The Sonos Five will look very familiar to anyone who knows their way around Sonos' 2015 Play:5 Gen. 2, which you can find lower down in this buying guide (or even the 2009 inaugural Sonos Play:5, originally called the S5). Considering the brilliance of Sonos' innovative, long-standing and highly popular multi-room speaker lineup, that's no bad thing. You've also got AirPlay 2 and aptX Adaptive Bluetooth compatibility, so you'll be able to stream high quality music from your iPhone or your Android device. For Spotify users there's Spotify Connect, while the Bowers & Wilkins Music App gives you access to lots more music streaming services, such as Deezer, Tidal, and Qobuz. It also comes with a higher price tag than its predecessor because of the extra premium upgrades that have been made to it. As a result, the Era 100 no longer sits at the mid-tier wireless speaker level but instead has been moved to the more premium end of the spectrum. The Bowers & Wilkins Zeppelin doesn’t quite reach the high mark set by its brand sibling, the B&W Formation Wedge, which has our top score in the premium category at 160. But it’s currently in third, just ahead of the Bang & Olufsen Beosound Balance and the Google Home Max.

Given that it does loads more than either the Bowers & Wilkins or the Naim speakers, Ruark has done well to keep to look of the R5 as clean as it has. Like all Ruark products, it’s first and foremost a lovely bit of cabinetry – tactile wood veneer and flawlessly smooth curves delivering perceived value. At 52cm wide it’s actually less space-hungry than the Naim – but the 30cm depth makes it seem bulkier. Yet despite the disc-loading slot and (crisp) OLED display sitting inside the grey fabric grille, the R5 is just as decorative a proposition as the other products here.

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Speakers: HF 2x 25mm (1”) double dome tweeters; MF 2x 90mm (3 1⁄2”) FST midrange; LF 1x 150mm (6”) subwoofer Following in the footsteps of theSonos Move, the Sonos Roam comes with both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity, which means it can work as aportable speakeras well as part of your wider multi-room Sonos system – and withGoogle Assistantand Alexa onboard, it doubles up as asmart speakertoo. The Zeppelin is compatible with Bluetooth 5.0 and supports the AAC, AptX Adaptive, and SBC codecs. The speaker supports up to 24-bit/96kHz audio from various streaming services including Deezer, Qobuz, Tidal, and others, assuming you pay for a subscription that lets you stream at that quality. The Zeppelin also works with Apple AirPlay 2 and Spotify Connect. Zeppelin App Controls and Smart Features

The fact the woofer fires down onto whatever the R5 is standing on from a distance of no more than 4cm contributes to a slight bloom in the lowest frequencies and makes the handover to the full-range drivers more problematic than is ideal. As a stereo speaker, the Zeppelin successfully delivers a wider, more expansive soundstage than your average single mono unit. However, if you’re expecting the kind of stereo imaging you’d get with a pair of speakers handling left and right channels separately, you’ll need to temper your expectations. Stereo separation, while reasonable, isn’t as tangible as it would be were there two units working in tandem. Solid, square-edged and with ample detail throughout the frequency range, it’s an object lesson in how to make a single enclosure sound full and expansive. Treble sounds are absolutely as crisp as they need to be (the One can be provoked if you’re streaming low-res, toppy files), but in virtually every circumstance the Sonos is impressive. Compared to the first generation of HomePod, there's better clarity around the upper mids, which really benefits classical and acoustic music, and the Dolby Atmos performance is incredible if you have two in a stereo pair. However the second generation HomePods are not as loud as the first gen, and the bass is a bit lighter too. They're still a huge step up from the HomePods mini, though, and the sound quality you get for the money is excellent.The number of Audio Pro speakers able to form part of a multiroom system seems to be increasingly daily - and yet the company has managed to ensure every new model upholds its hard-won reputation as a manufacturer of some of the best pound-for-pound wireless speakers on the market. No matter if it’s from the Addon ‘C’ range (see below), the smaller ‘A’ range or the mighty Drumfire (again, below), it will offer prodigious sound quality for the money. It will be as well made as anything else at a similar price. It will look and feel good. And it will make setting up a multiroom system about as straightforward as it ever can be. Those in search of a big, bassy party speaker will likely find the Zeppelin’s sound a little analytical but there’s no doubting it has the muscle to fulfil the role. Anything over about 50% volume and I felt in danger of being the subject of a noise complaint.

