Yes, you can use your portable Bluetooth speaker to play music around the house. However, if you want to enjoy the best sound quality, it’s best to go with a Wi-Fi wireless speaker. Unconstrained by the limitations of Bluetooth, these wireless speakers allow for better sound quality, since they can stream uncompressed music and other higher quality formats using the same wireless connections that TV streaming devices use, all while being able to easily pick up a wireless signal from anywhere in your home (at least, if you set up your routers or mesh network right). Plus, these Wi-Fi wireless speakers also have Bluetooth for those times you want to stream something directly from your phone.
Sure, most of these Wi-Fi wireless speakers tend to be limited by their need to be plugged in to a wall outlet. However, they more than make up for it with their bigger drivers, which produce fuller, richer sound optimized for filling the room with music, all while coming with more features you’ll be hard-pressed to find in many portable options.
Most Wi-Fi wireless speakers tend to be bigger than your portable speakers, allowing them to fit not just larger drivers, but better amps, improved components, and more IO options. The lack of need to protect against the hazards of the outdoors also means they’re able to focus more on giving them pleasing aesthetics that complement most home interiors.
Aside from those, many modern Wi-Fi wireless speakers also come with additional features that can be very useful at home. Some have built-in smart assistants that enable voice control among other capabilities, including being able to control your smart home devices by issuing voice commands to the speaker. Others have multi-room streaming capabilities, allowing them to synchronize the music they’re playing throughout different speakers around the house. Other features like spatial audio support, app control, and AirPlay support could also matter, depending on the users, so make sure to take all of those into account when choosing a Wi-Fi wireless speaker.
These are the best Wi-Fi wireless speakers for use around the house.
Edifier MS50A
Pros
- Warm, bass-heavy sound profile
- Spotify and Tidal integration
- Bookshelf speaker design
Cons
- No microphone
- No in-app EQ option
Size: 6 x 6 x 8 inches (width x depth x height)
Connectivity: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth
Power: Home outlet
Features: Stereo pairing, multi-room streaming (via Alexa), Spotify, Tidal, AirPlay 2
Not a fan of Wi-Fi wireless speakers with microphones due to privacy concerns? You might like this affordably-priced option, which ditches the microphone entirely. Instead, they used all that interior space to fit in a four-inch woofer, a one-inch tweeter, and an updated digital signal processor (DSP) to deliver rich and vibrant sound, with a very warm tone, punchy low-end, and excellent clarity at high frequencies. It requires downloading an app to connect to your home network, which is fine, although the lack of EQ options feel like a big miss. If you want stereo sound, you can pair two of the speakers together over Wi-Fi, with the pair looking like more traditional bookshelf speakers.
The speaker has both Spotify and Tidal connect onboard, so you can use those services with no need for any other device, while capacitive controls on top allow playback controls on the spot, although you can also control it from your phone if you don’t want to get up from the couch. In case you decide later you want a voice assistant with your speaker, by the way, you can pair it with a cheap Echo speaker (they recommend the Dot) to get Alexa onboard.
Sonos Era 100
Pros
- Open, spacious sound with clear detail
- Plenty of streaming features
- Easy to use app
Cons
- Sonos voice control has limited compatibility
Size: 4.7 x 5.1 x 7.2 inches (width x depth x height)
Connectivity: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth
Power: Home outlet
Features: Stereo pairing, multi-room streaming, voice control (Sonos, Alexa), Trueplay tuning, AirPlay 2
This WI-Fi-based wireless speaker arguably offers the best balance of features and price, coming in with excellent sound, a reasonable price point, and a healthy selection of features. It takes on a familiar conventional shape, which is, admittedly, a tad less exciting than many modern speakers, although we do love the more open, spacious sound that brings of plenty of detail and precision. While it doesn’t have the power to handle the biggest rooms, it should produce enough room-filling sound for most spaces.
Sonos speakers really standout, though, once you start playing around with the app, which provides access to its plethora of features. From the over 130 steaming services available and the
ability to search music across all your subscribed services to the assisted setup and speaker zoning to a whole lot more, Sonos simply offers the most complete features package as far as modern speakers are concerned. It also support voice control both via Alexa and Sonos’ own system, athough the latter only works with select streaming services for now.
