Jam Rhythm

An affordable Wi-fi speaker

Among decent wireless speakers under £200, most are based on Bluetooth and increasing numbers offer multi-room operation (whereby sound from a single source plays to several speakers) – all controlled from your phone or tablet. The Rhythm is at the lower end of the price range, but it also does multi-room, albeit with a smaller range of input options than many rivals. You can use Spotify Connect to stream music from the internet, for example, but you can’t use Google Cast to play from your Android device or PC.

Surprisingly, though, it’s based on Wi-fi rather than Bluetooth, which means it supports Apple Airplay. If you have an iphone, ipad or Mac, that gives you theoretically better sound quality.

For PCS and other devices Airplay is just a slightly more reliable form of wireless, but we found it a bit fiddly to set up, partly because it only works on the 2.4GHZ waveband, so if your router is dual band, you need to pick the 2.4GHZ option.

With that sorted, the Rhythm is easy to use. There’s a standard audio jack input too, for non-digital sources, and from the app the speaker also works as a one-way intercom. The 3.5in woofer and twin 2in speaker drivers put out rich, well-balanced sound, but we found bass fell off rather clumsily, and turning up the volume produced some harshness and distortion.

At the moment, when you buy the bigger Symphony speaker (£130 from Jam www. snipca.com/22543), you get a Rhythm for free. That’s a bargain.