Yamaha Musiccast WX-010

Poor Bluetooth lets this speaker down

A few years ago, Sonos, the big name in multi-room audio, cut the price of its cheapest speaker to under £200, and since then we’ve seen a growing number of competitors. At first glance, Yamaha’s model may be the most similar to the Sonos Play:1 – it’s almost the same size and shape, but its fabric cover feels a bit less synthetic and its glossy touch-sensitive top panel is arguably more elegant. Like the Play:1, it comes in black or white, and crucially it’s about £80 cheaper.

It’s hard to match Sonos’ sound quality, but we found the WX-010 sounded surprisingly good. A 2.5cm tweeter and a 9cm woofer are packed inside, along with two passive radiatorss to boost the bass, and what came out was rich and punchy, although thehe top end didn’t really sparkle.arkle. Yamaha’s Musiccast Controller app provides a three--band equaliser, so you can tailor the output to your personal taste. You can also send audio from any app to the WX-010 via Bluetooth. The enhanced aptx protocol isn’t supported, but, surprisingly at this price, Airplay is, so Apple users get a higher-quality and more stable connection.

That’s just as well, because we found Bluetooth pretty unreliable, giving regular dropouts. The app was also problematic, refusing to play WMA files from our Android phone even though it claims to handle the format (among others). The app also halhalted or ignored the volume control. This was too annoannoying to ignore, which is a shame, because the WX-101 is otherwise great value.

VERDICT: Less-than-robust software and poor Bluetooth connectivity detract from a reasonably priced multi-room speaker with Airplay

★★★☆☆

ALTERNATIVE: Philips Izzy BM5 £99 It doesn’t have Airplay, butut this Bluetooth speaker works with Philips’ multi-room system and sounds fairly decent