Apple HomePod 2
Pros
- Lively and energetic sound
- Excellent spatial audio via Dolby Atmos
- Impressive ability to adjust sound on the fly based on various factors
Cons
- Not ideal for non-Apple users
Size: 5.5 x 5.5 x 6.7 inches (width x depth x height)
Connectivity: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth
Power: Home outlet
Features: Stereo pairing, multi-room streaming, Dolby Atmos spatial audio, Siri voice control, AirPlay 2
If you’re an Apple user, it always makes sense to stay within the ecosystem, making this Wi-Fi wireless speaker a really good fit. It’s equipped with an unusual driver configuration that puts the woofer on top and the tweeters at the bottom, along with a number of sensors that detect the sound it produces in real time. These sensors pass that data to the S7 chip, which uses AI to adjust driver performance on the fly based on the speaker’s desired tuning to ensure consistent sound. It’s a very tech-heavy approach to audio delivery, just like we would expect from a tech company that makes their own speakers.
We love how responsive Siri is on this speaker, as it can pick up voice commands from across the room even while playing music at high volumes, although it still can’t play some popular services, including Tidal and Amazon Music, requiring you to use AirPlay for those instead. It also supports spatial audio via Apple Music and Apple TV 4K (if you want to use it for your big screen TV sound). We also appreciate its deep smart home integration, complete with support for the Matter platform, allowing you to control a lot of devices directly from the speaker.
Bose Home Speaker 500
Pros
- Superior sound with excellent clarity and detail
- Loud enough for parties
- Generous connection options
- LCD display out front shows album art
Cons
- Not as feature-packed as other options
Size: 6.7 x 4.3 x 8 inches (width x depth x height)
Connectivity: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth
Power: Home outlet
Features: Multi-room streaming, voice control (Alexa, Google Assistant), Spotify, AirPlay 2
Many Bose speakers we’ve tried deliver a bass-heavy sound profile and they sound amazing that way. This Wi-Fi wireless speaker departs from that tuning, delivering a soundstage that seems focused on clarity and detail, albeit with still enough bass to capably anchor the room-filling sound it produces. Suffice to say, this is an amazing-sound speaker with plenty of volume to fill out even larger spaces.
We love the addition of a small LCD display out front, which shows album art when playing tracks, adding a nice touch to the listening experience. It has built-in Alexa and Google Assistant for voice control with full functionality, allowing you to control more than music playback using voice commands, complete with a responsive mic array that’s able to pick up voice in all directions. There’s also multi-room streaming support, although it’s limited to various compatible speakers, instead of the wide selection of Bose speakers already out there.
Sonos Era 300
Pros
- Massive powerful sound
- Spatial audio support via Apple Music and Amazon Music
- Feature-packed
Cons
Size: 10.2 x 6.3 x 7.3 inches (width x depth x height)
Connectivity: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth
Power: Home outlet
Features: Stereo pairing, multi-room streaming, voice control (Sonos, Alexa), spatial audio with Dolby Atmos, Trueplay tuning, AirPlay 2
With a rated output of 300W, this Wi-Fi wireless speaker offers serious power, allowing it to produce sound that feels downright immense coming from such a relatively small enclosure. It’s a real booming sound that projects immensely across the room. More impressively, everything sounds cohesive and fluidly detailed even with the volume cranked up, complete with some meaty grunt on the low end. If you have a bigger room that you want to fill with sound, this is definitely the way to go.
It has all the same features as the Era 100 above, so we won’t go over them again. The big addition here, though, is spatial audio via Dolby Atmos. Unlike the Homepod 2, though, which only works with Apple Music, it can handle that 3D sound from both Apple and Amazon Music, making it an even better choice if you’re a fan of listening to those lifelike directional sounds.
Era 300
- – Featuring six optimally positioned drivers all around the front, sides, and top to support Dolby…
KEF LSX II LT
Pros
- Big, layered, and expressive sound
- Stereo sound out of the box
- Generous wired connectivity options
Cons
- Best suited for smaller rooms
Size: 6.1 x 7.1 x 9.4 inches (width x depth x height)
Connectivity: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth
Power: Home outlet
Features: Spotify, Tidal, Amazon Music, Qobuz, Deezer, Roon Ready, AirPlay 2, Google Chromecast
If you prefer a stereo setup out of the box and don’t mind splurging, this pair of wireless speakers definitely should be a prime consideration. They look like classic bookshelf speakers, so they bring that warm, old-school feel, although the overall aesthetic may or may not be your cup of tea. Sound is big, layered, and expressive, with an impressively refined yet warm feel that strikes a really impressive balance of sensations. Suffice to say, it’s our favorite-sounding speaker out of everything in the list.
We love the plethora of wired connections on offer, making it easy to integrate with any existing sound system, all while offering built-in support for a wide variety of music services. Heck, it’s even Roon Ready, making it an attractive pick for people who use the music management platform. It has an Ethernet port for directly connecting to your router, which is required if you want native playback for 24-bit/96kHz digital music files, while also supporting DSD256 and MQA decoding. Overall, this brings a lot more features that will appeal to audiophiles compared to others in the list, which, we guess, does explain the much higher pricing.
