Best Wireless Speakers

A wireless speaker, whether on its own or as part of your home music setup, is a wonderful way to play your music loudly and proudly. You can play music from a mobile device, a set-top box like an Apple TV or Amazon Fire TV, or using the speaker's own internal system. 

Many wireless speakers now respond to voice commands using digital assistants, such as Alexa, which powers the voice commands in our top pick, the Sonos One.

The Sonos One is the best all-around wireless speaker for most people. It has an excellent sound quality for its price, and pairs seamlessly with other speakers in the Sonos ecosystem to play music all around your home without expensive wireless installations.

And thanks to the introduction of AirPlay 2 support on Sonos One, these multi-room, multi-speaker capabilities are no longer restricted to other Sonos products. With AirPlay 2, your Sonos One can share music playback with other AirPlay 2 speakers from different manufacturers.

Voice control is becoming increasingly popular, and the Sonos One features support for Amazon's Alexa assistant, as well and Google Assistant. And thanks to recent updates for Alexa, you can now play Apple Music natively using Alexa on your Sonos One if you're a subscriber.

The Libratone Zipp Mini is a wireless speaker with support for both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, giving you multiple options for audio playback. This round speaker gives off 360-degree sound and can fill a room fairly well despite its small size. The colorful cloth cover is replaceable and comes off with a quick unzipping towards the bottom of the speaker.

You get a lot for the price of the Zipp Mini. Not only does it sound great, but it also supports AirPlay 2 for multi-room playback with supported devices, as well as Bluetooth, if you don't have an Apple device for playback. It integrates services like Tidal and Spotify, allowing you to start playing them with just a tap.

The Libratone Zipp Mini is also portable. Unplug it, and you've got a wireless speaker with about 10 hours of battery life. Its portability and support for AirPlay 2 make it an excellent outdoor speaker for parties, letting you beam your chosen music both in and out of your home with ease.

The Sonos Beam is a simple-to-use soundbar that integrates perfectly into the Sonos ecosystem. It pairs well with a couple of Sonos Ones for a wireless surround sound system or works perfectly on its own to provide much better sound than your TV's speakers ever could alone.

When you're not using the Beam for TV and movie watching, it also serves as a wonderful addition to your wireless music setup. Being a Sonos speaker, the Beam features full multi-room support through the Sonos system, just like a Sonos One or Play:5. It also features AirPlay 2 integration, letting you connect it to your Apple devices wirelessly. It pairs great with two HomePods set up in a stereo pair, for instance.

The Sonos Beam is part of the newer generation of Sonos products, and thus, Alexa support comes standard. This way, you can not only control music playback with your voice, but you can also control your TV that way. You can turn your TV's volume up and down, and you can turn your set on and off with simple Alexa voice commands.

The Libratone Zipp 2 features everything good about the Zipp Mini, just more of it. It has excellent 360-degree sound, but with a fuller, richer soundscape. It's still portable, but features a 12-hour battery life, up from the previous generation's 10 hours. And it supports both Bluetooth and AirPlay 2 for wireless music streaming at home or on the go.

One of the big changes with the latest generation of Zipp speakers is built-in support for Amazon's Alexa digital assistant. This gives you the ability to play music using voice commands and generally improves the overall usability of the speaker.

Like the Zipp Mini, the Zipp 2 offers multi-room music support, both through Libratone's proprietary system, which lets you connect up to 10 Zipp speakers and through AirPlay 2. Bluetooth is also a great option, especially if you want to take the Zipp 2 with you somewhere, such as on a picnic or just for playing music out in your back yard.

At 6.6 pounds (about 3kg), the Move is one hefty portable speaker. It makes sense though, with two Class-D amplifiers, a dedicated tweeter, and a sizeable woofer that pulls double duty generating bass and mid-range sounds, there is a lot of firepower in there to increase the weight.

It also has a powerful battery that should last you 10 hours on a single charge, and the Move does come with a beautiful dock to keep you powered when indoors. When you take it outside you can be secure in the knowledge that Sonos Move is full IP rated to withstand dust and water with no problem. So if your kids decide to have a water fight, or you forget to bring it in from the rain, the Sonos move will take it all in its stride.

It's also incredibly tough, surviving multiple drops onto concrete when we tried it out. This is important in a portable speaker as accidents happen and if I'm going to spend a lot of money I need to know it won't break in a moment's notice.

Music wherever you are

Wireless speaker systems are perfect for playing music throughout your home while avoiding expensive wiring setups. For some speakers, it also means that you can take them wherever you go, or play music from any device.

The Sonos One is the current king of the hill for wireless speakers, simply because it's the best option for most people. It delivers wonderful sound, integrates with a ton of services out of the box, features built-in Alexa support, and can be used with an AirPlay 2 system. And it does this all at a great price.

I'm also partial to the Libratone Zipp 2 as well. It's so easy to move around the house and has battery power to last as long as I need it. The sound on it is excellent as well so it doesn't matter if I'm rocking out or listening to podcasts the sound is excellent.