generation of wireless streaming speakers
The Echo Studio comes from Amazon, the maker of Alexa. It’s easy to set up and loud enough to fill a room. With thumping bass, clear sound, and good highs, it’s easily the best Amazon Echo. You can use Alexa to stream songs from Amazon Music, Apple Music, Spotify, Pandora, Tidal, and more.
The HomePod Mini may be better than the new HomePod in terms of power output, but it’s also a third of the price. For its size, the HomePod Mini has a laundry list of useful features — Siri voice assistant, temperature and humidity controls — and it sounds pretty good, too. If you’re deep in the Apple ecosystem, especially if you use Siri a lot, the Apple HomePod Mini should be a seamless addition to your home.
The Sonos Roam is a portable Bluetooth speaker on steroids — it can be used outdoors or as part of a Sonos multi-room system. It’s affordable (for Sonos, that is), and sounds better than other products of its kind. It also comes with a choice of voice assistants to make choosing a song even easier.
Not really a speaker, but a great option for people who don’t want to buy a whole new one. Let’s say you have a home stereo system — or even an old Bluetooth speaker like the Fluance F170 — and you want to add Wi-Fi streaming to it. The WiiM Pro has the best sound and streaming support of any dongle I can think of — and it’s only $149. The app makes it easy to set up and use, and it integrates with many multi-room systems.
Google may offer a lot of speakers, including the Nest Audio , but the one that was truly great with music — the Home Max — has been discontinued. It’s surprising, then, that the list of affordable yet great-sounding Chromecast-built-in speakers can be counted on one hand. And of those speakers, the JBL Playlist is the best one I’ve tested, with a generously sized speaker and enough volume to fill a medium-sized room. It also has Bluetooth and an auxiliary input for added versatility. It may not be “smart,” but if you want a system that can be controlled via an existing Google Assistant speaker, this is the one to get.
- JBL Link portable (Out of stock): The Link Portable is a bigger competitor to the Sonos, being both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth compatible, and capable of playing louder and with heavier bass. In his review of the Sonos Roam, reviewer David Carnoy says he prefers the sound and build quality of the Sonos and would buy it over the JBL
- Bose Home Speaker 300 (Out of stock): If you’re looking for a responsive smart speaker, the Bose Home Speaker 300 is both quick to use and beautiful to look at. However, it can’t quite match its competitor, the less expensive Sonos One, in terms of audio quality. Additionally, the built-in Bose Music multi-room system isn’t compatible with existing SoundTouch products. The 300 appears to be discontinued, but you can still find it in new condition at select retailers. There are also plenty of refurbished models available for even less. Read CNET’s review of the Bose Home Speaker 300.
The new HomePod now features an edge-to-edge Siri display
- Apple HomePod (2023) ($300): The new HomePod is a refined version of Apple’s first smart speaker, with better sound and more features. Despite the new support for Dolby Atmos, it’s the temperature and humidity sensors that are the most noticeable changes. Still, for $300, most people will be better off with the HomePod mini, which has a nearly identical feature set. Read CNET’s review of the Apple HomePod (2023)
- Bowers and Wilkins Formation Flex ($425): The Flex is a smaller sibling to the flashier Formation Wedge, but it’s still quite stylish and has an outspoken sonic signature. There’s plenty of competition at this level, though, including the Sonos Five , which is capable of a much bigger, party-ready feat. Read CNET’s first look at the Formation series.
The Sonos Move
- Sonos Moving ($399): If you want a wireless speaker that’s (sort of) portable and waterproof, the Sonos Move offers great sound in a very large box. If you need to power a tailgate or large party, this would be great, but for most people the Sonos Roam is both less expensive and more affordable. Read CNET’s review of the Sonos Move.
- Sony SRS-RA5000 ($798): Where are people supposed to put big speakers like the Sony SRS-RA5000 and the McIntosh RS150? A dressing table, say, a really big one? The Sony is over a foot tall, but its 360-degree view makes it even more unwieldy, making it best placed in the center of the room. Its sound is fine, but if you want 3D spatial audio, the Amazon Echo Studio is a quarter of the price. Read CNET’s initial review of the Sony SRS-RA5000.
- McIntosh RS150 ($1,200): The massive McIntosh RS150 has a few great things going for it, namely Chromecast built-in, Roon Ready and Spotify Connect. However, the sound wasn’t as clear as I expected and there are no EQ controls to compensate. Furthermore, this update misses a trick by replacing it with LEDs, while the previous RS100 had the legendary McIntosh blue meter. The competing Naim Mu-so Qb is more compact and offers excellent performance for the same price.
CNET follows a rigorous, unbiased evaluation process for all of our audio tests. We test Wi-Fi speakers from basic bedside speakers to high-end systems. Our audio lab includes a Roon server runs on Synology NAS, Google Nest, and Amazon Echo speakers, plus both iOS and Android devices. Similar speakers are compared side-by-side in a living room environment with different music styles, using multiple streaming platforms as needed. We rank the sound quality of each, evaluating clarity, dynamics, bass response, and stereo imaging (if applicable). If the speaker comes with its own app, we compare it to other competing controllers.
Frequently Asked Questions About WiFi Speakers
Both can be described as wireless speaker systems. Wi-Fi offers the same basic convenience as Bluetooth: use your phone’s Wi-Fi connection to play music through an external speaker or sound system. Like speakers that use Bluetooth connectivity, it can work with a subscription music service app like Spotify (via Spotify Connect) or Apple Music, a radio service like Pandora or TuneIn, or your own music collection. Here are the best reasons to buy a streaming Wi-Fi speaker:
- A Wi-Fi speaker sounds better than a Bluetooth speaker because of its higher bandwidth.
- Wi-Fi has better range.
- Thanks to Wi-Fi, your phone’s audio channel is not taken over. So you can have a phone conversation without the music being interrupted, for example.
- It also works great for multi-room audio, allowing you to play audio from multiple speakers throughout your home over your Wi-Fi network, all controlled from a single app on your phone.
With Multiroom, users can play from one or more speakers around the house at the same time, with most systems supporting up to a dozen or more different zones. For example, if you want to play a song in “house party mode,” where it blasts from multiple speakers around the house simultaneously, all of those speakers must be sharing the same ecosystem. For Sonos and other proprietary systems, all of those speakers must be Sonos (or connected to a Sonos device). For Chromecast, all speakers, regardless of brand, must be Chromecast-compatible. And so on.
Most speakers come with a dedicated companion app for iOS and Android that’s used for both setting up and controlling your system. It goes without saying that you’ll need an internet connection to use a Wi-Fi speaker, and most speakers support at least 2.4GHz or even 5GHz connections. Check your documentation for the name of the app you need, and make sure you have your Wi-Fi password handy, too. Most apps have a simple step-by-step process, so you should be up and listening to music in just a few minutes.
