Wireless Speakers: Rated & Reviewed

[caption id="attachment_2923" align="alignleft" width="260" caption="Bowers and Wilkins Bowers & Wilkins Zeppelin Air"][/caption]

Wireless speakers are becoming more and more popular with everyday families these days. Sick of dealing with chords? Wish you're entertainment stand looked clean and organized? If you are looking to make an investment in quality wireless speakers, then be sure to take a look at these reviews of some of the top speakers on the market:

1. Bowers & Wilkins Zeppelin Air (AirPlay)

The Zeppelin is everything you'd expect from an Apple-anointed speaker: elegantly minimalist, reasonably powerful, and a tad pricey. In action, though, it's a bit more modest. After we waded through a few minutes of browser-based setup and wireless handshakes, the speaker was filling the apartment with the splashy hi-hats of Buddy Rich. But while the Zeppelin's 24-bit upscaling of AirPlay's 16-bit streams produced the crispest overall sound, it had a habit of dropping off the network every couple of days.

Wired: Clean audio and simple setup. Roomy 30-pin dock.

Tired: Drops connections. Skipping ahead in a song means a party-killing two-second pause.

Speaker: 7 out of 10

Airplay: 7 out of 10

2. Sony SA-NS400 HomeShare Network Speaker (DLNA)

This thumper is the epitome of no-frills pragmatism. Tedious network pairing did it no favors, but it's solid as a wireless streamer. Shooting audio from a Windows 7 machine and Droid X was easy, though laggy startups and rebuffering discouraged DJing. The Sony can't handle WAV files, however. Windows Media Player downscaled our WAVs into compatible formats, but that noticeably stunted the dramatic swells of Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir."

Wired: 3.5-mm input for wired playback. Single-button switching between audio sources.

Tired: Attention-grabbing in its homeliness. Middling mids and sloppy bass from the integrated sub.

Speaker: 5 out of 10

DLNA: 5 out of 10

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