Home 150
The Home 150 is the smallest of the three wireless speakers, but still a solid and substantial object, with a 12cm-square footprint and 19cm height. The same sturdy fabric wrap covers three sides to meet at the back, where there’s a screw-threaded mounting hole should you wish to hang the 150 on a wall, and below that the indented connections panel offering a minijack auxiliary input, a USB-A slot and Ethernet networking. There are two buttons down there, one to launch Bluetooth pairing, and the other a ‘Connect’ button to connect the Home 150 with your HEOS app.
The reflective top surface illuminates as you approach to show more controls: three ‘input selection’ touch buttons, play/pause and volume control. Again, simple and intuitive.
It instantly impresses with scale and weight beyond the expectations of its size. It’s a mono speaker, boasting a single 25mm tweeter and an 89mm woofer, but it leverages these for a remarkably rich sound, even out in free space on a sturdy stand or table. It was unexpectedly powerful as it kicked out an isolation-broadcast version of Crowded House’s Locked Out performed by Finn and family, drums to the fore with a solid kick-drum, the bass guitar forward and full and extended, plenty of drive and energy in the midrange to push forward guitars. Yet it was equally impressive rendering the more delicate acoustic version of Message to my Girl which followed. Aside from a slight sibilance to vocal consonants, this sounds like the presentation from a speaker substantially larger, and it has an excitement, a punchy presentation akin to a mix which has been energised through a favourable dynamic limiter. Ultimately its size and power have their limits at a point beyond which congestion and distortion become evident, but that point is impressively loud for a speaker so small. As for linearity, while its response to a sweep is less than smooth, with a notable push right down low then a dip from 60 to 100Hz, the balance is enjoyable in practice, spoken voices are tonally accurate, and there’s even a good sense of atmosphere around the different elements, an especially impressive achievement when working in mono. Positioning near a wall or a corner can enlarge the sound still more, at the cost of less predictable frequency response.
Some other multiroom systems offer useful battery operation for their smallest offering, making them a go-anywhere solution (though limited to Bluetooth or wired connections when away from the home network) — but that option is not available here. However, as with all the Home range, the Denon 150 can be paired with another 150 to play in stereo; we did not have a second with which to try this, but we know the effect from many other systems is invariably still more impressive. And as with other multiroom systems, a pair of Denon Home 150s can be paired with a soundbar and subwoofer — here the $1699 DHT-S716H soundbar and $1099 DSW-1H subwoofer — to create a 5.1-channel surround sound set-up.