The 2021 Zeppelin gets just about everything right in the sound department and it scores well on the smart front, too. Form Follows FunctionLike all Bowers & Wilkins products, the design of the new Zeppelin is defined by its acoustics. The driver placement creates a beautiful and instantly recognisable design that has been its signature for over 15 years. Five, well-spaced and carefully positioned premium drive units bring your music to life with room-filling stereo sound. This is an expensive and large speaker; it weighs 6.5 kilos and is 65 centimeters long, taking up a good bit of real estate on a cabinet or bookshelf. It’s set up to stream in a variety of ways, including AirPlay 2, Bluetooth aptX, Spotify Connect and its own app, Music B&W. The hardware consists of two double-dome 1-inch tweeters, two 3.5 inch midrange drivers and one 6-inch subwoofer, powered by 240 watts of Class D amplification. Let’s see how it performed under our rigorous Audio tests. The only place I was able to accommodate my review sample without completely rejigging the decor of my flat was on my office desk. This proved a perfect location for testing but wouldn’t be ideal were I wanting to impress guests with a Hi-Res playlist over dinner.If you're Apple Music user, the HomePod 2 is perhaps the best-value speaker out there. It’s cheaper than what you get from the hardcore hi-fi brands (such as theNaim Mu-so Qb 2), but is crammed with luscious detail, crisp treble, and a rich mid-range. And you get the impressively easy setup and control you'd expect from Apple. The Era 100 is the latest offering from the wireless multi-room speaker company and replaces the Sonos One, which we rated as the best wireless speaker option for most people since it came out in 2016. Voice control: Alexa; Google via BT | Hi-res audio: Yes (24bit/192kHz) | Spotify Connect: Yes | Apple AirPlay: Yes | Bluetooth: 5.0 | Chromecast built in: No | Internet radio: Yes | Wi-Fi: Yes This comes down to the fact that it is the first speaker from Sonos with Dolby Atmos support. Thanks to up- and side-firing speakers, its spatial audio is next-generation. It's the biggest differential factor out of the two Era offerings and the main reason why we would choose the 300 over the 100.

At 650x210x194mm and 6.5kg, the Zeppelin is one of the larger wireless speakers around – and, let’s not forget, it looks like a Zeppelin. So while its little metal stand doesn’t have all that much of a footprint, the speaker itself requires (demands, actually) quite a bit of breathing space. Bowers & Wilkins seems to want its wireless speakers to look like something. In the case of the Zeppelin it’s, well, a Zeppelin. In the case of the B&W Formation Wedge, it’s - what is it? Most of a lampshade. Part of a Christmas tree decoration? Whatever it is, it’s something – feel free to project your own image onto it. We cue up Can I Believe You by Fleet Foxes and the choral voices at the outset are nicely weighted, emotive and expansive. As the beat drops, strings are textured and drums feel three-dimensional in a surprisingly wide, spacious and, yes, room-filling soundstage. It’s giving away both power and drivers to the other two here, but nevertheless it gives a widescreen and punchy account of itself. And the integrated phono stage, which is such a rarity in products like this, proves to be more than adequate – all of that warmth and harmonic subtlety vinyl-fanciers fetishise is delivered by the Ruark. In fact, the overall balance is probably on the ‘warm’ side of neutral regardless of the source of music.Naim, on the other hand, continues to make a spectacular design feature of the Mu-so 2’s control interface. That oversized, smooth-gliding wheel on the top panel is illuminated, home to 15 touch-sensitive buttons that illuminate via proximity sensor, and is quite possibly the single most pleasurable interface in the whole of Electronics World.